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Thoughts on Sense8, its cancellation and Netflix in general
8 years ago
Eeep. Well, that was a bit of a bummer. Not the show itself, but rather the sudden cancellation of it. Granted, it wasn't a *total* surprise, just a little unexpected. Until now almost pretty much everything on Netflix got renewed like there was no tomorrow (There's going to be a second season of "Flaked", and I bet almost no one knows that this show even exists), but I guess these days are long gone now, since it wasn't the only show in recent days on that service that faced a premature end. And it has to be said: Sense8 was a very expensive show to make and there were not that many people watching it. At least I hardly knew of any who did. I hardly saw any discussions about it on social media. I never saw any gifs of episodes that created a meme. There never was any real *buzz*, at least not on the scale of "Stranger Things". On the other hand it has to be said that it never got the big promotion that "House of Cards" and "Orange is the New Black" received. Would more people have watched if there had been posters all over town and ad banners on every website? We'll never know. All I know is that I only knew that the second season was online because it popped up in my queue. And in hindsight this probably was the first sign that Netflix had already given up on the show by then.
Ahwell, anyway. I'm going to miss this show's corny butt. The mixture of upright sincerity and in-your-face messages. The touching speeches and the lines that even George Lucas would have considered to be too cheesy. The loveable characters and the over the top actors that would project every emotion on a 200% level. On a superficial level it reminded me of the early seasons of "Torchwood" - with the notable difference that this show was actually executed *well*.
My biggest point of annoyance however is that the series was just in the middle of hitting its stride. The mythology got deep, the storylines were expanding and coerced with others - and this literally on a global scale. And we merely got to see the tip of the iceberg; so seeing it ending the way it does is rather... anticlamactic. But well, what can you do. In the end it was a pleasant surprise to see "my" Doctor Sylvester McCoy having a recurring part in Season 2, and there were visual moments that I'll probably never forget. That one fight scene in which Wolfgang was up against Lila with both of them having their cluster behind them, mimicking their movements in unison, certain was something you had never seen before (and I wish it had been longer).
Since the chances that another service (let alone even a network) would pick this show up are 100 below zero, we'll probably get a comic book that attempts to conclude the story (but will most likely get cancelled in the long or even short run due to low sales). Nope, it didn't read this somewhere, this is just my own little guesswork.
I personally wonder though if cancellation like these, shows with a long continuing storylines, won't hurt Netflix image in the long run. Because until now it something of a "safe haven". It was the service that would take over cancelled shows from networks and conclude them properly or even give them the resources that it didn't get elsewhere. "Black Mirror" springs to mind especially. But now you learn that even here you have to face the threat of a show facing a sudden dead end. (And when Netflix has passed on you you have nowhere to go. Which network or other service would pick you up? But the actual tricky thing about this is: You as a fan would never even know that the show you love and invested in was ever in danger because we never get to hear the viewing figures. So the axing will always come out of the blue and out of utter leftfield. And there will never be the time for a fandom to organize and start a "Save our show!"-campaign.) So in the end this means that Netflix is "just like all the others" and doesn't treat its shows any better then, say, FOX does. (In a way you're probably even better off on a network, at least from a certain perspective. You very well might have less creative freedom, but at least you'll get a chance to conclude your story properly when you see the numbers coming in and therefore the "writing on the wall".) So... um... well. You probably wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee to a subscription service if it keeps cancelling your shows, you know what I mean? And I have to say, the majority of "Netflix biggies" like the aforementioned "Orange is the New Black" or "House of Cards" are something that I have no interest in. I can't say that I'm seriously considering cancelling my subscription yet, but events like these cause some mental cogs turning.
So, in the end, "Sense8" probably wasn't on my personal list of favourite shows of all time, at least it wasn't *yet* at this stage anyway, so I may sound a little more invested here than I actually am. (In fact, I was about to write a journal about the shows I've been watching lately, and wanted to give the second season of "Sense8" a short mention.) But I do find the mechanics behind the cancellation and its implications for the future rather disheartening.
Ahwell, anyway. I'm going to miss this show's corny butt. The mixture of upright sincerity and in-your-face messages. The touching speeches and the lines that even George Lucas would have considered to be too cheesy. The loveable characters and the over the top actors that would project every emotion on a 200% level. On a superficial level it reminded me of the early seasons of "Torchwood" - with the notable difference that this show was actually executed *well*.
My biggest point of annoyance however is that the series was just in the middle of hitting its stride. The mythology got deep, the storylines were expanding and coerced with others - and this literally on a global scale. And we merely got to see the tip of the iceberg; so seeing it ending the way it does is rather... anticlamactic. But well, what can you do. In the end it was a pleasant surprise to see "my" Doctor Sylvester McCoy having a recurring part in Season 2, and there were visual moments that I'll probably never forget. That one fight scene in which Wolfgang was up against Lila with both of them having their cluster behind them, mimicking their movements in unison, certain was something you had never seen before (and I wish it had been longer).
Since the chances that another service (let alone even a network) would pick this show up are 100 below zero, we'll probably get a comic book that attempts to conclude the story (but will most likely get cancelled in the long or even short run due to low sales). Nope, it didn't read this somewhere, this is just my own little guesswork.
I personally wonder though if cancellation like these, shows with a long continuing storylines, won't hurt Netflix image in the long run. Because until now it something of a "safe haven". It was the service that would take over cancelled shows from networks and conclude them properly or even give them the resources that it didn't get elsewhere. "Black Mirror" springs to mind especially. But now you learn that even here you have to face the threat of a show facing a sudden dead end. (And when Netflix has passed on you you have nowhere to go. Which network or other service would pick you up? But the actual tricky thing about this is: You as a fan would never even know that the show you love and invested in was ever in danger because we never get to hear the viewing figures. So the axing will always come out of the blue and out of utter leftfield. And there will never be the time for a fandom to organize and start a "Save our show!"-campaign.) So in the end this means that Netflix is "just like all the others" and doesn't treat its shows any better then, say, FOX does. (In a way you're probably even better off on a network, at least from a certain perspective. You very well might have less creative freedom, but at least you'll get a chance to conclude your story properly when you see the numbers coming in and therefore the "writing on the wall".) So... um... well. You probably wouldn't want to pay a monthly fee to a subscription service if it keeps cancelling your shows, you know what I mean? And I have to say, the majority of "Netflix biggies" like the aforementioned "Orange is the New Black" or "House of Cards" are something that I have no interest in. I can't say that I'm seriously considering cancelling my subscription yet, but events like these cause some mental cogs turning.
So, in the end, "Sense8" probably wasn't on my personal list of favourite shows of all time, at least it wasn't *yet* at this stage anyway, so I may sound a little more invested here than I actually am. (In fact, I was about to write a journal about the shows I've been watching lately, and wanted to give the second season of "Sense8" a short mention.) But I do find the mechanics behind the cancellation and its implications for the future rather disheartening.
