
Danny Dyer left EastEnders amid great hoopla in a Christmas episode that made everyone seasick. Ellie Taylor gained a new following of admirers after sashaying her way to the final stages of Strictly. And now they’re collaborating on a new Netflix programme, which premieres on March 1. Doesn’t it seem exciting?
But… this is a game show. Known as Cheat. And yeah, I feel cheated, not only at the squandered opportunity to pair these two in – well, anything besides another game show – but more specifically at how Netflix has exposed its real colours. It aspires to be the BBC1 wasteland on Saturday nights.
Remember when Netflix shook up the TV landscape with programmes like Stranger Things and The Crown, as well as more experimental art-house jewels like Sense8? It felt like TV was changing forever, providing you more (ad-free) variety and quality for your membership dollars.
However, any difficult shows are being cancelled left and right. Meanwhile, the dating programme Too Hot To Handle has completed four seasons. They’ve already done their own take on Blind Date (Love Is Blind, three seasons and counting), and now we have Cheat, in which competitors cheat their way to a cash reward – how very 2022 – in an already crowded market.
Isn’t it the job of Challenge or Michael McIntyre?
I’m not interested in paying for a membership when the free-to-air networks already serve every imaginable quiz show/dating problem requirement. Netflix was meant to offer a unique experience.
It’s a rot that’s been brewing for a while. As the axe dropped with callous premature abandon on fan favourites like Sense8, Midnight Mass, and, most recently, 1899, it was evident that Netflix was nothing more than a profit-driven ratings-hungry business.
Who knows, Cheat or Ch$at – I love the £ symbol in the title – may be a game show revolution, but the odds are stacked against it. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too harsh on Netflix.
After all, it is a business model that, like other company models, is predicated on producing money. As a result, its judgements are mostly dependent on the viewership statistics that its computers analyse.
You know, the ones who make annoying ‘you might also like’ suggestions based on the flimsiest of flirtations. I mean, I watched Marie Kondo for maybe three minutes once, and since then, any show involving a duster and a garbage bag has flitted into my inbox.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The power is in the hands of the algorithms, and they do not lie. They’re telling Netflix that instead of an intricately planned foreign language drama, their audience wants a Danny Dyer game show. It prefers videos about rich dogs (Gunther’s Millions) over cerebral musings on religious tolerance (Midnight Mass). It wants Emily to stay in Paris indefinitely.
We are the algorithms, and we can only blame ourselves.
Cheat is on Netflix on March 1. You have been warned