Paul Rudd, Tim Robinson and the art of social suicide

Meghan's Netflix show fails to make top 350

News.com.au

an hour ago

News.com.au

Meghan's Netflix show fails to make top 350

It's not often a spreadsheet makes news but today's story comes to you live from the depths of thousands of line items. Every six months Netflix executives take a break from brainstorming ideas like a S quid Game / Stranger Things crossover set in space and lets the world take a look under the hood by releasing their streaming figures. In the first half of this year, the Emmy-nominated Adolescence was the most watched TV show on the platform, hoovering up 145 million hours of viewing. Meanwhile, Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex's lifestyle-tainment show which saw her instruct audiences in the finer art of decanting pretzels from one plastic bag into another didn't manage to make it into the top 350. According to Netflix's latest 'What We Watched' report, With Love, Meghan was the 383rd most watched show, registering 5.3 million views, beaten by the first four seasons of Suits and Gossip Girl season one (number 376). Who knew that Blair Waldorf could better a real life duchess? With Love 's flatter-than-a-deflated-souffle-numbers have left the Hollywood entertainment bible Deadline scratching their heads, given that the world is in for a second serve. They reported that the show's ranking 'is very low for a Netflix original — and pretty unprecedented for a show that has been renewed.' ('Atypically,' they noted, With Love 's seasons one and two were filmed back-to-back.) Today, more than three months on since With Love posed the important question to audiences, 'but have you ever thought about fiddling about and colour-co-ordinating a fruit plates?' No date has been set for Meghan's sophomore series. But there is one clear date on the horizon: September 2. That day will mark five years since Meghan and her husband Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex announced their 'megawatt' five year Netflix deal. Back then, in 2020, this seemed like an all round jolly good bet, with the world pressed-up- against-the-glass and glued to the unfolding saga of the self-exiled couple. They had done the unthinkable - turned down the chance to spend their lives in a group chat with Princess Anne sending horse gifs, doing charity all the charity work they fancied and never having to pay a gas bill. When they announced the deal, it seemed a given that the streamer's subscribers would eagerly gobble up whatever they made. It all seemed pretty win-win: The duke and duchess would make content that 'that informs but also gives hope' and 'impactful content that unlocks action' and Netflix could piggyback on the global Sussex obsession. Five years on the proof is in the cold, stodgy pudding. The only 'action' they have 'unlocked' is Meghan having given an unexpected boost to the flower sprinkle industry and them managing to further estrange the royal family and to set a lot of Brits' teeth further on edge. Meanwhile, Netflix has extracted the only thing of real value the Sussexes possessed -the sorry, sad tale of their tortured royal lives. The outlier in their Netflix tale has been their six-parter, Harry & Meghan, all those hours of raw emotions, soft lighting and one infamous curtsy making for compelling viewing, translating into Netflix's biggest documentary debut ever, which has now been watched for more than 177.85 million hours in total. Huzzah and all that. However, move beyond that and we have two egregiously flaccid duds, Harry's solo Heart of Invictus and Polo proving that he's about as good at making TV as his uncle Andrew is at giving interviews, and With Love's limp showing. Heart of Invictus only got 300,000 views after its release. Since then it has not made the top 6,800 shows. Polo, a boring offering of on field testosterone, horsey braggadocio and capped toothed-men rabbiting on about winning only got 600,000 views, putting it at 2,946th spot. In the six months of this year, it has added 500,000 views and currently sits at 3,436. In return for all this output and their credibility, the Sussexes have reportedly only made tens of millions, far from the much touted figure of $USD100 ($153) million. Over the weekend, 'a source with knowledge of the Netflix deal' told the Daily Mail that the Sussexes 'probably managed to maybe keep $10million-$15million [$15.3-$23 million] or a touch more purely for themselves over the nearly five years so far.' How long can or will that sum last, with the same Mail report saying they need to bank $6 million a year after tax to pay for their living expenses? The good news for the duke and duchess is that Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos is said to be a huge fan of Meghan's and that With Love will be renewed for a third go. According to the Mail, 'It's probable that they'll pay Meghan between $3-$5million [$4.6- $7.6 million] a year for it.' Or in other words, the duchess would make just about enough to keep the lights on and their bank manager sweet. With Spotify having parted ways with the Sussexes back in 2023, the duke failing to have gotten a single podcast series off the ground, and both The Hollywood Reporter and Vanity Fair having published exposes about their allegedly poor treatment of staff, the couple's Hollywood fortunes are in the doldrums territory. The Duchess of Sussex might keep cranking out With Love and dispensing invaluable advice about how to put ice in drinks but beyond that their entertainment careers appear to be largely kaput. Should push ever come to shove, the latest Netflix spreadsheet makes one thing clear: the appetite for royal melodrama is as healthy as ever. Season one The Royals, a long since canned series in which Liz Hurley is the Queen and heads up a fictional British royal family, has been viewed 14.3 million times for a total of more than 85 million hours. As the saying goes, there's money in muck - and monarchy.

‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery

Sydney Morning Herald

6 hours ago

Sydney Morning Herald

‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery

A brooding cop, troubled by his past. Stunning wilderness. Long-held secrets in a tight-knit community. A murder investigation. Eric Bana. Share these details with an Identikit artist, and you'll probably get something that looks like The Dry, or its sequel Force of Nature, the Australian feature films in which Bana starred as Jane Harper's detective Aaron Falk. But that, insists the 56-year-old whose star turn on the other side of the law as Chopper Read is now, remarkably, 25 years old, would be wide of the mark. 'I just love working outdoors. It's been a pretty consistent theme, that I'm always drawn to big outdoor shows,' he says. 'But I don't think they have too much in common after that.' In Netflix's six-part crime series Untamed, Bana plays Kyle Turner, a detective with the Investigative Services Branch. 'It's kind of like the FBI of the National Park Service,' he explains of the real-life ISB. 'There aren't that many of them [investigators], and they move around from park to park, depending on the workload.' Kyle is based in Yosemite, where he's lived for years. His ex-wife Jill lives nearby, and though she has repartnered, they are bound – not especially healthily – by trauma. Neither of them can, or will, move on. When a young woman drops to her death from a cliff (almost collecting a couple of climbers along the way, in one of the more spectacular opening sequences in recent memory), Kyle suspects foul play rather than an accident. Soon, he realises the dead woman is linked to a case he had investigated many years earlier, and that the sprawling wilderness he holds dear also hides a whole range of nefarious activities besides illegal campfires. The spark for the show was lit when screenwriter Mark L. Smith read an article about a real-life crime in a park, and the ISB investigation that followed. 'And it was just like, 'We haven't seen this on film before, a murder mystery thriller investigation in a national park',' Bana says. 'That's where the idea began, and then he just started fleshing it out. 'Well, who would this person be?' Loading 'He's not based on a real character,' he hastens to add of Kyle. 'It was just the germ of the idea.' Bana is a producer as well as star of the series, and as it was in development, a real-life story was unfolding in the Australian wilderness – the so-called High Country Murders of Russell Hill and Carol Clay, for which former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was ultimately convicted. For Bana, that duality of the remote wilderness was part of the appeal of the Untamed story. 'A lot of wacky stuff goes on, and that plays into the psyche,' he says. 'Even if you love the outdoors, there's the element that you always feel a little bit exposed.' There's the natural aspect – which, in Australia, often means the threat of bushfire or flooding or extreme heat or cold, or simply wandering off track and becoming hopelessly lost. 'But then there's also that thing of, well, what if there's someone else out here? What about the humans, you know? So on a subconscious level, I think everyone relates to that, and we definitely were trying to tap into that.' Bana read a script for the first episode in 2018, and was immediately onboard. But it took years to get it made. Why the delay? Loading 'COVID, strikes, trends, quality, making sure we had everything right. Just all the normal things – and the abnormal ones. I've lived with Kyle for a long, long time, probably one of the longest gestation periods I've had for a character.' ISB officers generally 'don't work as part of a massive team, and they are often highly skilled in their particular areas, used to working alone', Bana says. And Kyle has that lone-wolf vibe dialled up to 11. Basically, he just doesn't like people very much, himself included. Though the park is a major character too, the series was actually shot in Canada's Whistler, which Bana had previously visited on skiing holidays with his wife and kids a couple of times, but had never seen in the warmer months. 'In the middle of summer you can't get into Yosemite because of the tourists, and the restrictions,' he says. 'We just had more freedom of movement in British Columbia.' For Bana, much of that movement was done on the back of a horse. He first learnt to ride for Troy, more than 20 years ago. 'That was a pretty intensive training period because we were bareback, no stirrups for that film. So from there, everything's pretty easy afterwards.' Sometimes he'd get to set in the backwoods by car, sometimes by chairlift. And on one memorable day, he and co-star Sam Neill rode their horses to location. Loading 'They weren't in the scene, we were just using them as transpo,' he says of their trusty steeds. 'He's not even on camera today, my guy, but I'm using his saddlebag for packing some stuff. You'd just pinch yourself every day you were up on a horse on top of a mountain somewhere at the back of Whistler, and realise it was actually a job. It's just amazing.' Untamed marks Bana's second TV series out of the States, following Dirty John (based on the true-crime podcast) in 2018. Those with long memories will recall that he got his start as part of the cast of sketch-comedy show Full Frontal in the mid-1990s, had a brief eponymous solo show, Eric, from 1996, and played Joe Sabatini in the ABC's weeknight serial Something in the Air in the early 2000s. But post- Chopper, he has almost exclusively been a movie actor. Untamed doesn't represent a major shift, he insists. 'It doesn't feel that different. I mean, there are some days when you feel like, 'OK, we're really having to go quickly', but generally, there's not a huge difference between making a TV show and making a movie. ' On Dirty John, we had one director over the eight episodes, so that just felt like a big film. This, because I worked so closely with [creators] Mark and Elle, felt like a big film shoot, with three directors. It was amazing and incredible to work on and to put together an incredible cast for this.' That includes Rosemarie DeWitt (Mad Men, United States of Tara, The Boys) as Kyle's ex-wife, Jill, and Lily Santiago (La Brea) as Kyle's offsider Naya Vasquez. And, of course, it includes Sam Neill, aka The Prop (see the NZ actor and winemaker's prolific social media output for further detail). 'Sam Neill's a legend,' Bana proclaims happily. But, remarkably, this was the first time the pair had ever worked together. In fact, he adds, 'We'd never even met prior to this project, ever been in the same room. 'We have mutual friends, and the first day we met, we're both like, 'How is this possible?' 'He said, 'I feel like I've known you my whole life'. And I said, 'I feel the same'.' Of course, they got on like a house on fire. And, of course, Neill brought out a few bottles of his Two Paddocks pinot noir at the end of long shooting days. 'Absolutely, my word. He wasn't getting away from the job without some of that,' Bana says. But tell me, Eric – did he open the really good stuff, his top-of-the-line Fusilier, or First Paddock offerings? 'Oh,' Bana says with a laugh. 'I'm going to have to go through my picture library this afternoon and find out just how close a friend I am.'

The Age

6 hours ago

The Age

‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery

A brooding cop, troubled by his past. Stunning wilderness. Long-held secrets in a tight-knit community. A murder investigation. Eric Bana. Share these details with an Identikit artist, and you'll probably get something that looks like The Dry, or its sequel Force of Nature, the Australian feature films in which Bana starred as Jane Harper's detective Aaron Falk. But that, insists the 56-year-old whose star turn on the other side of the law as Chopper Read is now, remarkably, 25 years old, would be wide of the mark. 'I just love working outdoors. It's been a pretty consistent theme, that I'm always drawn to big outdoor shows,' he says. 'But I don't think they have too much in common after that.' In Netflix's six-part crime series Untamed, Bana plays Kyle Turner, a detective with the Investigative Services Branch. 'It's kind of like the FBI of the National Park Service,' he explains of the real-life ISB. 'There aren't that many of them [investigators], and they move around from park to park, depending on the workload.' Kyle is based in Yosemite, where he's lived for years. His ex-wife Jill lives nearby, and though she has repartnered, they are bound – not especially healthily – by trauma. Neither of them can, or will, move on. When a young woman drops to her death from a cliff (almost collecting a couple of climbers along the way, in one of the more spectacular opening sequences in recent memory), Kyle suspects foul play rather than an accident. Soon, he realises the dead woman is linked to a case he had investigated many years earlier, and that the sprawling wilderness he holds dear also hides a whole range of nefarious activities besides illegal campfires. The spark for the show was lit when screenwriter Mark L. Smith read an article about a real-life crime in a park, and the ISB investigation that followed. 'And it was just like, 'We haven't seen this on film before, a murder mystery thriller investigation in a national park',' Bana says. 'That's where the idea began, and then he just started fleshing it out. 'Well, who would this person be?' Loading 'He's not based on a real character,' he hastens to add of Kyle. 'It was just the germ of the idea.' Bana is a producer as well as star of the series, and as it was in development, a real-life story was unfolding in the Australian wilderness – the so-called High Country Murders of Russell Hill and Carol Clay, for which former Jetstar pilot Greg Lynn was ultimately convicted. For Bana, that duality of the remote wilderness was part of the appeal of the Untamed story. 'A lot of wacky stuff goes on, and that plays into the psyche,' he says. 'Even if you love the outdoors, there's the element that you always feel a little bit exposed.' There's the natural aspect – which, in Australia, often means the threat of bushfire or flooding or extreme heat or cold, or simply wandering off track and becoming hopelessly lost. 'But then there's also that thing of, well, what if there's someone else out here? What about the humans, you know? So on a subconscious level, I think everyone relates to that, and we definitely were trying to tap into that.' Bana read a script for the first episode in 2018, and was immediately onboard. But it took years to get it made. Why the delay? Loading 'COVID, strikes, trends, quality, making sure we had everything right. Just all the normal things – and the abnormal ones. I've lived with Kyle for a long, long time, probably one of the longest gestation periods I've had for a character.' ISB officers generally 'don't work as part of a massive team, and they are often highly skilled in their particular areas, used to working alone', Bana says. And Kyle has that lone-wolf vibe dialled up to 11. Basically, he just doesn't like people very much, himself included. Though the park is a major character too, the series was actually shot in Canada's Whistler, which Bana had previously visited on skiing holidays with his wife and kids a couple of times, but had never seen in the warmer months. 'In the middle of summer you can't get into Yosemite because of the tourists, and the restrictions,' he says. 'We just had more freedom of movement in British Columbia.' For Bana, much of that movement was done on the back of a horse. He first learnt to ride for Troy, more than 20 years ago. 'That was a pretty intensive training period because we were bareback, no stirrups for that film. So from there, everything's pretty easy afterwards.' Sometimes he'd get to set in the backwoods by car, sometimes by chairlift. And on one memorable day, he and co-star Sam Neill rode their horses to location. Loading 'They weren't in the scene, we were just using them as transpo,' he says of their trusty steeds. 'He's not even on camera today, my guy, but I'm using his saddlebag for packing some stuff. You'd just pinch yourself every day you were up on a horse on top of a mountain somewhere at the back of Whistler, and realise it was actually a job. It's just amazing.' Untamed marks Bana's second TV series out of the States, following Dirty John (based on the true-crime podcast) in 2018. Those with long memories will recall that he got his start as part of the cast of sketch-comedy show Full Frontal in the mid-1990s, had a brief eponymous solo show, Eric, from 1996, and played Joe Sabatini in the ABC's weeknight serial Something in the Air in the early 2000s. But post- Chopper, he has almost exclusively been a movie actor. Untamed doesn't represent a major shift, he insists. 'It doesn't feel that different. I mean, there are some days when you feel like, 'OK, we're really having to go quickly', but generally, there's not a huge difference between making a TV show and making a movie. ' On Dirty John, we had one director over the eight episodes, so that just felt like a big film. This, because I worked so closely with [creators] Mark and Elle, felt like a big film shoot, with three directors. It was amazing and incredible to work on and to put together an incredible cast for this.' That includes Rosemarie DeWitt (Mad Men, United States of Tara, The Boys) as Kyle's ex-wife, Jill, and Lily Santiago (La Brea) as Kyle's offsider Naya Vasquez. And, of course, it includes Sam Neill, aka The Prop (see the NZ actor and winemaker's prolific social media output for further detail). 'Sam Neill's a legend,' Bana proclaims happily. But, remarkably, this was the first time the pair had ever worked together. In fact, he adds, 'We'd never even met prior to this project, ever been in the same room. 'We have mutual friends, and the first day we met, we're both like, 'How is this possible?' 'He said, 'I feel like I've known you my whole life'. And I said, 'I feel the same'.' Of course, they got on like a house on fire. And, of course, Neill brought out a few bottles of his Two Paddocks pinot noir at the end of long shooting days. 'Absolutely, my word. He wasn't getting away from the job without some of that,' Bana says. But tell me, Eric – did he open the really good stuff, his top-of-the-line Fusilier, or First Paddock offerings? 'Oh,' Bana says with a laugh. 'I'm going to have to go through my picture library this afternoon and find out just how close a friend I am.'

Paul Rudd, Tim Robinson and the art of social suicide

Hashtags

Try Our AI Features

Comments

Related Articles

Meghan's Netflix show fails to make top 350

‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery

‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery

Paul Rudd, Tim Robinson and the art of social suicide

Hashtags

Try Our AI Features

Comments

Related Articles

Meghan's Netflix show fails to make top 350

‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery

‘A lot of wacky stuff goes on': Eric Bana goes wild, again, for Netflix murder mystery

Get Started Now: Download the App