Here are two series that will most likely gain wide audiences; but they both seem put together by some algorithm, resulting in exercises of ticking boxes - lacking any true spark.

Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu - Amazon Prime) - This is a limited Series that on the surface, would look like it’s made from TV Heaven. Based on a Liane Moriarty novel (she wrote Big Little Lies), David Kelley producing, and a cast stuffed with good acting potential. Premise is as simple as simple can be, 9 strangers head up to the poshest wellness retreat headed by some mysterious woman, and there, their psyches will be exposed, and hopefully, they’ll leave as better persons. Nicole Kidman, Bobby Carnavale, Melissa McCarthy, Micheal Shannon, Regina Hall, Luke Evans - the cast list reads like a How Can We Miss. And most of us would presume, all you’d have to do is create a screenplay that keeps us on tenterhooks on the next reveal, the next personality flaw, or deep dark secret, right?

If filmed as a satire of the very rich and vacuous seeking inner peace, this would have worked, but there’s no bite at all in this series. If we’re to take it seriously, it’s just too implausible and asks us to treat these nine with contempt. They didn’t know there’d be a no mobile phone policy? Plus it’s more like they’ve been told you’re this type of person, and not much else in terms of fleshing out their characters. It’s numbing, and at some point, we stop caring about what happens to them. This is what I’m referring to as algorithm obsession - you’ve assemble all the parts, but there’s nothing under the hood. Plus Kidman looks like she stepped off the set of Lord of the Rings. There’s something very hollow at the center of this series and while it’s clickbait for an audience, I doubt you’ll be remembering much of it when you turn your TV off.

Clickbait (Netflix Australia-USA) - You have to hand it to Netflix in terms of knowing their audience. Here’s a Limited Series of 8 episodes that’s bound to shoot up their Most Watched charts as it slickly offers exactly what it’s titled. It’s a murder thriller that puts social media smack dab in the center of its premise. A family man is kidnapped and a video is released online stating that as he’s guilty of untold crimes, if the video hits 5 million views, he dies. Of course, his family - wife and two sons, his sister, are moving heaven and hell to save him. And the irony is pointed out that in repeatedly watching to video to hunt for clues, they’re adding to the views. It is a premise that holds much promise, so I was ready to be taken for a ride - please return my money!

Unfortunately, the ride burns out much sooner than expected. Episodes are titled, The Sister, The Detective, The Son, and so on. But they’re all just cover for stretching this mystery, with a paucity of clues or actual story development going on within each ep. Honestly, revealing what happened and keeping us invested could have been done over two episodes maximum, given what we’re asked to absorb. There’s so much repetition, it’s like someone is asking us if we got it, if we noticed this was being said the first time it was mentioned. Even the characters begin to grate on us, as it’s like they’re all in holding pattern because of the 8 episode commitment. In some universe, with too much time on our hands, this could work; but here, it just makes for TV tedium.
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