A new show debuted at number 2 on Netflix’s top 10 list, and may soon unseat Virgin River season 4 for the top spot. That would be Keep Breathing, which seems like a bit of an…odd offering, for a few different reasons.
First of all, it is not well reviewed at all. In an era where a few dozen series could possibly get a 90%+ score on Rotten Tomatoes across half a dozen streaming services, Keep Breathing scored an abysmal 38% among critics, and an abysmal 45% from audiences. A 5.1/10 on IMDB is equally rough.
TV scores tend to be higher than movie scores when it comes to metrics like this, so these numbers are remarkably low, and aren’t likely to dispel recent talk about Netflix’s problems with quality control, throwing a lot of stuff at the wall to see what sticks. And in this case, it’s not even something they can show that the critics don’t like, but the audience eats up. Neither group seems to like it.
The show is also odd in the fact that it was set up as a limited series from the start. Not only are there only six episodes, but most of those episodes are barely over thirty minutes long. The total runtime of the entire show is somewhere around three and a half hours, overly long superhero blockbuster length I suppose, and with a bit of editing, seems like it could possibly just be a movie.
The show is not based on a hit book or anything, and was created directly for Netflix. What is it really about?
“When a small plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian desert, a lone woman must fight against the elements and the odds to survive.”
The only woman is Liv, played by Melissa Barrera, who you may recognize from In the Heights. A common complaint about the show is that despite a seemingly exciting concept, it’s just too boring. Most say it could probably have been cut down to an 80-minute film, and nothing of value would have been lost. There is more evidence in the recent idea that in the age of streaming, many stories stretch out much longer than they need to in order to fill 6-10 episode orders when in another era they would have been just a regular movie. , and might have worked better without so much padding.
I suppose if you want to check it out for yourself, it’s a lower time investment than other series options, and you don’t have to worry about it ending on a cliffhanger for season 2, since it’s a limited series of the start But something clearly went wrong here, and even if it is looked at a lot in the end, maybe it should have been rethought from the beginning.
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My sci-fi novels include the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
