Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points For Friday, September 16th, 2022

It's another Warner Bros Discovery Friday news dump.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, September 16th, 2022.

THE FIREHOSE OF CONTENT THAT IS NETFLIX
I spend a fair amount of time (maybe too much, from your perspective) in this newsletter complaining about how difficult it is to be an American journalist covering shows that are produced internationally. Especially if they are shows that were originally produced in a language other than English.

One of the reasons why I care is people looking around on their favorite streaming service will run across an unfamiliar title and do a web search for more information. And a surprising amount of the time, my review or feature might be one of the few English-language pieces they'll find.

So having as much info as possible is good for me and my pocketbook. But it's also good for the streamer, because that info might be enough to persuade them to watch.

And there is a lot of international content being released this week. As an example, these are the new titles hitting Netflix today. ELEVEN titles, coming from places including from South Africa, Japan, Great Britain, Spain, India, and the U.S. And for the most part, there is almost no info out there about most of the titles.

For the record, here are the eleven titles and a quick logline:

The Brave Ones (South Africa)
Reincarnated as a human being to avenge her sister’s death, a goddess must learn to harness her superpowers to defeat her enemies and save her family.

Do Revenge
After a clandestine run-in, Drea (Alpha, fallen it girl) and Eleanor (beta, new alt girl) team up to go after each other’s tormentors. Do Revenge is a subverted Hitchcock-ian dark comedy featuring the scariest protagonists of all: teenage girls.

Drifting Home (Japan)
One fateful summer, a group of elementary school kids set adrift on an abandoned apartment building must look within themselves to find a way back home.

Fate: The Winx Saga: Season Two
Bloom tries to understand and control her powers while she and the other students at Alfea pull together to defend Solaria from a catastrophic threat.

Gymnastics Academy: A Second Chance (Australia)
In the wake of an injury, American teen Kyra Berry gets a second chance to chase her dreams — and a gymnastics scholarship — in faraway Australia.

I Used to Be Famous (Great Britain)
Two decades after his peak, a former boy band star gets an unexpected second shot at success when he forms a bond with a gifted young drummer.

Jogi (India)
Amid tension in 1980s India, three friends of different faiths unite in a noble yet dangerous effort to save hundreds in their town.

Love Is Blind: After the Altar: Season Two
What happened to the couples and singles from Love is Blind season two after the weddings? Love is truly blind, but is the future blurry? Follow the stories of Jarrette, Iyanna, Deepti, Shayne, Natalie and more when Love is Blind: After the Altar (S2) premieres September 16th.

Mirror, Mirror (Spain)
Five employees grapple with their respective desires by arguing with themselves in the mirror, ahead of their cosmetic company's 50th anniversary party

Santo (Spain)
Two cops (Bruno Gagliasso, Raúl Arévalo) must learn to work together to catch the world's most-wanted drug dealer, whose face has never been revealed.

Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard (Great Britain)
Upstart payment firm Wirecard wowed the financial industry with its runaway success — until a tenacious team of journalists exposed massive fraud.

HBO MAX CANCEL-ATHON CONTINUES
Apparently, the executives at Warner Bros Discovery haven't quite grasped the nuances of the 24/7 news cycle. Because once again, they have waited until late on Friday to announce they've stopped production and/or pre-production on some projects. If this were 1997, a Friday news dump might work. In 2022? Not so much.

First, a spokesperson at HBO Max just confirmed to me that the streamer is not moving forward with its in-the-works series centered around the DC Comics character of John Constantine. Also, a HBO Max standalone series about DC Comics’ Madame Xanadu has also been scrapped. Both projects come from J.J. Abrams’ Warner Bros.-based Bad Robot and will be shopped around to other streamers in hopes of finding them a home. Although it's not clear who would be willing to take on projects using IP owned by a rival media company.

HBO Max is also making additional cuts in its animation division. According to people working on the show, the crew of Bye Bye Bunny: A Looney Tunes Musical were laid off earlier today. The film was set to be the first Looney Tunes film to be a full-blown musical and was scheduled to premiere on both the Cartoon Network and HBO Max.

This is just the latest of a series of decisions that cancelled direct-to-streaming animation titles based on long-running Warner Brothers characters. It's not clear it there is a strategy behind the moves other than saving money. But as intellectual property goes, most major studios and streamers would pay a lot to own beloved characters ranging from Bugs Bunny to Scooby Doo.  It just seems short-sighted not to invest in the future of these characters.

THE CHANGING FACE OF NON-FICTION STREAMING DOCUMENTARIES
The Hollywood Reporter has a really great look at how the success of true crime and other non-fiction documentaries produced for streamers has changed the production and editorial process for producers. And mostly, it hasn't been for the better:

But then, a red flag: Gibney started to get notes from the streamers “that tried to scientifically rationalize the process,” he says: “‘Our algorithm states that by minute 10 you should do X, Y or Z.'” In the meantime, he admits, his company attempted to industrialize its production process to meet the streamers’ demand. “Both us as a production company and then soon the streamers themselves were trying to reintroduce formulas,” Gibney says. “And suddenly we realized that that was the road to perdition.”

While the streamers’ appetite for documentary content has created a new golden age for nonfiction filmmaking, it’s come with transformations that many find worrying: Doc subjects are being paid, timelines are getting scrunched, and the line between premium nonfiction and reality television is blurring. Two camps have emerged, one that has welcomed the resources, reach and riches, the other fearful of a Faustian bargain with the powerful platforms.

One thing documentaries have in common with other streaming genres is that crews are regularly complaining about compressed time schedules, tight budgets and workflow that values efficiency over accuracy:

“My fundamental rule for editing used to be, before I even talk about structure, I want to screen every frame of footage,” says filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills; Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes). “In today’s fast-paced, highly compressed editing schedule, not only do I not look at all the footage, but the editors working on my shows often don’t look at all the footage.”

According to labor group the Alliance of Documentary Editors, an ideal edit schedule for a traditional documentary is about a month per 10 minutes of finished work, or nine months for a 90-minute film; editors who spoke for this story report recently being asked to complete films in five to six months. Several doc producers have introduced the role of “story editor” or “story producer,” a job commonly found in reality television but not traditionally in documentary — which some believe is intended to save time and help edits hit particular story beats.

Other reality television techniques are creeping into the field, such as “frankenbiting,” or the practice of editing different parts of dialogue together. Documentary editors often edit out “ums” or “ahs” for clarity purposes, but multiple sources say that in some cases — still rare — subjects’ words can be pieced together to punch up dialogue or help facilitate a story arc. “Frankenbiting is part of the process of editing to a certain degree, but what I’m talking about is something where the reality of what we’re seeing onscreen is often a fun house mirror version of reality,” says one veteran documentary editor. “For me, the most concerning is the fact that I’m seeing this at companies that are run by veteran documentary filmmakers who should know better.” Artificial intelligence is also, somewhat controversially, helping docs to re-create voices, or at least their likenesses. Morgan Neville’s Roadrunner had an AI model of Anthony Bourdain’s voice speak words he had written in email, while Andrew Rossi’s The Andy Warhol Diaries used an AI-actor hybrid to foster the illusion that the artist was reading his own diaries.

And in what seems to be a recurring them in today's newsletter, cutbacks at Warner Bros Discovery have also impacted its non-scripted documentary slate:

As nonfiction has become a larger part of streamer strategies, fortunes will now ebb and flow with those of the wider entertainment industry, like the recent downturn for Netflix stock and Warner Bros. Discovery’s cost-cutting — HBO Max, after mass layoffs in the nonfiction division, will no longer be acquiring or commissioning original projects, with future documentary film content now managed by HBO proper’s docs team. (Current HBO Max projects that are in production will be completed on a case-by-case basis.) Still: “Even if Netflix trims down their $17 billion [overall] budget, you can still make a lot of docs with $1 billion,” says Mooser.

WHAT'S NEW FOR FRIDAY
Here's a quick rundown of all the new stuff premiering today on TV and streaming:

CMT Giants: Vince Gill (CMT)
Dateline Season Premiere (NBC)
Do Revenge (Netflix)
Drifting Home (Netflix) - [photo gallery]Dying To Win (LMN)
Fate: The Winx Saga Season Premiere (Netflix)
Goodnight Mommy (Prime Video)
Gymnastics Academy: A Second Chance (Netflix)
Heathers: The Musical (The Roku Channel)
I Used To Be Famous (Netflix)
Jogi (Netflix)
Los Espookys Season Two Premiere (HBO)
Love Is Blind: After The Altar Season Two Premiere (Netflix)
Mija (Disney+)
Mirror Mirror (Netflix)
My Dream Quinceañera Season Premiere (Paramount+)
Sago Mini Friends Series Premiere (Apple TV+)
Santo (Netflix)
Skandal! Bringing Down Wirecard (Netflix)
The Brave Ones (Netflix)
The Grand Tour Presents: A Scandi Flick (Prime Video)
The Great British Baking Show Season Premiere (Netflix)

Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU MONDAY!

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.