Netflix offer £3m for uncensored Little Britain
 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbi...ittle-britain/

They want to poach Matt Lucas and David Walliams from BBC woth the promise that they can go uncensored in the new episodes

Fun fact: £3m would also buy the NHS approximately 194 new medical ventilators

But I'm glad that Netflix's priorities lie with inflating David Walliams' bank account instead

Matt Lucas has always said if he made Little Britain today, his own taste has completely changed so I don't think he'd want it to be as offensive as it was anyway.

Netflix are just gonna stop making to TV to fund the NHS then eh

When they have a spare £3m that they can piss away on a show that was never funny in the first place made by two incredibly rich people who aren't in desperate need of either the money or the exposure, in this case, yes!

This is legit so dumb, I-

The article states that the revival was being made for the BBC anyway, and that Netflix are paying Lucas and Walliams over a million pounds each to buy the rights instead "because it would be good for their brand"

in other words, a massively rich company (in an industry where 120,000 workers have lost their jobs because of corona) is giving massively rich celebrities money for no reason other than brand vanity, in the midst of a global pandemic in a country with a severely underfunded health system. If thinking they could perhaps divert non-essential spending on non-essential business deals for a week or two (when the entire industry has shut down and is rethinking its priorities - like, even Holby City are donating medical equipment, for crying out loud) is a dumb take, so be it! Until then, I'll patiently look forward to being able to watch Matt Lucas say the word "dust" in a funny voice and a dress ten times in one sketch on Netflix rather than BBC One

The article is also the sun so...

Netflix is an American company, why would they send funds to our NHS?

Because it has a UK arm, who are the ones paying out for this

Local content acquisitions aren't all made by one centralised Netflix branch

But still, why would they do that?

Unless you're suggesting they make big donations to every healthcare service in every country that they have a "branch" in? In which case, they'd probs go bust. They're already using megabucks of borrowed cash to spend what they spend.

Netflix have actually just created a $100 million dollar fund for workers in the creative community who have been affected by the pandemic https://thehill.com/changing-america...navirus-relief

But go off I guess

You could also say they are trying to keep 10s of millions entertained for what could end up being a very long time stuck inside

I'm not saying they should do that (they can by all means, if they're waging wars over the acquisition rights to, say, the Slovakian and Paraguayan versions of Little Britain too). I'm just using this example as a reflection of my belief that large companies (such as Netflix) probably ought to reassess unnecessary expenditures, such as throwing money at celebrities to sell their already-exisiting shows to them, during a global pandemic that is severely crippling their industry financially, especially when the amount they're paying celebrities to acquire the rights to a single show is more than they've donated to the relief fund for British workers in said industry. And if they have the money to pay for Matt Lucas' kitchen renovation, I'm sure they have a little left over to help sort out, say, this country's potentially disastrous ventilator shortage as well. But hey, that's just the anti-capitalist in me speaking!

See my above post, only £1m of that is going to the British film & TV industry (which makes me wonder why the rights to Little Britain alone are worth 3x the amount of the livelihoods of thousands of workers)

The offer is 3m for the show? I.e. to make new episodes. That's not 3m in their back pocket.

From what I understand of the OP I am not reading a Sun link.

If it is the budget for making the show there are far, far more expensive shows worth looking at in terms of money they could save and place elsewhere than a potential revival of LB.

The article implies that Netflix are shelling out to Matt and David directly to have the show on their platform:

If the £3m was entirely production costs, why would the show cost twice the amount to make at Netflix compared to the BBC?

Are you asking the difference in production value between Netflix and the BBC?

Judging by the article, the main difference in production value that Netflix are aiming for is making the show "less PC", so I can only assume they're dishing out £100,000 per use of the r-word

(again, not sure a series of Little Britain with an increased special effects budget is what the world is crying out for right now, given *gestures generally at everything*)

The exact same could be said of the BBC, if, of course, there were any feasible way of filming and distributing a TV series while the country's on lockdown

Well I'm not debating the quality of the material, not much of a fan myself but the difference in general production value from the BBC to Netflix is kind of standard. And that obviously costs more. The costumes/prosthetics, the locations, the standard of guest cast etc.

It's not as though they're making it now during the crisis, this is just a report of on one show (out of hundreds) they are currently buying/producing etc. It's really one drop in a large ocean.

It's a weird situation as they both forged a career after it from being PC friendly but the whole appeal was the bad taste and risky skits

In which case, I guess I just think it's a sign of corporate greed for those high up at Netflix to be buying hundreds of shows while its out-of-work freelancers are
collectively getting less than it takes to buy a single one of those shows

Of course, £1m is better than nothing considering the attitudes of certain large global companies towards their workers at the moment (cough Amazon cough), and I'm sure an argument can be made that all Netflix are doing is ensuring production can continue as smoothly as possible when, or if, their employees are able to return to work, but as we can tell I'm a natural born cynic

Greed is what the bosses of Weatherspoons and Sports direct have done

That is absolutely true, and I don't want to make it sound as if I'm willingly taking the Netflix situation out of context as much as I may take issue with a story such as this (at the end of the day, they're still looking out for workers, which can't be said for the likes of Sports Direct)

But... if they stopped functioning and buying shows there will be nothing ready to enter production once they all return to work? :think: