Netflix vs Barnflakes
It appears that Netflix – which is, as a whole, still crap and derivative as I’ve often said in the past – have this year stolen two TV show concepts from this very blog. Yes viewers, The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman is currently a three-part documentary looking at the extraordinary exploits of conman Robert Hendy-Freegard and Old Enough is a Japanese documentary where toddlers are sent out into the world alone to go shopping or travel on public transport. Both were here first.
I wrote about my concept for a film about Hendy-Freegard in 2014 on the post The Puppetmaster, and my post Top 5 TV show concepts featured the show Walk a Mile in my Shoes, a dead ringer for Old Enough.
Now, you’re wondering why haven’t got my lawyers on the case? Well, if we go into specifics, my concept for the Puppermaster was as a fiction film ‘based on true events’, a combination of the Arnold Schwarzenegger film True Lies (which came out in 1994, the same time actual events were unfolding and where the sub-plot with Bill Paxton was strangely very similar to Hendy-Freegard’s real life technique) and a grim kitchen sink drama. The name Puppetmaster was used by the Daily Mail at the time.
The Netflix documentary is okay. It’s hard to make the story boring, but they almost do, with their ubiquitous method of cutting forwards and backwards in time, and contrived interviews and recreations (with the real life victims bizarrely talking about themselves in the third person (“You don’t give up” translates as “I didn’t give up”)), and no proper conclusion. My version would have been better.
I’ve yet to see Old Enough so can’t comment but it’s apparently been going for 30 years in Japan so I can’t really cry plagiarism. Anyone else is welcome to take film or TV concepts from this blog, as long as they pay me lots of money.
I actually feel hypocritical to be constantly criticising Netflix whilst this week I’ve actually watched a few shows as I have a free membership. So, to be fair, I’ve mostly enjoyed The Squid Game, The Sparks Brothers and jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy.
Related
I was also mock-paranoid a decade ago when the Guardian seemed to be nicking ideas from my blog, mentioned in these two posts from 2011 and 2013:
Notes on tipping
The risible fall of M. Night Shyamalan
Previously on Barnflakes
The Custodians
Top ten unwatchable Amazon Prime / Netflix shows
Lifetime subscription
Alternative cinematic streams
Top ten Studio Ghibli films
Incidental sounds from Netflix’s Power
Random Netflix review: Stranger Things 3
Amazon Prime / Netflix mash-ups
Random Netflix TV reviews
Top 5 film concepts
The life and death of Michael X
Found Object
Elsewhere on Barnflakes
Homeless Movies