Netflix EMEA boss Larry Tanz has put the Mr Bates vs the Put up Workplace debate to mattress.
That debate over whether or not a streamer would have commissioned a neighborhood present just like the ITV breakout hit has been raging for the previous 18 months and Tanz, whose workforce has lately had success with Adolescence, strove to kill it off at immediately’s Deloitte Convention in London.
“Possibly that is lastly my probability,” mentioned Tanz. “[Netflix UK boss] Anne Mensah and her workforce within the UK commissioned Adolescence, Child Reindeer and Poisonous City for the UK viewers in the beginning. Possibly I can lastly put that to mattress right here and say we completely would have commissioned Mr Bates within the UK. We expect our viewers would adore it.”
Tanz’s shutdown of the controversy was unsurprising on condition that Netflix has discovered such success with native UK hits of late. Adolescence has been killing it and is now nearing Stranger Issues in changing into Netflix’s second most watched English-language sequence of all time. Satirically, high execs on the BBC and Channel 4 have lately mentioned they might not have afforded Adolescence, which was made through an costly one-take fashion and starred Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters.
Because the BAFTA-winning Mr Bates aired to thousands and thousands in early 2024, debate has raged over the dying of really native British programming. Earlier on the Deloitte Conf, ITV applications boss Kevin Lygo joked that the present has made “s***hundreds” of cash through worldwide gross sales. He has regularly mentioned it made a loss regardless that the celebrities took paycuts.
Whereas Tanz confirmed Netflix would have commissioned Mr Bates, Amazon’s ex-UK MD Chris Hen lately mentioned the alternative, with Hen acknowledging that the ITV smash was “too British” to have been commissioned by an American streamer. Tanz clearly disagrees.
Tanz, who oversees 1000’s of hours of content material throughout Netflix EMEA, was talking on the Deloitte and Enders Media & Telecoms 2025 and Past Convention after BBC boss Tim Davie and alongside Sony worldwide boss Wayne Garvie.