In a study conducted in 2017, it was revealed that American teens spent 27% of their time watching Netflix among all entertainment consumed; second only to YouTube.
Netflix has always been big on data. Back in 2011, they won a bidding war to produce their first original, House Of Cards , and green-lit the first two seasons of the show before even a single scene was shot. Why? It had data that showed audiences were a fan of the original House of Cards (UK), and that all Kevin Spacey films and David Fincher movies drew eyeballs on the streaming service. It was all the push they needed to make a 100 million dollar gamble and it paid off.
It’s not entirely surprising, then that Netflix is big on teen dramas at the moment, especially after the runaway success of 13 Reasons Why a couple years ago. Among them is Elite . Set in a prestigious educational institution, Las Encinas, which is nestled among the scenic mountains of Spain, the drama revolves around three under-privileged students who get a full scholarship after the building of their local school collapses.
The show intercuts between a murder investigation being conducted in the present and the three students getting bullied by more influential students in the past. Following a 13 Reasons Why -meets- Riverdale -meets- How To Get Away With Murder -meets- Gossip Girl template, the show is overcrowded with ideas, and exhaustingly mundane. Another familiar element is the presence of actors from La Casa De Papel , another Spanish hit on Netflix, but their presence doesn’t lift the storytelling in any way. Avoidable.
The high school show to beat all others, though, is American Vandal , the sophomore season of which premièred recently.
A satire that doffs its hat to some of the most stellar documentaries on Netflix — the plot of Making A Murderer and the narrative style of The Keepers — American Vandal is unlike other mockumentaries in that it’s not a story within a story, but strictly follows the rules of the most hard-hitting documentaries even while dealing with outrageous incidents.
The first season began with drone shots of Hanover High School in Oceanside, California, as a solemn voice-over implied that the peace of the city would be destroyed by a dastardly crime — the vandalism of the vehicles belonging to the school’s teaching faculty, in the form of penis-shaped graffiti. It’s impossible to keep a straight face while watching an intense dissection about the implications of penis-shaped graffiti, and the first season kept the humour intact throughout its run.
But it’s the latest season where American Vandal really finds its tone. It begins with another ill-fated incident: students of St Bernadine school suddenly feel the urge to defecate after consuming lemonade during the lunch break, resulting in chaos as hundreds go pooping all across the school premises. It’s an incident that requires the thorough investigative abilities of Peter Maldonado and Sam Ecklund, the filmmakers whose Hanover High documentary travelled far and wide.
While retaining its tongue-in-cheek wit, the new season isn’t only focussed on getting the laughs, but also in designing a thicker plot that gets you deeper in. It’s all quite silly when you think about it, but the skill involved in balancing rip-roaring fiction with somber documentary storytelling is what makes American Vandal unlike any other teen drama at the moment, on Netflix and otherwise.
The first two seasons of American Vandal are streaming on Netflix.
