If you share a Netflix account with a friend, relative, colleague, in-law, neighbour or ex whose password you happened to crack, your viewing days may be numbered. The streaming service is planning to fight back against password-sharing – by charging an extra fee to subscribers who let friends and family from other households use their account.
In a post this month, Netflix emphasised that ‘a Netflix account is intended for one household’, adding: ‘We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account with features like profiles and multiple streams. While these have been hugely popular, they’ve also created confusion about when and how you can share Netflix. Today, over 100 million households are sharing accounts – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films. So over the last year, we’ve been exploring different approaches to address this issue in Latin America, and we’re now ready to roll them out more broadly in the coming months.’
Given that more than a quarter of British Netflix subscribers reportedly allow friends or family to use their accounts, that’s a lot of viewers who may soon be cut off. So if you’re one of them, what films and TV should you be watching – while you still can?
If you missed The Dig when it was released on Netflix in 2021, it’s well worth catching now. Ralph Fiennes plays Basil Brown, a self-taught archaeologist and excavator hired by landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) to work on the mounds on her land at Sutton Hoo. He uncovers the rivets from a ship – revealing that her land might be the burial site of someone significant. News of Basil’s discovery reaches leading archaeologists, who demote him to a general groundsman’s role – before Edith steps in. Set in 1939, it is the reimagination of the excavation at Sutton Hoo in a glossy production that deserved its five Bafta nominations (although it was robbed on the night in each category).
A film that fared better on thee awards front was The Father. Anthony Hopkins received an Oscar for his moving portrayal of a man also called Anthony, suffering with dementia. Olivia Colman plays his daughter, who is trying to arrange for him to have a carer despite his refusal of help. The next day, a woman bearing a close resemblance to Colman (Olivia Williams) and her husband (Mark Gatiss) remind Anthony that he is living with them in their flat. Anthony is confused. He thought it was his flat, and he was under the impression that his daughter was moving to Paris with her new boyfriend. These mark the start of many mix-ups for Anthony – and the audience. The film is a pitch-perfect portrayal of a debilitating condition, sensitively handled throughout. It appared in cinemas in early 2021 and arrived on Netflix in the spring of last year.
Netflix houses many brilliant book-to-film adaptions, including The Scapegoat, based on the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. Kind-hearted teacher John Standing is made redundant before he meets his doppelganger Johnny Spence in a pub one evening. Johnny is wealthy, arrogant and in trouble with his family. Before they part ways, he tries on teacher-John’s scruffy duffle coat as a joke, getting John to wear his smarter attire. The following morning, Johnny has vanished, leaving John to take his place. John gets taken to Johnny’s ancestral country mansion, meets his family – and then learns that Johnny has led the family business into disrepair and it’s up to him to pick up the pieces. Both male protagonists in the 2012 film are played by Matthew Rhys, and it co-stars Andrew Scott, Alice Orr-Ewing and Eileen Atkins.
Anatomy of a Scandal, meanwhile, is the compelling Netflix adaption of the novel by Sarah Vaughan. In the six-episode series, Sienna Miller plays the wife of an MP whose affair with an aide is about to be made public as he has been accused of rape. Michelle Dockery is in the dock as the prosecution questioning him, determined to get him behind bars.
From a rather different era, The Queen’s Gambit is an engaging seven-episode adaptation of a novel by Walter Tevis about a teenage chess prodigy who’s propelled to fame when she wins multiple chess matches in the 1950s – while grappling with difficulties away from the board.
Robert Harris’s book Munich was also brilliantly adapted for the gripping 2021 film Munich: The Edge of War, with Jeremy Irons as Chamberlain and George MacKay as Hugh Legat, Chamberlain’s private secretary.
There are a few films based on true stories worth hunting out, too, including The Courier – one of the most dramatic offerings on Netflix. The. 2021 release tells the story of Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch), a businessman recruited to be the go-between for MI6 and a GRU officer in Moscow in the early 1960s. When he gets caught by the KGB, he is sentenced to eight years in a Moscow prison but is released after four because of concerns for his health. Cumberbatch reportedly shed 10kg for the prison scenes to show the ordeal Wynne went through while he was locked up.
Benediction is another powerful and moving true-story-turned-film – an atmospheric portrayal of the life of Siegfried Sassoon (played by Peter Capaldi) who reflects on the actions of his younger self (Jack Lowden).
Fun and light-hearted options include Man vs Bee, a series delivered in short segments that chronicles the disasters of a house-sitter (Rowan Atkinson in his element). Meanwhile, Call My Agent shows the amusing and not-so-smooth running of a talent agency in Paris.
Whatever you pick, don’t forget to tell your password-sharing friend about it. At least we can still make the most of the social aspect of sitting in our separate houses watching the same thing on TV.
What are your favourite Netflix films and series? Share your recommendations below.
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