I am reminded of the show Tuca & Bertie. It was a new Netflix original from the same people who created BoJack Horseman. You would think it would be obvious to surface the new show to anyone who watched the old show. Except that never happened. The show's creator even commented that Netflix's algorithm never recommended her her own show. She had to manually search to find it.

The only real explanation is that Netflix believes it is more important for customers to think the catalog is large rather than the catalog is good. Netflix wants people to spend 10 minutes scrolling through crap to find something to watch instead of simply listing all the recommended content at the top and for people to notice that there are only a few good options.

But I have the same problem with the music services -- I listen to a lot of "quiet" music playlists for sleep and work. And so, all the playlists Spotify build for me are quiet. But I also follow and listen to a lot of rock/noise/loud music. But the "made for you" formulas won't budge.

I jokingly believe I need two services -- one where I listen to ambient/quiet/etc, and another where I never listen to it.

But the probability is I'll stop caring about music services and live without them. I don't need to curate my relationship with services like they're tomagachi's. I pay for Youtube Premium, but when I subscribe to a certain number of music artists, it chokes my video subscription feeds.

Moving to willfully not caring for content, music and videos alike.

Meanwhile I can pay the same for amazon and get more Picard, Mr Robot, The Expanse... and if the TV sucks there are plenty of movies on rotation.

But I realized they might also be found elsewhere, and it turns out they're carried by Amazon Prime Video. That was the last straw for my Netflix subscription.

I'm amazed by how thoroughly Netflix has changed me from a lover to a hater of their service and company in recent years. It's not just a matter of cancelling because they don't have a catalog I care about. It's that I feel lied to and manipulated as well.

Last weekend I tried to find To Live and Die in L.A. -- from the 1980s but hardly obscure. I couldn't find it legitimately available to stream anywhere, for any amount of money.

I even tried Kanopy, which has been my go-to source for films I can't find on paid streaming services, but they didn't have it either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Live_and_Die_in_L.A._(film)

"Page Eight" was a great little spy movie with Bill Nighy and Rachel Weisz on Netflix. Now you can't rent from anywhere, for any price afaict.

How does this optimize revenues for the studios?

[0] https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/10085700

* The Name of the Rose * The Draughtmans Contract

I spose I'll have to find them at an old fashioned DVD store, eg. https://filmclub.com.au/

The Name of the Rose (2019 series): https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Name-of-the-Rose/81093444

The Name of the Rose (1986 movie): https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Name-of-the-Rose/70000552

The Draughtsman's Contract: https://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/The-Draughtsman-s-Contract/459...

Your spelling of "Draught[s]man" might have misled you for that one. It's a little sad that Netflix's search returned no results for such a close spelling. I'm not sure why you didn't see Name of the Rose.

(although maybe from your example link you are in Australia and thus don't have access to Netflix DVD?)

This makes me wonder just how much other content they do have that would really appeal to me. It feels like rather than perhaps not spend _quite as much_ time on perfecting their recommendation algorithm, they've just completely given up. For a while now, the only real content that Netflix successfully "recommends" to me are things that I've already started watching.