How Netflix Is Mastering The Art of Entertainment!

I had never been a big fan of sitting on the sofa and “marathon” watching television series. Most of my friends weren’t either.

Then Netflix came to change our minds!

I started to appreciate a series due to a bet with a friend. She is a big nerd and I was not that big of a nerd, considering that for most people, nerds are the ones who enjoy anime, comic books, superhero movies, and prestige television series.

I believe that being a nerd is to love knowledge and once you find a subject you like, you are drawn to it because you want to know everything about it. There is no such thing as shallow knowledge when you are a nerd!

She bet that I was not able to watch a whole television series, from the very beginning to the end, before the end of the year. I had watched sporadic episodes of FRIENDS and I thought it was funny, so I decided to pick it as my goal series.

That’s when I fell in love with “marathons watching”. At that time, DVD was a big deal so I bought the complete box set because it included every season. The more I watched, the more I liked it, that’s how I became a prestige television series lover. I believe that most people did not have the same patience, and Netflix made our lives much easier by making high-quality content available at a fair price.

Before this adventure, I thought that the USA had the only good movie industry and I had always been afraid of trying something new. I, for example, grew up hearing that French movies are terrible, but because I love languages I started to try different things. It was through the German movie industry that I fell in love with the German language (“The Wave”), it was the same with French (“Trouble at Timpetill”), and Spanish (“The Orphanage”).

Netflix has changed the way TV entertains us, it opens up an entire world that in the past was only available through expensive Cable packages, (I LOVE YOU, NETFLIX <3). The best part is that they are not only good at providing this service, but also creating content. Over the last two years, Netflix has produced a lot of high-quality movies and prestige television series, and I would like to talk about two of them.

What called my attention is that they are not American series per se. I have to confess that I prefer to watch my movies, series, and Anime (“Death Note”) in their original language. It does not matter if it is English, Russian, or Japanese, I watch them with English or Portuguese subtitles and learn a lot of new languages!

Here are the two shows that have totally caught me up in their plotlines!

~TABULA RASA

Philosophically, Tabula Rasa means the mind in its uninformed original state or an opportunity for a fresh start. According to John Locke, the human mind is like a blank board, “(scraped tablet or tabula rasa) upon which experience imprints knowledge.
John Locke (1632 – 1704), who was an English philosopher and physician who argued that people acquire knowledge from the information about the objects in the world that our senses bring. People begin with simple ideas and then combine them into more complex ones.

The meaning of the title of a show gives you an idea of what you are about to watch. “Tabula Rasa” is a Latin phrase often translated as “blank slate” in English and originates from the Roman tabula used for notes, which was blanked by heating the wax and then smoothing it.

Synopsis:

“Mie is a young woman with amnesia who is locked up in a secure psychiatric hospital. After Thomas Spectre goes missing, Detective Inspector Wolkers visits her, claiming that she was the last person seen with him — making her a witness and prime suspect in the disappearance. As she appears to be the key to solving the case, the police won’t allow Mie to be released from the hospital until Thomas is found. That means she has to reconstruct her lost memories and find her way through her recent past in a desperate attempt to fill in the blanks. But the more Mie remembers, the more she mistrusts the people around her — and herself.” ~Arnav Srivastav

As Chacrinha, a famous TV Brazilian presenter once said, “on television, nothing is created, everything is copied”, we are hardly ever surprised by the film industry these days. Well, at least I am. However, Tabula Rasa was able to be different from the shows we are used to watching by creating a very smart and creative plot twist. Most of the time, you are puzzled by the events, until the truth is finally revealed. Of course, I will not give you a spoiler, but you should definitely check it out.

A quality prestige television series can be a mix of thriller, horror, and police investigation, which are my favorite types of movies!

~MERLI

Merli had been on my Netflix’s list for a while but I was kind of waiting for the perfect moment to watch it. The original language is Catalan and I have to confess I learned a lot of words and phrases by watching it. I keep telling my students how you can use series and movies to learn a language. You will not become fluent, of course, but you learn a lot of words and it helps you to sharp your accent.

The series carries the name of the main Character, Merli, who is a Philosophy teacher. At first, you even think he might be a loser, as he has no job and is about to be kicked out of his apartment for not paying the rent.

As series goes by, we realize he is extremely smart and very persuasive and on top of that, an awesome teacher, loved by all his students for teaching classes differently from the standards imposed by the institution, showing them that they can (and should) use philosophy to help them to go through life.

I confess this show is almost like a soap opera, but the good kind. This is the kind of show you watch when you arrive home from a tough day in the office and just want to relax and see something fun. Of course, the series addresses many philosophers and discuss at least the basics of their theories.

So, if you are looking for something less “Hollywoodian”, I definitely suggest these two prestige television series as a start. Thank you, Netflix, for bringing us amazing entertainment at such a bargain!