Reimagining the "Deep Dive" Feature and Other Things....

Plus: Streaming poll! Also, I had a breakthrough (and almost a breakdown!). Good times.

I’m kidding about the breakdown, mostly. I don’t want to unduly alarm anyone.

But I do think I was transported to another realm — no lie, as the kids say — in some kind of dissociative fugue state after talking with my tax person about this giant boulder about to fall on me. Maybe it had something to do with watching “The Accountant” movie?

Anyway, I digress. It’s fine.

The Deep Dive feature gets a refresh.

I started the Deep Dive feature in 2023 and since then I covered part of Netflix, a little bit of Brit Box, then referenced the feature numerous times and, upon reflection, did a “kinda-sorta” thing with it several times.

Not exactly efficient. Even though it was useful.

In this brief glimpse behind the curtain, I think what I’m trying to say is that I love the Deep Dive idea but my execution of it always left me thinking it could be done better. Then the next post was due, life rang the doorbell, etc. etc. You know how it works.

I think the biggest issue was that I would find between two and possibly four series on a platform — trying to stay away from the series that had floated into the zeitgeist and focus on hidden gems instead, as the Deep Dive title suggests — and what resulted was essentially two decent sized reviews of series I found, then mere bold-face mentions of five or six others and perhaps some movies.

Again, useful. Maybe a tad shy of really helpful. There was room for improvement.

I noted that most people get Netflix and that particular streamer is a vast dumping ground of un-promoted series, many without trailers, so it’s really perfect for a Deep Dive. But I also noted that my very first Deep Dive: BritBox revealed a minor flaw — not everybody subscribes to it, so if I was only focusing on that, a number of people would probably wait to read something different on another day (unless they were, in that moment, considering the value of adding BritBox).

Since then, the first refinement was yeah, not everybody subscribes to everything, but if you include the big streamers and mix in the niche streamers then it’s a shotgun approach that won’t kill anyone and will likely be helpful.

The last couple of nights, as I’ve been sampling series and movies, it occurred to me that the Deep Dive feature needs to be ongoing and more frequent.

Because if I watch the first episode of four random (but good!) series, my excitement/endorsement might get you watching (useful), whereas circling back again — diving deeper, if you will — not only allows me to highlight even more of these endlessly available series but continue to write about the series I had watched only once, updating their continued quality or lack thereof, and motivating you to add (or subtract) them from your Watchlist (helpful).

That seems like a better formula.

So here’s what I’ve come up with and if you have additional suggestions to put in the comments I would love to hear them:

• As an example, I’m going to restart the feature in earnest with Hulu early next week and then follow up with Hulu again a few days later.

• Since Hulu qualifies as what I’m calling a “Big 5” streamer (Netflix, Amazon, Max, Hulu, AppleTV+), then I would mix in, with separate entries/different days, a Deep Dive on smaller, more niche streamers like, say, MHz, Criterion, BritBox, Mubi, etc.

• What that would create is a lot of enticing, thoughtful, curated content. That’s the whole point of this Substack.

• Then, once I’ve mined enough Hulu content deemed worth adding to your Watchlist, I would switch to a different “Big 5” streamer and have multiple posts from their vaults, while also mixing in separate posts on the “niche” streamers.

So that’s the plan.

If you’re thinking, “Hey, what about Disney+, which seems pretty big,” I’ll just note that internationally Disney+ doesn’t use its Hulu brand in the title but definitely uses the content, and in that incarnation the whole thing is pretty impressive. But here in the U.S., the better shows, in my opinion, are separated over to Hulu. I haven’t found a ton of Disney original stuff that blows my mind, so I’ll treat Disney+ as niche at this point, while emphasizing the Hulu part of its streaming family.

What does this all mean, succinctly? That you’ll see a lot more Deep Dive posts and the new iteration should be a bit more organized, in-depth as it evolves, and helpful.

The Breakthrough:

Anyone who has read my work through the years probably understands that I don’t involve myself with hospital dramas and I almost always try to avoid series where the storyline is about someone who is sick and dying, slowly and sadly (“Breaking Bad” being the obvious exclusion, and I would argue that Walter White’s cancer is very much underplayed after the first season and he morphs pretty quickly into an antihero, and in that setting there’s less emphasis on fearing The Big C).

The hospital series aversion goes back to truly disliking the formulaic network style that spawned the genre — even though that produced the best of the bunch, relatively speaking. Beyond just hating how tired the shows eventually got, I’m kind of a hypochondriac and so I always think I HAVE THAT.

It’s why I didn’t watch “The Pitt” on Max, even though many people liked it (though I was a bit surprised that nobody in the comments was beating the drum for the show very often, at least early on).

I also skip a lot of series where young kids are dying or in peril. I went to watch “The Killing Of A Sacred Deer” the other night, watched the trailer and went, “Noooope, not yet.” And I really like Yorgos Lanthimos.

Often it’s just the mood I’m in.

Which meant that, initially, there was zero chance I was going to watch Hulu’s “Dying For Sex,” starring Michelle Williams as a woman recovering from breast cancer and, two years later, the cancer reappears in her hip, metastasizes and is inoperable. I mean, that’s a log-line for my wonky brain that screams “avoid this at all costs.” I worry enough about death, I don’t want to marinate in a series about it.

And yet, I felt like I should take a leap and watch it; fall into the breakthrough out of a sense of duty. I watched the pilot as I was scouring Hulu series and I thought it was excellent.

I’ll write about that show more in the upcoming Deep Dive: Hulu, but mentioning it now allows me to add one other thing about this feature: In order to include as many shows as I deem worthy and in order to give you a critical analysis of each, more than likely the “reviews” will be shorter and, more important, evolving — meaning I’ll write a little more about each show as I keep circling back more regularly on the platform-specific Deep Dive feature.

I thought a previous feature I tried — Peek TV — which looked at just one episode and then raced onward, was actually not a bad way to get the word out and feed interest in a series. Since we all know — especially from the recent versions of The Box Set with “Silo” and “Severance,” — individual episodes vary in quality so the fluctuations of some of these shows I discover will likely get more critical attention from me, without each having to be its own Box Set choice.

And for those of you who truly take notice of these things (I’m assuming most don’t and it’s just me constantly tinkering with ideas), yes, I did have the Still Watching feature, which itself sprung from the Two Episode Test feature. I just felt like I was being inconsistent with the Still Watching feature and got lazy and bored with it.

The Other Stuff:

Apropos of nothing, except that it crops up all the time and there’s rarely a chance to mention it, let me vent ever so briefly about the Substack editing platform: You people have no idea how this thing autocorrects words randomly — both on the fly and seemingly in the time after I’ve typed several other words.

It. Makes. No. Sense.

It. Is. Maddening.

I have not found a fix for it, if one exists. But imagine, if you will, just how often it decides to randomly autocorrect actor names, particularly those that are not well-known American names. Here’s the answer: Always. Every time.

I mean, in the last paragraph it autocorrected “decides” to “decided” and I can tell you from late night writing experiences that those are the kinds of “typos” that are super easy to miss as I proofread. But foreign actor names and series titles are the worst, followed by even the slightest variation on any name or word that seems “common” or what autocorrect thinks is the right word to fuck up in the moment.

It’s a dumb thing to get angry about. And yet, I always do.

I feel better having told you.

I promised streaming polls, so I’m going to deliver. I’ll keep it simple: I’m changing all the polls because you can only vote for one, apparently. That’s so lame.

If there’s something I missed, let me know. I didn’t include Starz or AMC and a few others (FX I count as included with Hulu) because they are really more traditional cable channels than streamers, but I would certainly be open to including some of their series if people are banging the drum about one or two pretty consistently.

One last thing: Because life is a hustle, I went over to BlueSky and planted a flag and the lone entry I made was a post with my Substack address and a handy Substack-provided QR code for potential new folks floating by in the ether. If you are on BlueSky, tell your friends and followers, or direct them there (it’s the standard Tim Goodman/Bastard Machine branding and logo) and at the very least encourage them to sign up for the free version of this Substack. As always, I would be greatly appreciative of that support.

As most of you know, I’m done with the socials, so I won’t be posting there. But I know a lot of you are (the editing platform just changed you are to your; see what I mean?!) still brave enough to be in the discussions and a rising number of you are right there on BlueSky, so if you feel like you can spread the word or point them to my flag (and QR code) then thank you in advance.

(And yeah, you could also just tell random friends that they can find me here: timgoodman.substack.com).

Love to your mothers.