Until then, Netflix wasn’t even seen as television – at that point, people were still referring to House of Cards as a series of webisodes – and this is something it has maximised on ever since. When House of Cards won its first Emmy in 2013, it completely upended the traditional broadcaster applecart. You have to assume this technology was much more rudimentary a decade ago, because no algorithm in the world would suggest that the best show with which to launch a television revolution is a show about Silvio Dante in Norway. As such, it can confidently commission a new show and finesse it according to data to ensure that it will have a baked-in audience. It knows the type of shows you watch, the times you watch them, when you are most likely to check out, and a million other things. The streaming service’s biggest achievement this decade has been in how it analyses user data. Netflix is now much, much better at knowing what viewers want And so, when it comes to writing the history of how streaming services began to turn the tables on traditional broadcasters, an underwhelming drama about a mobster in snow will go down as the key series.
Lilyhammer beat House of Cards to screens by almost exactly a year. And then, while it waited for that show to reach fruition, it co-produced Lilyhammer with the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK1. In March it hired David Fincher to help adapt the BBC series House of Cards for the service. In 2011, Netflix realised that the best way to drive new subscribers was to offer original content. Photograph: Collection Christophel/Alamy It’s even weirder when you consider what Netflix had coming up Lilyhammer: an underwhelming drama about a mobster in snow. And what better way to mark its 10th anniversary than rewatching it to see how Netflix has changed over the years? There isn’t any. But, when it debuted in 2012, it was the very first Netflix original series. If we are being completely honest, it wasn’t particularly good. It ran for three seasons and Bruce Springsteen had a cameo in the final episode. It was a Norwegian show about the messy misadventures of a mafia underboss living in the witness protection programme 100 miles north of Oslo. That’s right, let us all wish a happy anniversary to Lilyhammer. And it was a show which was every bit as important a milestone in TV’s evolution.
But let us also not forget that – 10 years ago this week – Van Zandt followed The Sopranos with another show. A vast, swaggering monument of a show, The Sopranos quite rightly holds the reputation of playing a pivotal role in the history of television. We’ll let you know if the service eventually makes a statement regarding the cancellation or if we learn more about why Lilyhammer was given the boot.W hen you think of Steven Van Zandt’s acting work, your mind will automatically flick to The Sopranos. “Business got too complicated,” could mean any number of things, from the creative end to the monetary end. While Van Zandt seems to be proud of the effort he and the creative team put into the first three seasons of the drama, he’s a bit more ominous in his tweet when it comes to explaining why Netflix opted not to pick up a fourth season of the program. Still, the viewership may not have been the culprit for the cancellation. Now that Netflix is pouring money into a lot of other originals, Lilyhammer may have been left by the wayside (especially with all of the action-oriented Marvel content coming up). While we don’t have official ratings from the streaming service, we do know that Lilyhammer has been less popular than Daredevil, which reportedly saw more than 10% of Netflix users tune in for the premiere (according to outside research). While Netflix doesn’t officially release ratings to the public, Lilyhammer never earned the buzz that a lot of other programs, from House of Cards to Orange is the New Black, have gotten during their respective tenures with the subscription streaming service.