Producing local content in international waters: the case of Netflix’s Tidelands

ABSTRACT

Netflix’s supernatural crime series Tidelands (2019) was the subscription video service’s first commissioned original series to be produced in Australia. Shot in tropical Queensland with a diverse cast of local and international stars, Tidelands exemplifies the complex challenges involved in Netflix’s attempts to be a global producer creating content for national markets. This article builds on a tradition of research into international television production to locate Tidelands within its industrial and cultural contexts. Combining textual and industry analysis, and drawing on an interview with executive producer Nathan Mayfield, we show how Tidelands negotiates a strategic dual orientationin its use of locations, casting and genre, addressing both Australian and international audiences simultaneously. We conclude that internationally oriented Australian subscription video-on-demand originals such as Tidelands rehearse but also reformulate longstanding tensions regarding the interaction between the national and the global in screen culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Tidelands
• Netflix
• Australian television
• television production
• subscription video-on-demand
• SVOD production
• SVOD originals

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Discover Project Grant 190100978: Internet-Distributed Television: Cultural, Industrial and Policy Dynamics. The authors thanks Amanda D. Lotz for her generous editorial input, and Luke Daws, Claire Darling and Oliver Eklund for research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Lunatics and Tidelands were fully financed by Netflix and did not receive Screen Australia funding. Tidelands received undisclosed financial support from Screen Queensland. Budget and expenditure data for these series are not publicly available, however Screen Australia notes that these two Netflix series contributed (alongside titles from ABC, SBS, Stan and YouTube) to a tripling in total expenditure within the category of Australian online drama in the 2017/2018 financial year, compared to the previous financial year (Screen Australia 2018, 16).

2. According to market research firm Ampere Analysis (2020, 2), the SVOD user base in Australia is now roughly three times as large as the traditional linear pay-TV user base. The most recent Australian Communications and Media Authority (2020) Communications Report notes that 55% of Australians have access to Netflix at home (2020, 92). For analysis of the politics and policy of Netflix in Australia, see Turner (2018), Lobato and Scarlata (2019), and Cunningham and Scarlata (2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number 190100978).

Notes on contributors

Alexa Scarlata

Alexa Scarlata is a research assistant at RMIT and a PhD candidate in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Her research considers the achievements and constraints evident in the recent history of online television in Australia, particularly as this pertains to local drama production and policy. Alexa is the Book Review Editor of the Journal of Digital Media and Policy and has published in Critical Studies in Television, International Journal of Digital Television, Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research and Media International Australia.

Ramon Lobato

Ramon Lobato is Associate Professor in Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne. Ramon is the author of Shadow Economies of Cinema (British Film Institute, 2012), The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015, with Julian Thomas) and Netflix Nations (NYU Press, 2019).

Stuart Cunningham

Stuart Cunningham is Distinguished Professor, Media and Communications, Queensland University of Technology, Queensland. Recent books include Hidden Innovation: Policy, Industry and the Creative Sector (UQ Press, 2013) and Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley (with David Craig) (NYU Press, 2019).