Netflix should give Nadine Dorries doubt on Channel 4 sale plan - Andrew Vine

It feels to me that ever since she was given the culture brief, Ms Dorries has hardly uttered a word about television without citing Netflix as something our broadcasters should aspire to.

In particular, her misguided and damaging determination to sell off Channel 4 appears to rest squarely on the repeated assertion that it will enable the station to take on the streaming giants, with Netflix perpetually at the top of the list she always quotes.

Is this really the model that we want British television to be following Ms Dorries? I don’t think so. I happen to be one of the 200,000 former subscribers who abandoned Netflix in recent months, causing the company’s value to plummet.

My reason for doing so was simple. Most of it is rubbish – dire American films with casts of ham actors, lowest-common-denominator drama series with predictable plots and sanctimonious real-life stories. This is dumbed-down television with a total absence of interest for me. It isn’t worth the subscription and a lot of other people obviously share that view.

The other big streaming services, including Now and Amazon, don’t seem much better, going on the evidence of the free trials I’ve had, so I won’t be shelling out for them either.

Yes, there is the occasional nugget of a quality drama or film, but they are few and far between, amid acres of filler material that is just dross.

But still, these are the broadcasters who are cited as the exciting new future of television – until now, at least. The sudden tarnishing of Netflix’s fortunes ought to prompt a rethink of what we want from our broadcasters.

It may be that the streaming channels have already reached their high-water mark during the worst of the pandemic, when families stuck at home and desperate for distraction from what was happening accepted whatever was on offer. Now that isn’t the case, and given the squeeze on household budgets it’s possible that audiences are much less inclined to spend their hard-earned money on sub-standard entertainment, however glossily packaged and relentlessly promoted.

Which raises some awkward questions for Ms Dorries and what appears to be her antipathy towards the best of public-service broadcasting.

Next weekend, at the television Baftas, Channel 4’s compelling Aids drama set in the 1980s, It’s a Sin, is the favourite to sweep the board. And it deserves to. It was as powerful and compelling a drama as I’ve watched, and excellent viewing figures prove millions of others thought likewise.

If it does take home a raft of awards, each will be a riposte to the Culture Secretary. It isn’t Channel 4, or the BBC, also a target for Ms Dorries’ dislike, that should be aspiring to the standards of Netflix, but the other way round.

There are a lot of Conservative MPs who are uneasy about the privatisation of Channel 4, and they should be.

Besides being a superb broadcaster that fosters talent, produces an admirable breadth of programming and provides some of the most incisive news coverage in British television, it is part of the economic landscape. Its new headquarters in the centre of Leeds is a tangible commitment to investing in the north, which the Government has so far conspicuously failed to do on any scale, despite repeated promises.

If Channel 4 is sold off, the buyers will most likely be based abroad, probably in the United States. Does Ms Dorries really think they will continue putting money into the north?

Of course they won’t. A broadcaster that reflects the nature of modern Britain will be reduced to yet another peddler of mass-produced transatlantic tat.

It is to be hoped that those Tories who don’t like the idea of selling off Channel 4 can pressure Ms Dorries to drop her plan.

While they are about it, they might also whisper in her ear to drop the shrill criticism of the BBC, an even greater national institution which has proved how vital it is to the country all over again with its coverage of the war in Ukraine.

It also happens to be creating first-rate drama, like the new series of Gentleman Jack, set in Yorkshire.

The streaming services are not the best that broadcasting can be, nor are they giving vast amounts of people what they want. Netflix’s problems are proving that.

If Ms Dorries truly wants broadcasting at its best, she should drop her prejudices against the public-service channels and accept that we already have it, in the form of the BBC and Channel 4.