Although I dropped my Netflix subscription three months ago I never did remove my RSS subscription to UK New On Netflix, so every once in a while I have the option of reminding myself of what I’m missing out on.1
Among the recent items that New On Netflix UK lists, I find this:
Please Hold The Line
Date Added: 23rd December 2021 […]Description: This atmospheric documentary follows cable technicians in Eastern Europe as they visit customers’ homes and forge both technical and human connections.
Certificate: Suitable for ages 15 and up
Year: 2020
Duration: 1hr 26m
Audio: Romanian [Original]
Subtitles: English, French, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian
In fairness, for all I know this was the talk of the Romanian film and TV business a couple of years back, a bit of social observation with a commentary courtesy of a Romanian counterpart of Jonathan Meades that would be worth a place on BBC Four if the Romanian producers could just talk to the right people at the BBC and the description (which I’m guessing was provided by Netflix2) simply just doesn’t do it justice.3
Doubtless, Netflix would say I should resubscribe and watch it and find out for myself. But then they would, wouldn’t they?
- Yes, I do need to be very bored to resort to this. I do occasionally contemplate going back to Netflix and re subscribing for a month and bingeing their higher-profile stuff that seems to intersect with my interests, but then I remind myself of how much material was on Netflix and looked promising after I first subscribed to them but which I never got round to watching – the Gilmore Girls sequel, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, Stranger Things – and I realise that the issue is more that I just don’t want to be that big a slave to my TV screen. Much better to be a slave to the computer screen, obviously. Hence my spending time drafting footnote-heavy blogposts like this. ↩
- For the record, here’s how the plot description in the IMDB describes it: “Cable technicians in Eastern Europe navigate a modern-day Tower of Babel. With unflappable humour and a dose of philosophy, the technicians hold the line in a dissonant world.” Well, someone put a bit more effort into that. No guarantee it’s any more accurate than the presumably-Netflix-sourced version above. ↩
- No English-language reviews on IMDB, though the one working Critics Review there leads to this review in Italian or German. A quick visit to Google Translate takes care of the rest. ↩