Even though Netflix’s in-house action output can always be relied on to draw solid viewership numbers, a worrying number of them aren’t exactly welcomed with open arms by critics.
In the last year alone, we’ve seen Red Notice (the platform’s biggest original hit of all-time), Interceptor, The Takedown, The Gray Man, Day Shift, and many others all end up under the 60 percent threshold on Rotten Tomatoes that keeps them away from a Fresh rating, but this week’s debutant Lou has bucked the trend. Or at least, it has for now.
At the time of writing, the J.J. Abrams-backed revenge story has a 65 percent rating on the aggregation site, but it’s curious to note that a 69 percent user average puts it below pretty much all of the titles listed above. Maybe there’s something in the water, or maybe it’s a fact of life that the Netflix exclusives to win over the general public are the ones panned by critics.
Either way, Lou has gotten off to a stellar start since being added to the library yesterday, having instantly made the Top 10 in a whopping 89 countries, as per FlixPatrol. Not only that, but it’s additionally rocketed right into the number one slot in 60 of them, proving that there’s a huge market out there for watching Allison Janney reinvent herself as an unlikely ass-kicker.
It might end up being the latest in a long line of Netflix OGs to vanish into the ether and never mentioned again a month from now, but as it stands, Lou is a certifiable smash hit among the streamer’s sizeable customer base.