Let’s not even try and kid ourselves by pretending the majority of viewers watch erotic thrillers for the complex plotting, intricately-woven narrative, and richly-drawn characters. Based on the evidence, even the trashiest of titillating tales can draw in huge numbers on streaming, with Netflix’s Obsession providing merely the latest in a long line of examples.
Despite bearing a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 43 percent – which is incredibly over twice as high as the average audience approval rating of 21 percent at the time of writing – the platform’s latest scantily-clad and saucy story has instantly taken hold of second place on the worldwide episodic most-watched list.
Per FlixPatrol, Obsession has given the Top 10 a right good seeing to in a mammoth 84 countries around the globe, where it’s thrust directly to the summit in over 20 of them. A modern-day update of Josephine Hart’s novel Damage, Richard Armitage stars as a surgeon who embarks on a passionate and decidedly risky affair with his son’s fiancée, which soon devolves into borderline obsession as you could probably infer from the title.
The source material was already adapted into a movie back in 1992 that saw Miranda Richardson land an Academy Award and Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in amongst widespread acclaim, but Netflix’s reinterpretation doesn’t hold a candle to its salacious predecessor.
Then again, there’s the promise of sex and skin, which has long since proven itself as one of the easiest sells on-demand, so there was no chance Obsession was going to turn out as anything other than an instant sensation.