Well, even a stopped clock is right once a day

[dreamshark]

You know how Netflix is always coming up with helpful suggestions for shows it thinks you'd just love and you wonder, "What the hell did I ever do to make Netflix think I would like Family Guy?" But I scan through the list anyway; it's hard to ignore a category that has your name in it. So this evening I found myself watching The 4400, an off-brand skiffy series from the mid-2000's. And darned if Netflix wasn't right on the money this time! I finally managed to hit the back button in time to avoid starting Episode 4, and found myself back at "Top Picks for Sharon." Where I learned that Netflix had suggested The 4400 "because of [my] interest in Scandal," a show that has absolutely nothing in common with this one. Now if they had suggested The 4400 because I liked Heroes or Flash Forward or Once Upon a Time or the first 2 seasons of Lost - that would have made sense.

I do like Scandal, as a matter of fact. I just don't see the connection between a steamy, cynical DC-based soap opera and a mildly uplifting series about what happens after all the alien abductees from the past 60 years get dropped off in Seattle one evening by a passing comet. 

Comments

[guppiecat]

4400 is great...for the first season. I wish I'd not gone on to seasons 2 and 3

[mle292.livejournal.com]

They are surprisingly good at picking out "Because you liked X and Y, but not Z, you will probably also like Q." Maybe it has a writers in common, or maybe just a similar color scheme. All I know is that it's a little eerie.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

For some reason, The 4400 didn't make much of an impression on me and I don't think I caught it into the 2nd season. I dunno; there as a spate of sf series a few years ago that seemed fairly similar and they all merge into one.

I sometimes explore Netflix' suggestions, which leads to interesting, if not necessarily good, choices. Often, a choice I'll add on whim doesn't pop to the top for a year or two, and I've forgotten why it's there. I think that's how I got to Moonrise Kingdom (which I liked), The Secret Life of Arrietty (a knock-of of "The Borrowers" that didn't work all that well), In Darkness (a sort of "Shindlerr's List" of a Warsaw denizen hiding some Jews in the sewers, which worked better than I might have expected), Safety Not Guaranteed (a time-travel film that some friends raved about and popped up as a suggestion), The Mystery of Picasso (a documentary watching him paint; fascinating, the only film with two good commentaries) and used their ratings to find most of the Bollywood.

At some point, perhaps, we should trade Hidden Gems. Or merely our five star list. I have a spreadsheet of all my Netflix orders, when I placed them, when I got them, when I sent them back, when Netflix got them, what rating I gave, and various other notes.

[seekerval.livejournal.com]

Guess I'll have to take a look at The 4400. Thanks for the rec.

[sraun]

There was a web-site "The Library of Alexandria" that - TTBOMK - pioneered the modern 'if you like x, you might like y' idea. They took advantage of big data - they compared what you liked to what other people liked, and then recommended what other people that liked what you liked that you hadn't read yet. It ends up with some surprising recommendations, and seems to get better as you give it more information.

One think I like about the Library's implementation was that it would give you a confidence rating - some of their recommendations were given a 'this is a really off-chance recommendation'.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I watched 'The 4400' on Thorin's recommendation, I believe, and liked it at the time, but don't remember much of it.

'Heroes' sticks much better in my memory. There's something about slightly over-the-top characters that gives them more lasting power in my memory. I don't think that's a factor the Netflix algorithms account for.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

A stopped clock is right twice a day, if it doesn't specify AM or PM.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess that was the original idiom. Without even thinking about it, I updated it for the digital clock era. Although the fact that all "stopped" digital clocks think it is the same time (midnight) kind of changes the meaning a little.