‘Keep Breathing’ Is Netflix’s Latest Rotten Series Debut

A new show has debuted at #2 in Netflix’s top 10 list, and may soon unseat Virgin River season 4 for the top spot. That would be Keep Breathing, which seems like it’s a somewhat…strange offering, for a few different reasons.

First off, it’s not reviewing well at all. In an era where a couple dozen series are probably getting 90%+ scores on Rotten Tomatoes across a half dozen streaming services, Keep Breathing has a very low 38% among critics, and an also-bad 45% from audiences. A 5.1/10 on IMDB is equally rough.

TV scores tend to skew higher than movie scores when it comes to metrics like these, so these numbers are noticeably low, and are not likely to dispel any recent conversations about Netflix’s problems with quality control, throwing lots of things at the wall to see what sticks. And in this case, it’s not even something they can point to that critics may dislike, but audiences are eating up. Neither group seems to like it.

The show is also strange in the fact that it’s being pitched as a Limited Series from the start. Not only is it just six episodes, but most of those episodes are barely over thirty minutes long. The total runtime of the entire show is somewhere around three and a half hours, overly-long superhero blockbuster length, I suppose, and with a bit of editing, seems like it probably could have just been a movie.

The show is not based on a hit book or anything, and was created directly for Netflix. What’s it actually about?

“When a small plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, a lone woman must battle the elements and odds to survive.”

That lone woman is Liv, played by Melissa Barrera, whom you may recognize from In the Heights. Frequent complaints about the show is that despite a seemingly exciting concept, it’s just too dull. Most are saying it probably could have been cut down to an 80 minute movie, and nothing of value would have been lost. It’s more evidence in the recent idea that in the age of streaming, a lot of stories are stretching themselves way way longer than they need to be to fill 6-10 episode orders when in a different era, they might have just been a normal movie, and perhaps would have worked better without so much padding.

I suppose if you want to check it out for yourself, it’s a lower time investment than other series options, and you won’t have to worry about it ending on a cliffhanger for season 2, given that it’s billed as a limited series from the start. But clearly something went wrong here, and even if this ends up being viewed a lot, perhaps should have been rethought from the start.

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