‘The Bastard Son And The Devil Himself’ Is Netflix’s New Critical And Audience Hit No One Is Watching

Netflix has a problem with failing to elevate some of its great series and watching very average, bad stuff rise to the top of its most-watched charts all-too often.

Case in point would be the arrival of The Bastard Son and The Devil Himself, a new series on Netflix I can all-but guarantee you’ve never heard of. But unlike vastly more popular shows like The Watcher and Inside Man, it’s getting stellar reviews from both critics and audiences.

The series is an adaptation of an YA novel by Sally Green about the son of a notorious witch. Right now, the show has a perfect 100% from critics and a sky-high 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and those combined yield a total we almost never see from many series across Netflix or…anywhere.

Unfortunately, it very much seems like no one is watching. I saw The Bastard Son and The Devil Himself appear briefly at the very tail end of the Top 10 list when it first debuted, but it has almost immediately vanished, replaced by higher profile series like the return of Manifest and reality shows like Buying Beverly Hills. Even the horrifically rated Blockbuster comedy (22%) is still on the Top 10 list while Bastard Son has disappeared entirely.

It is…not super shocking, given the context. First, there’s the name, The Bastard Son and The Devil Himself, which is a mouthful, and you might imagine that they could have shortened it a bit from the book name to make it a bit more palatable for TV. If I didn’t know any better I would have thought this was some sort of gory horror flick directed by Rob Zombie with that name.

Then, there’s the fact that this is a cast of almost complete unknowns, probably no one you have never heard of. There’s no one I have ever heard of, even as an entertainment journalist. The only member of the cast I recognize is the lead, Jay Lycurgo (though I didn’t know him by name) who has been playing Tim Drake on the last two seasons of Titans.

So, in this situation, Netflix should be boosting the show with its algorithm to ensure it gets seen by as many people as possible given that it’s…very good, according to both critics and fans. Instead, the unfortunate reality is that it seems more likely that viewership will be low and it will get cancelled, like many of Netflix’s other YA experiments before it.

Interestingly, this series is executive produced by Andy Serkis, the talented actor and director who must have seen something special in it. We’ll see if Netflix manages to direct some attention its way, but for now, it seems like everything is kind of stacked against it. Hopefully it can break through somehow, or forever be relegated to a hidden gem that viewers may find after digging through mountains of trash.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.