‘Pulse’ Dethroned In Netflix’s Top 10 List By A New Show

Everyone cannot stop talking about The Pitt on Max, the medical drama that has become one of the best, most-watched shows in the country. But far less people are talking about Pulse, Netflix’s new medical drama that was briefly #1 on its Top 10 list, but has already fallen off amidst critic and audience scores that are quite literally both at 50%, a coinflip whether most people will like it or not. The synopsis is pretty basic:

“A group of ER residents navigate medical crises and personal drama amid a divisive allegation at their Miami hospital.”

So that is…The Pitt, more or less, plus there being one central scandal and no stand-out “real time” 24-like concept. But clearly this is not going as well nor generating much word of mouth.

Pulse has been replaced by Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluncing, a documentary chronicling the creepy world of often underage social media influences which in one instance leads all the way up to an FBI investigation. Certainly scandalous enough where I’m not exactly surprised it’s reached the top spot on the Netflix chart.

Most other shows on the list right now are not scripted as Netflix leans increasingly on a glut of reality programming, Love on the Spectrum, Kill Tony, Million Dollar Secret and Gone Girls are the list alongside Bad Influence. After a month, Adolescence remains at #8 and has recently become the third most-watched English-language show in Netflix history, sparking conversations about a second season that was never originally planned for the miniseries.

I don’t have a lot of hope for a Pulse season 2. Even if yes, it has hovered around the top few slots on the list and did make it to #1 briefly, I just don’t know if that’s a good enough performance, plus these pretty bad critic and audience scores, to justify a return. And again, it’s being totally drowned-out by The Pitt, airing at the same time.

We are about to see what is almost certainly going to be a new #1 in short order, the return of the sci-fi anthology Black Mirror, which always puts up good numbers for Netflix hence why it keeps getting renewed. It grabs a great cast each time, but I think most people would agree it’s rarely lived up to the British version of the series that originally aired. We’ll see how this new season goes.

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