Upon reaching the five-minute mark in Netflix’s newest installment of the powerhouse show “Black Mirror,” viewers are faced with something rarely seen on mainstream television: a choice. The main premise for “Bandersnatch” is one of decision-making, and it allows the audience to choose their own adventure by making choices at key moments in the plot. A viewing experience such as this has, unsurprisingly, rattled Netflix viewers far and wide. With waves like these, one inevitably wonders whether this is the new standard of television.
The concept of choosing one’s own adventure in entertainment isn’t exactly new and has been viewed in both video games and books, just as “Bandersnatch” mentions. Notions of the idea in print can be traced back to 1941, with the ffirst widely published choose-your-own-adventure book series coming into the spotlight in 1979, selling upwards of 250 million units. Video games began to showcase the idea as early as 1976 and are widely considered to have pioneered interactive fiction. Modern examples also tend to be very successful, with some choose-your-own-adventure video games selling millions of copies and being showered with awards.
However, despite the project’s mutual successes, it’s not as though interactive fiction commands either industry. Sales of the once-groundbreaking book series, “Choose Your Own Adventure,” levelled and dropped, leading production to come to an end in 1998. Similarly, higher-caliber games such as “Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” tend to overshadow their choice-based counterparts, like indie favorite “Life Is Strange,” by selling millions more copies. The two were released within months of each other, but one clearly outsold the other, despite both games receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews. A parallel can blatantly be drawn to this in that the Netflix original movie, “Bird Box,” was released within days of “Bandersnatch” and broke Netflix viewing records within just a week. Keeping this in mind, it’s not unlikely that it overshadowed the “Black Mirror” production.
Production of “Bandersnatch” also took two times longer than a typical episode, coming in at 18 months of preparation, filming and editing. Companies and studios, in addition to audiences, simply don’t have the patience to wait a year-and-a-half for a single program. The prosperity of television largely depends on the public’s general interest in shows, and in a binge society, interest declines if people are left waiting too long for only one program. That isn’t the only drawback, though, as money may also prevent choose-your-own-adventure shows from reaching extreme popularity, since “Bandersnatch” required twice as much money to create. All of the potential endings and timelines for the episode required much more footage than a typical episode, totalling almost five hours of screen footage. It’s difficult to imagine that studios would be willing to pour such a great magnitude of resources into a single production.
The fact of basic human nature must also be discussed. Television exists as an activity meant to both relax and captivate audiences by “turning off the brain,” which “Bandersnatch” doesn’t exactly fulfill. In fact, viewers are made to do the one thing television is meant to allow people to escape from: actively engaging. This is likely the reason other attempts at interactive shows have flopped. Take, for example, “Rising Star,” a 2014 singing competition show that allowed audiences to vote for their favorite contestants. The show had a sound novelty, but it was cancelled after a single season, likely because people don’t typically watch television to actively engage in what they’re watching. They want to observe, judge and unwind, crafting their own opinions without the risk of actually being involved.
Many frustrations also arose from “Bandersnatch” viewers. Typical audiences spent an hour and a half watching the show, while the shortest possible amount of time one could spend viewing it is near forty minutes. While this is to be expected, as different audiences took different paths, much of that extra footage is simply repeat shots. Thus, boredom ensued, and boredom doesn’t bring back returning viewers.
While some of these issues can be resolved—and in the near future, too—as of right now, they pose significant roadblocks to production teams. Studios following suit will likely take no small amount of time in both catching up and becoming proficient enough to regularly produce choose-your-own-adventure shows. Interactive television will likely become more common in the future, but it may take longer than the public thinks, be it because of time, money or basic human behavior.
