At the end of last year, MrBeast – an unfathomably successful YouTuber who revels in obnoxious demonstrations of wealth – went mainstream. He launched Beast Games on Prime Video, a sort of cloth-eared, Squid Game-style elimination show that entirely failed to twig that Squid Game was a satire. I gave it a pasting, but it went on to become Prime’s second biggest series debut of 2024.
As such, we now find ourselves in a weird new world. Streamers have realised that the only way they can compete with YouTube is to open the cheque book for its content and run it on their own platforms. It’s what Amazon did with Beast Games, and it’s what Netflix has done with Inside. The latter is a British reality show that premiered on YouTube last year. Every episode got more viewers than anything shown on BBC One, so Netflix quickly snapped up the rights to the second season. Inside will be watched by so many people that it’s almost pointless for me to tell you whether it’s any good or not.
