After nearly six weeks of dipping in and out of the #1 spot on Netflix as the year’s second most-watched series on the service, Wednesday has been dethroned, for a third time, by a brand new series. And this time I really do mean brand new, a totally new show that is not a returning megahit series with a new season, the way we’ve seen from Emily in Paris. Nor is it some much-anticipated debut like Harry & Meghan or The Witcher: Blood Origin.

The new #1 series is called Kaleidoscope, a limited series, meaning it’s only supposed to run for this one season. Unless of course, it’s stupidly popular and then maybe they change their minds and make more. It’s happened before. But at least “limited series” means that it will have some sort of coherent ending to it, unlike many Netflix debuts which get cancelled.

The show is about a master thief who tries to steal $7 billion dollars with his crew, but things do not go according to plan, as they generally don’t in literally every heist story you’ve ever seen.

I know you know the lead actor in this, Breaking Bad/The Mandalorian’s Giancarlo Esposito, who as “charming master thieves” go is of course, pretty good casting. You probably recognize a few other cast members as well, like Jai Courtney from Spartacus and Suicide Squad, Tati Gabrielle from The 100 and You, and Paz Vega from The OA and Cuna de Lobos.

It’s a bit too early to fully tell how the show is reviewing but so far it seems pretty…mixed. There are only 5 scored critic reviews in, and only one of those is positive, meaning it has a 20% on Rotten Tomatoes. It has a higher audience score at 76%, but that’s with only a few dozen reviews in. In short, it’s just too early too tell given that the show literally came out yesterday as Netflix’s first debut of 2023.

As for Wednesday? What more is there to say? It’s been an absolute monster for Netflix, not just in terms of viewing hours, but in terms of making a mark on pop culture itself thanks to Jenna Ortega’s portrayal of the character and her spooky dance moves that have taken over TikTok. One thing we should be hearing early in 2023 is a season 2 (or 3, or 4) renewal for Wednesday.

I’m definitely going to keep an eye on Kaleidoscope, and we’ll see how further reviews judge it. I do like the cast, and the concept, so if I get a spare eight hours sometime soon, I’ll give it a shot myself.

Update 1/4: While nothing has changed about the ranking order, Kaleidoscope is still on top with Wednesday at #2, we do have a bit of an update about season 2, namely that there may be some problems with rights issues going on behind the scenes, which is why it’s taking so long to announce a second season.

The issue is that that Wednesday is actually an MGM production with Netflix acting as the distributor for season 1. But MGM was just purchased by Amazon last year. Given that Amazon Prime Video and Netflix are huge rivals, there’s now some debate about what might be going on behind the scenes, with Amazon possibly trying to wrench away Wednesday season 2 for itself and steal one of Netflix’s biggest shows of all time, or they might charge Netflix an arm and a leg in order to keep airing the series indefinitely.

Netflix hates shows that it does not fully own, generally, but Wednesday is such a huge hit, and a genuine pop culture phenomenon, they might have to make an exception. I would expect them to fight incredibly hard to get this done and pay whatever it takes to secure the rights to future Wednesday seasons, assuming that was not established ahead of time in the initial MGM deal. But it’s unknown what that deal was, and whether or not it could be changed under new Amazon ownership. Nothing official about this has come out, but that’s currently the theory about the lengthy delay of a season 2 announcement.

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