Could you be a Netflix zombie? That is the unflattering label business analysts use for subscribers who keep paying for the service while barely watching it.
These are the undead members of the television audience. Each month, they fund access to a library that once felt indispensable, packed with hits such as Stranger Things, Baby Reindeer, The Crown and Squid Game.
Yet Netflix’s output increasingly appears dominated by shallow shock documentaries, formulaic true crime, second-hand dramas and comedy series recycled from earlier decades. Viewers have become less eager to binge, and the latest UK top ten offers little to revive that enthusiasm. When I looked recently, the line-up was underwhelming at best.
The most-watched Netflix programme among British viewers was Nobody Wants This, a romantic comedy whose title almost invites criticism. Now in its third season, it features Kristen Bell as a sex podcaster who falls for Adam Brody’s rabbi. Its appeal, at least to me, seems distinctly niche.
Second place went to The New Stanford Prison Experiment, a reality programme presented as a psychological investigation. Inspired by a 1971 study carried out by a Stanford University professor, it places 30 volunteers in a mock prison, dividing them between inmates and guards.
For anyone unconvinced by that prospect, third place belonged to Below, a Canadian science-fiction thriller about a fisherman defending his isolated community from a sea monster.
At number six was the excellent BBC1 comedy Ghosts. Charlotte Ritchie plays a woman who inherits a crumbling country house, only to discover that she can see the spirits haunting it.
Ghosts is a genuine delight, but the series concluded three years ago. Netflix surely does not intend to become another nostalgia outlet, endlessly recycling much-loved sitcoms in the manner of Gold, Dave and the other repeat-focused channels.
Among the original productions in the top ten, the only one I considered worthy of a Daily Mail review was East Of Eden, in seventh place. The adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel stars Florence Pugh as the ruthless Kathy. I awarded it two stars, calling it “highly flammable – timber houses, log barns and truckloads of wooden acting”.
Netflix’s biggest hit with British viewers was the romantic comedy Nobody Wants This, starring Kristen Bell as a sex podcaster and Adam Brody as the rabbi she falls for
Netflix monitors how regularly subscribers sign in and how long they spend watching. When someone begins a series but abandons it, the company follows up with automated reminders. Last week, I received one urging me not to forget to complete the dreary costume drama My Brilliant Career. My instinct was to answer: “Why would I? It was dreadful.”
Netflix does not use the phrase “subscription zombies”. Internally, it refers instead to “qualified play days”, or QPDs – a measurement of customers who pay for the platform but do not watch it. The number of those inactive subscribers is increasing.
That helps explain a worrying statistic: in 2026, the average number of minutes each consumer spent watching Netflix content rose by only 2 per cent. The figure is a crucial measure of how popular the service remains.
Netflix was once expected to transform entertainment. But annual growth of 2 per cent is not a revolution. It is a plateau.
Investors have noticed. Netflix shares have dropped by almost 30 per cent over the past year, falling from $93.76 on January 1 to $65.85 at the end of last week. The stock has also lost half its value since reaching $134 in June last year, wiping roughly $300 billion (£225 billion) from the company’s market value.
Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive and one of the industry’s most conspicuous personalities, does not appear to accept that the business faces a fundamental problem. As the disappointing third-quarter figures were released this month, he insisted: “Our business and our business flywheel are working. There is no need for a fundamental shift in the strategy.”
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“We do need better execution in the US,” Sarandos added. That was widely interpreted as a call for modest operational improvements. Perhaps, given what followed, he intended the word “execution” rather more literally: on October 14, around 1,000 employees – about 6 per cent of Netflix’s workforce – were dismissed in an internal memo.
The redundancies were overseen by chief content officer Bela Bajaria, who was herself dismissed just hours later. Netflix’s film chief, Dan Lin, also lost his job. In an awkward twist, Lin found himself alongside Sarandos at a gala for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles the following weekend.
Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos, regarded as one of the industry’s most flamboyant figures, appears not to acknowledge the scale of the company’s problem
Disney+ is producing Rivals, adapted from Jilly Cooper’s famously saucy novels and featuring Aidan Turner, Emily Atack, Danny Dyer and David Tennant
This was the biggest tranche of job losses in the company’s 29-year history, going back to its beginnings as a DVD-through-the-post service, though it has always been ruthless in its readiness to axe staff.
Managers are encouraged to apply the ‘keeper test’ at appraisals: unless they believe they’d roll up their sleeves and fight to keep an employee, dismissal follows.
‘While once the disrupter, challenger and share taker, Netflix now finds itself on the other side of the chasm,’ Sean Diffley, an analyst at banking giant Morgan Stanley, told The Hollywood Reporter, adding that the streamer will have to ‘fight harder to remain relevant’.
That fight pitches it against numerous rivals that are, quite simply, commissioning and delivering much better shows. These include Disney+, which actually makes a sensationally successful series called Rivals, based on Jilly Cooper’s uproariously saucy novels and starring the likes of Aidan Turner, Emily Atack, Danny Dyer and David Tennant… genuine household names.
Apple TV has Slow Horses, with Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden, and Ted Lasso, which stars Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham. Amazon Prime has Alan Ritchson as Reacher, and Clarkson’s Farm. It’s telling that when James Bond returns, it will be on Amazon, not Netflix.
It’s too soon to claim that Netflix is doomed, however. Last year it had 325 million subscribers and that figure has grown in 2026 – probably by 13 per cent, according to best estimates.
But the fact that the firm no longer releases regular subscriber figures is telling. If growth was booming, they’d be shouting about it. Instead, they claim there are better metrics for success, such as revenue.
The obvious way to increase revenue without improving the service or increasing the number of subscribers is to put prices up. And that’s what they’ve done in the UK, twice this year.
Fees rose in February and again last month. The basic plan, with adverts, has risen from £5.99 a month to £7.99, an increase of 33.4 per cent. The ad-free plan went up by a less swingeing 7.7 per cent but skipping the ads means paying almost double, with a £13.99 tariff (up from £12.99).
And if you subscribe to the premium tier, which offers 4K Ultra High-Definition and the option for four users to watch different shows on their own screens, it’s £20.99 a month, up by 10.5 per cent from £18.99.
No surprise, then, that the ‘subscription zombies’, the untold millions who can’t find anything worth bingeing on and who continue to pay their fee out of habit, are multiplying.
Soon they will rise from the grave (or sofa) to cancel a direct debit that has become a waste of money. Unless Netflix can find a way to hold them back, it too will become one of the living dead.