The rise of the streaming era is arguably making content more accessible, but it’s also making it more and more difficult to gauge which narratives are breaking through and connecting with audiences. This is in part due to a more nebulous aspect of streaming: the specificity of the viewing numbers—an aspect streamers are famously hesitant to reveal.

Netflix does release numbers, but their stated methods for determining those numbers (e.g., counting someone who watches only two minutes of any given program as a “view”) make them less than reliable indicators of exactly how popular the programs in question are.

So to determine the popularity of macro narratives, we tend to resort to the cacophonous void that is social media. And from that tenuous perspective, the most popular narrative of the COVID-19 lockdown period has undoubtedly been Netflix's documentary series, Tiger King: Murder Mayhem and Madness, which brought the world together online with an intensity not seen since that striped dress on which nobody could agree about the color.

While at Final Draft we might be a bit more about scripted narrative, and Tiger King is a documentary, it should still be noted that shows such as it, and indeed all reality series—from Survivor to Big Brother to Love Is Blind (another recent Netflix phenomenon)—rely upon the contributions of what from any reasonable angle could be considered writers, often under the designation of “segment producer” or “story producer”. It's a huge part of reality programming that (somewhat controversially) isn't aligned with the major writers’ unions.

But there's an argument to be made that the people in these roles are as creatively important to the success of these “non-scripted” shows as traditional writers. With documentaries and reality shows (such as the new Netflix series Too Hot To Handle, which is generating a lot of discussion on social media now that most everyone has binged Tiger King) showing themselves to be cultural lightning rods during this unprecedented situation, it strengthens the argument that the “writers” behind these shows should be officially regarded as such.

While there's undoubtedly less of a spec market for reality shows—as much as there is a spec market at all these days—writing is writing and story is story, and the creative and industrial snobbery suffered by reality shows may diminish when we emerge from lockdown.

It should also be noted that a traditionally scripted adaptation of the Tiger King story was already in the works before the show hit Netflix, which again, highlights the narrative connection between what is often referred to as “reality” and that which has sprung forth from the mind of a writer.

Getting back to how difficult it is to gauge the success of a screen narrative when we don't have box office numbers to rely on, Universal has claimed that Trolls: World Tour, the first major Hollywood release to pivot to digital since COVID-19 shut down every cinema (apart from a smattering of drive-in theaters) in the country, has been a raging success, and the most popular digital debut of all time.

There are many caveats to factor in here, not least of which is the uniqueness of the current pandemic situation. But also, as the Vanity Fair piece linked above acknowledges, the fact that Universal itself is the one making the claims, and it's harder to judge their veracity without the traditionally more scrutinized box office numbers.

That's not to say Universal's numbers are false, or that Trolls: World Tour wasn't a success, it's just important to note that it's difficult to properly assess the cultural impact of this story in the current context.

There are plenty of prognosticators suggesting this situation is edging closer and closer to becoming the new normal, and if that's the case, it will only become more difficult to determine which narratives are connecting with audiences. Which could have wide-ranging implications for the kinds of narratives that get written to begin with.