Netflix Chief Says They Turned Down 'Handmaid’s Tale,' More

TV history is littered with great shows initially being passed over. Before “Mad Men” landed on AMC, both HBO and Showtime let it go by. HBO and FX both rejected “Breaking Bad” before it too became a smash hit for AMC as well. So it’s not a surprise that even with all their success and data to study from, Netflix also goofed on picking up shows that have become big hits.

The biggest of all is “Transparent,” which went over to their rivals at Amazon, and became a critical and audience darling. But there are a couple of other shows that slipped through their grasp.

“There have been many of them,” Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos told Variety. “A lot of times, it’s not the reflection of the show — it’s just timing. We looked at ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ three years ago, four years ago. It wasn’t in the creative form that it is today. ‘Mr. Robot’ is a show we missed on. In a weird way, it might have been a better Netflix show.”

Not sure what the comment there about “Mr. Robot” is all about, except the series and Netflix are both tech related? All this is to say that there are no sure things when it comes to TV. There are plenty of great shows that go unnoticed, unexpected projects that develop huge followings, and every once in a while something that will change the landscape completely. In fact, even Netflix would probably admit they had no idea that “Stranger Things” would become the phenomenon that it has. (Indeed, multiple networks passed on it, before it wound up on Netflix).

It also goes to show that as much as Netflix may disrupt the industry, sometimes, even they sometimes come up snake eyes after rolling the dice.