Netflix EMEA Chief Puts ‘Mr Bates’ Debate To Bed: “We Absolutely Would Have Commissioned It In The UK”

Netflix EMEA boss Larry Tanz has put the Mr Bates vs the Post Office debate to bed.

That debate over whether a streamer would have commissioned a local show like the ITV breakout hit has been raging for the past 18 months and Tanz, whose team has recently had success with Adolescence, strove to kill it off at today’s Deloitte Conference in London.

“Maybe this is finally my chance,” said Tanz. “[Netflix UK boss] Anne Mensah and her team in the UK commissioned Adolescence, Baby Reindeer and Toxic Town for the UK audience first and foremost. Maybe I can finally put that to bed here and say we absolutely would have commissioned Mr Bates in the UK. We think our audience would love it.”

Tanz’s shutdown of the debate was unsurprising given that Netflix has found such success with local UK hits of late. Adolescence has been killing it and is now nearing Stranger Things in becoming Netflix’s second most watched English-language series of all time. Ironically, top execs at the BBC and Channel 4 have recently said they could not have afforded Adolescence, which was made via an expensive one-take style and starred Stephen Graham, Erin Doherty and Ashley Walters.

Since the BAFTA-winning Mr Bates aired to millions in early 2024, debate has raged over the death of truly local British programming. Earlier at the Deloitte Conf, ITV programs boss Kevin Lygo joked that the show has made “s***loads” of money via international sales. He has frequently said it made a loss even though the stars took paycuts.

While Tanz confirmed Netflix would have commissioned Mr Bates, Amazon’s ex-UK MD Chris Bird recently said the opposite, with Bird acknowledging that the ITV smash was “too British” to have been commissioned by an American streamer. Tanz clearly disagrees.