Netflix Launches ‘Lilyhammer’ Original Series - nishimuranaturawrove

Netflix's great plunge into creating original content for its members began Monday with the online release of Lilyhammer, an eight-episode series with Steve Van Zandt in the familiar role of gangster.

Van Zandt, who also jams with Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, played "Silvio" on the HBO hit series "The Sopranos."

In Lilyhammer, Van Zandt goes into the federal witness protection program after ratting on fellow gangsters. He chooses to be located in Lillehammer, Norway, because He made an idealized connector to the place later watching it on television receiver during the 1994 Wintertime Olympiad.

His vision of Lillehammer as a paradise of "clean zephyr, fresh tweed snow, and gorgeous broads" doesn't quite mesh with reality, notwithstandin.

The series has been along Norwegian television for three weeks, where more than 20 percentage of that nation's population look out it weekly, making it the most watched show in Norwegian TV history.

Netflix is breaking the mold in several ways with its dispersion method. For instance, it's releasing each episodes at once. TV audience don't need to keep coming back week later hebdomad to see another episode. That scheme appears to be aimed at doing something Netflix hasn't been too good at lately: giving its customers what they want.

"We are trying to give our members what they want: choice and ascendancy," Netflix Of import Content Officer Ted Sarandos writes in a company web log. "If you want to watch united instalment a week, you can. If you want to watch the undiversified flavor this week, you can do that too."

To boot to being debuted online in North America, concurrently the series will be shown in Romance America. That kind of distribution is made accomplishable by the Cyberspace and holds new potential for series equal Lilyhammer.

"With none physical need for split distribution, the possibilities for a regional TV program or movie to reach a global audience are boundless," Sarandos explaines.

Lilyhammer and another original series, "House of Cards," slated for release later this year, are part of a strategy by Netflix to build its repute Eastern Samoa a provider of quality content, similar to what insurance premium networks, HBO and Showtime, and AMC sustain cooked on cable Telly.

After bighearted its subscribers plenty of reasons to leave the service last year, Netflix is hoping that its new original smug will establish its customers a reason for sticking with the service.

Follow self-employed technology writer John P. Mello Jr. and Now@PCWorld on Twitter.