Oftentimes whether or not you dig a TV show can be decided in the first episode.
If you take many of the best TV shows of all time - Severance, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad - all of them do the work to have you gripped by the end of the very first episode.
One Netflix mini-series however has them all beat as an opening three minute long scene has viewers totally hooked and will leave you watching over and over again.
It is not the first time Netflix has managed to hook viewers in the first scene – with fans having earlier this year discovered a French thriller that had a 12-minute one shot opening scene.
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Beef may not have a 12-minute one shot scene, but there is one way in which it has its competitors beat, because the first scene in the show is the most iconic and talked about from the series.
The Netflix show stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong as a pair of strangers both living unfulfilled lives in entirely different ways.
The show, also starring Young Mazino, Justin H Min, and Joseph Lee, sees the pair develop a bizarre connection following on from the first scene.
Beef received near universal acclaim, hitting a massive 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
It also averaged an 8/10 on IMDb and an audience Rotten Tomatoes score of 87 percent.
Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com said of the show in his 3.5/4 star review: “A tonally daring piece of television, one that vacillates wildly from comedy to drama to thriller and back again.”
Izzy Ampil of BuzzFeed said: “It is a funny, erotic, horrifying portrait of two people locked in a manic-depressive spiral of mutually assured destruction.”
Many fans online specifically related to the show’s opening scene, however, which sets up the entire narrative - and which was actually inspired by a real life incident.
It sees Yeun’s Danny at a store trying to return an item unsuccessfully then go to drive off.
After someone cuts him off as he tries to reverse they begin beeping the horn at each other, leading him to chase after them in his truck.
They then beep at one another on the road as they race after each other, eventually jumping kerbs to catch up.
The other car, driven by Ali Wong’s Amy, similarly engages in this bonkers behaviour and gets away with Danny memorising her license plate.
The show then follows the pair’s bizarre feud off the back of this incident as they spiral together. Taking place in the first five minutes of the show, the three minute scene had fans hooked.
One commented on the scene saying: “Not what I expected, but I’m hooked.”
Another, commenting on the series as a whole on Reddit, said: “I was obsessed from the first episode.
“Going in, I was expecting more of a comedy. By the last episode I was like ‘this was the saddest show I’ve ever seen’ lol.”
The series was such a hit for Netflix that a second season has been confirmed to be in the works.
Though the creatives behind it will remain, it will see a new cast with Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Cailee Spaeny, and Charles Melton all starring in season two of the show.
Beef is available to watch on Netflix now.
Topics: Netflix, TV and Film, TV, Rotten Tomatoes
Michael Slavin