Resident Evil apparently debuted at a respectable number two in Netflix’s top 10, with 72.7 million hours watched, but there was no expected rise to 73.3 million hours in its second week, and the show fell out of the top 10 entirely on the third week. While Netflix seems to regularly cancel shows that its audience likes, that’s not the case here since Resident Evil received poor reviews from both critics and fans of the original games. The live-action series focused on twins Jade Wesker (Tamara Smart) and Billie Wesker (Siena Agudong) in both present-day New Raccoon City and the post-zombie apocalypse of 2036. Their father, Umbrella scientist Albert Wesker, was played by Lance Reddick – which was the only reason I even considered watching the show. The series was developed for TV by former Supernatural writer Andrew Dabb, who spoke in interviews last month about wanting to incorporate elements from later games into future seasons, including Resident Evil Village’s Lady Dimitrescu. Obviously that’s not going to happen now. Resident Evil has had a handful of new adaptations recently, including the Netflix animated series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness (also apparently terrible) and the live-action film Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City (also apparently terrible). Maybe Resident Evil is too text-rich a game to adapt to a non-interactive format? Yeah, let’s go with that.
