Why Quibi shows are a mess: "None of these Quibi shows were born wanting to be Quibi shows"

Vulture

The shortform streaming service's shows don't work because they are, for the most part, originally not designed for Quibi. "The streaming works fine," says Kathryn VanArendonk. "The user interfaces are serviceable. The app itself functions as promised. The shows, though, are a mess. Quibi shows all share a few qualities: They’re short, with episode run times under ten minutes. Short doesn’t have to mean chintzy or trivial, but Quibi shows almost universally feel cheaper and less memorable than similar stuff on other platforms. The Quibi shows that are meant to seem like TV shows do feel like TV shows (Run This Town, Shape of Pasta, Murder House Flip), but their compressed run times and thoughtless cinematography just remind you of how much better they could be if they were TV shows. Camera angles and scene edits look identical to the visual design of a typical TV show, full of panning cameras and long shots, and it’s seemingly meant to signal that 'this is a serious, expensive TV show!' Instead, it signals that no one’s put much effort into thinking about what this should look like when played in a vertical format on a phone. The Quibi shows that seem closest to YouTube series (Dishmantled, Gayme Show, Memory Hole) fare better, but even those feel half-hearted, all shell and no inner oomph. The worst are the movies, like When the Streetlights Go On or Most Dangerous Game, which Quibi advertises as 'movies in chapters.' In their widescreen cinematography, the beats of each scene, the way they’ve been awkwardly crammed into tiny chunks, I swear you can still hear them screaming, 'I’m a movie!' even as Quibi shovels dirt over their short-form-mobile-storytelling graves." ALSO: The best show on Quibi is one that is probably meant for stoners: Let’s Roll with Tony Greenhand.