It took 365 Days, but I’m finally cancelling my Netflix subscription

Sifting through trash like the softcore erotic film about a woman kidnapped by a Mafia boss has become too much for Roisin O'Connor. There are far better ways to spend your time

365 Days: kidnapping, abuse and sexual assault masked as erotica (Netflix)

It was the location that first prompted me to watch Netflix’s latest scandal-causing original release. The film 365 Days (or 365 DNI) is based on the first book in Blanka Lipinska’s best-selling trilogy. Set in Sicily, it follows Laura Biel (Anna-Maria Sieklucka), a “feisty” young Polish woman who works in hotel marketing, as she is kidnapped by ruthless Mafia boss Massimo (Michele Morrone) while on holiday with her good-for-nothing boyfriend.

I know Sicily very well. I lived there for three months as an au pair and (until lockdown happened) had gone back most years to visit the family and friends I made there, travelling around the island until it began to feel like home. It’s one of the most beautiful, culturally rich and historically interesting regions in the world (like all places, it has its problems, too) – which is why I find it so devastating that it’s where Lipinska chose to set her story.

There are so many things wrong with this film. Within the first 15 minutes, the character Massimo has already forced a flight attendant on his private jet to perform oral sex on him. Another five minutes and Laura has been kidnapped, with Massimo informing her that he will have her parents killed if she tries to escape. When she does try, she runs into Massimo executing a former member of his crime family for luring young girls into sex work – a transparent attempt to make him seem redeemable. (Spoiler alert: he’s not.)

It’s fine, though, because the next day Massimo gives Laura a nice breakfast and takes her shopping. He later forces her onto his jet and sexually assaults her on the way to Rome. Then he chains her to a bed and forces her to watch as a sex worker performs oral sex on him. When a member of a rival family tries to rape her, he blames her for it, knocks her off his yacht, then pulls her out of the water and tells her that was her fault, too. When she recovers from yet another fainting spell (she does that a lot), she initiates sex in a seven-minute scene that is the closest thing to mediocre porn Netflix has ever released.

I could expend plenty more energy going through exactly why 365 Days is quite so appalling. But really, it was just the final straw in the build-up to deleting my Netflix account altogether. While there are plenty of gems on there – works of artistic or political importance, even – they are nestled alongside thousands of naff films adapted from weak material. With so much on offer, I find myself retreating to the same shows over and over again, from Gilmore Girls to Friends. It’s why I’ve found that BFI Player, with its brilliantly curated archive and careful selection of new releases – forcing me to make more discerning choices – is just about all I can handle.

Anna-Maria Sieklucka and Michele Morrono in ‘365 Days’ (Netflix)

As a single woman living on my own (my flatmate went home to stay with family before travel restrictions were put in place), I worried that lockdown would be difficult – if only for for the fact that a relatively short dry spell was about to turn into a very long one. As it turned out, it was the bouts of PTSD – triggered by another three months confined indoors, after I spent the better part of last summer bed-bound with a badly broken ankle – that were the real slog. It’s probably why I found it all too easy to retreat back to the same old easy TV shows. But it wasn’t actually helping. Netflix and other streaming services felt like a trap in which my time was being frittered away. So, as I went through a period of self-loathing and actually clicked “play” on Keeping Up with The Kardashians, I looked up at the bookcase of novels and short stories and biographies I have yet to read and thought, “Enough.”

It’s funny how it can take the absence of something to make you appreciate it. It didn’t take lockdown for me to want to see my mum, or to remember just how much of a thrill I still get watching my favourite musicians perform live. But given how fortunate I am to live in London, home to so many galleries, museums and hidden treasures, I’ve wasted too many hours at home staring blankly at a screen, and I want that to stop.

I’ve made progress already: last week, I finally finished the novel I’ve been trying to write for two years, and read four books cover to cover, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant Half of a Yellow Sun, the copy of which I’ve had for years. I’m growing things on the balcony, and I don’t mean the mould that collects in a mug of coffee after I’ve accidentally left it sitting there for a week. I’ve even started painting again (believe me, I’m no Michelangelo), a hobby I’d all but abandoned after university.

There’s a stack of recipe books in my kitchen that I’ve barely touched, but now I know that Ottolenghi’s ricotta and oregano meatballs are almost as good as the recipe I was given by the Sicilian Nonna who kept asking me why I didn’t have a boyfriend while I chopped garlic. I’m writing letters to my friends, and calling family members I used to only see at Christmas. And I’m trying to educate myself about the most pressing issues of our time: race, climate change, trans issues. I hardly expect to become an expert on anything but hey, there’s always room for improvement.

By no means am I suggesting that everyone should delete their streaming services and start reading War and Peace. There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying your favourite TV shows or films. And, of course, there are plenty of great shows on Netflix about a vast range of different subjects. But for me, it’s become a trap in which I return to the same old shows every time and that prevents me from doing other things that I find infinitely more fulfilling. To generously paraphrase a quote from the film, I didn’t need 365 Days to make me fall out of love with Netflix, but it definitely helped.