YouTube Red’s New Comedy Series Makes YouTube Red the Butt of Many Jokes

As YouTube Red expands beyond its initial targeted audience into the broader 18-49 demographic, the subscription streaming service will be airing a new series that spoofs police procedurals—and spends a lot of time making jokes about the very platform it is airing on. Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television*, which will debut Oct. 18 on the service, satirizes tropes that appear in “everything Dick Wolf has ever put on the air,” director and executive producer Rawson Marshall Thurber said at the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour. In the series, Veronica Mars actor Ryan Hansen plays a version of himself, and teams up with a detective (Orange is the New Black and The Handmaid’s Tale’s Samira Wiley) as part of a new LAPD task force that pairs actors and detectives to help solve crimes. Some of the show’s funniest jokes involve YouTube Red itself: The faux Hansen is filming a show for the service as he’s on the job, which leads many of the show’s characters to crack jokes about the platform’s name and viability. One recurring bit is that people keep confusing YouTube Red’s name with that of popular porn sites like RedTube or YouPorn. In the pilot, Hansen tries to explain the streaming service to guest star Eric Christian Olsen: “It's exactly like YouTube, but it's not free.” Olsen’s sarcastic reply: “Wow, that seems like a fantastic business model.” In a later episode, as Hansen’s TV family is discussing YouTube Red, one of his kids asks, “Mom, how come I haven’t seen a single ad for stuff I don’t want on YouTube?” The mother explains that YouTube Red doesn’t have advertising, and “it’s a bargain at only $9.99 a month.” The daughter then asks, “Like Netflix?” And the mom pauses and says, “Well, they both cost the same…” Thurber, who also made Dodgeball and We’re the Millers, said he packed the pilot with YouTube Red jokes to see how executives would respond. “I don’t know how far we can push this, but I think this is really funny,” he said. Susanne Daniels, YouTube’s global head of original content, said the jokes about the porn site title confusion were her "favorite" in the pilot. “When a network has a good sense of humor about itself, it opens [things] up,” Thurber said. Daniels said she never asked the producers to tone down or remove any of the jokes about YouTube Red. “A lot it was all really playful, you’ve got to be able to make fun of yourself,” she said. “I didn’t think they went over the line. They might now, that I’ve said this.” YouTube Red broadens its reach Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television* is one of 37 new shows and movies that YouTube Red will roll out this year, up from 27 shows and films last year. There’s even more programming set for 2018, including Cobra Kai, in which Ralph Macchio and William Zabka will reprise their characters from the Karate Kid franchise. When the service launched in February 2016, “our initial strategy was to work with endemic stars” from popular YouTube channels to “jumpstart the platform,” said Daniels. After “the year of the great experiment,” she is expanding the programming slate to the entire 18-49 demo, appealing to “the non-heavy user” of YouTube as well. Daniels is aiming for a 50-50 split between programming featuring YouTube stars and shows that will appeal to a broader audience. YouTube Red is also dabbling with advertiser-supported programming, which is available in front of the subscription paywall. (All programming behind the paywall is ad-free.) Daniels said only unscripted programming will be ad-supported, and she’s looking for content “that has the potential to go viral for us.” The exec wouldn’t share subscriber information but said “we are overreaching ambitious goals” and “we’re going to continue to invest a lot in growing that further.”