As users clearly know based on nothing but the data, you don’t have to try too hard to find something vaguely erotic among the vast swathes of the Netflix content library, but the algorithm isn’t going to push them to the front of the homepage for obvious reasons. With that in mind, it’s all the more impressive that The Year I Started Masturbating has ended up as one of the platform’s biggest hits, because you’re hardly going to happen across it by accident.
Per FlixPatrol, the Swedish sex comedy is cracking one off in celebration after becoming the fifth most-watched feature on a global scale. In an even more stunning development that you couldn’t possibly hope to make up no matter how hard you tried, it’s done so by breaching the Top 10 in an entirely-fitting 69 countries worldwide. Nice.
Not only that, but it’s become the second sex comedy in a matter of days to enjoy Netflix success after Germany’s Hard Feelings and its talking genitalia enjoyed a sparkling weekend hovering around the summit, so we’re left with no other choice but to infer that paying customers are getting saucier by the day.
In the case of How I Started Masturbating, that involves going along for the ride as Katia Winter’s Hanna ends up being dumped by the father of her children, leaving her unemployed and with nowhere to live. Upon deciding to win him back, she sets out on a journey of self-discovery that leads her to believe that dedicating so much of herself to the ideal of who she was supposed to be may not have been the right course of action.
It’s nowhere near as titillating as its title would suggest, but it’s nothing if not eye catching.