After the live-action Death Note was savaged by fans of the source material, prior to the ill-fated Cowboy Bebop being cancelled weeks after premiering to much fanfare, not to mention the resignation that the upcoming One Piece will suffer an identical fate, subscribers don’t have a lot of confidence in Netflix’s manga adaptations. However, Burn the House Down should help ease at least some of those doubts.
Inspired by the series of the same name by Moyashi Fujisawa, the streaming service’s new eight-episode conspiracy thriller with chilling undertones follows Anzu Murata, who fled her home 13 years previously with her younger sister when their mother was accused of intentionally burning it to the ground.
For over a decade, she’s remained entirely convinced that her mom wasn’t to blame and was wrongly accused of a crime she didn’t commit, leading to her taking an undercover job as the housekeeper at the very same childhood home where the arson took place in order to gather evidence that the real culprit has been hiding in plain sight all along.
Conspiratorial tales and labyrinthine webs of intrigue have always been things Netflix has done very well, so it’s no shock that Burn the House Down has proven popular among an audience that can’t seem to get enough of episodic thrillers, no matter how many the platform pumps out on an almost-weekly basis.
To that end, discovering that Burn the House Down has cracked the Top 10 in 49 countries around the world (per FlixPatrol) is par for the course, but ranking as the eighth-biggest TV show on the entire planet on the market-leading streamer is still a noteworthy accomplishment.