I Put Netflix’s #7 Show on as Background Noise; Within Minutes, I Was Hooked

Ignore the Rotten Tomatoes score people

As someone who works from home, there’s nothing I love more than a silly, easygoing TV show I can throw on for some background noise. Usually, that means some kind of competition series, whether it’s Is It Cake?, Million Dollar Secret or The Great British Baking Show. Most of the time, they stay exactly where I intended them to be: in the background. But every once in a while, one manages to completely pull me in.

The latest culprit? Netflix’s number seven show, Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.

The reality competition series transforms Roald Dahl’s iconic chocolate factory into a colorful social experiment. Twelve Golden Ticket winners each bring a partner into a massive 40,000-square-foot confectionery wonderland, complete with an edible garden and chocolate river. The 24 contestants live inside the factory while competing in physical challenges, judgment tests and moral dilemmas for a $3 million grand prize, paid out as $100,000 annually over 30 years.

At first glance, this was not exactly screaming “next must-watch.” But I needed something on in the background that I didn’t have to really pay attention to, so I pressed play. Once the show gets going, it gets surprisingly dramatic.

We’re talking betrayals, plotting, scheming and villains. Basically, everything you need for a show that starts as background noise and somehow turns into, “Wait, what did they just do?”

There are also appearances from Howie Mandel, Wayne Brady and Nick Cannon, along with some of the original 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory actors.

Now, I’m not saying this is the best show I’ve ever watched. In fact, critics have been particularly brutal. The series finished its first season with an 11 percent critics’ score and a 34 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, giving it the lowest audience score among the major Willy Wonka adaptations.

And yet, it has remained in Netflix’s Top 10 for two weeks since its September 23 debut, when it landed at number two. So clearly, I’m not the only one watching.

All episodes are Wonka’s The Golden Ticket are streaming now.

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