When you think of Netflix, you might think of immovable cultural artefacts like Friends, or beloved original productions like Stranger Things, or oddly ratified lockdown staples like Tiger King. And yet one of the biggest Netflix shows, possibly ever, is a show you might not even be aware of. Ladies and gentlemen, that show is Cocomelon.
According to Forbes, Cocomelon recently broke a record by remaining in Netflix’s top 10 most-watched shows for 62 days. That’s longer than Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s longer than Ozark. It’s longer than Tiger King, The Umbrella Academy and Love is Blind. So what is this Cocomelon? A prestigious drama that offers an authentic look at an important social issue? A deliberately trashy reality show about a shopping mall concession kiosk? A true crime documentary about a monster known only as The Cocomelon Killer?
Well, no. It’s a kid’s show. And if anything that’s putting it loosely. In fact, Cocomelon is a just series of three hour-long nursery rhyme compilations. The first episode – Cocomelon Sing-Alongs: Playdate With JJ – begins with a song called First Day at School. Over a melody pitched nebulously between Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and This Old Man He Played One, a CGI toddler (think Pixar by way of a debilitating radiation leak) expresses nerves about starting school. His family prepares him by endlessly drilling him on what he needs to take, what he needs to do and the precise level of emotion he should be experiencing. He goes to school. It’s fine. The song ends. Three minutes have passed. Another 57 remain.
Look, Cocomelon is not the sort of thing that holds up to scrutiny well. It’s cloying and simplistic and repetitive and, unless you happen to be suffering from a very specific type of hangover, not designed to be watched by adults at all. Some songs – like Father and Sons Day, where the toddler does sit-ups with a sort of formaldehyde Rob Lowe figure – are genuinely unbearable to endure. But guess what? They’re not for you.
If you’re a preschool child, though, this stuff is like crack. The Cocomelon you see on Netflix is actually an edited highlights reel of its YouTube channel; the second most viewed channel on Earth, with 82bn views and a $120m annual ad revenue. And YouTube is where I first came to know Cocomelon. Between the ages of one and three, my children absolutely wolfed this stuff down. It didn’t matter that the characters floated around weightlessly, as if they’d been shot in the rear with a tranquilliser dart. It didn’t matter that many of the songs followed the same fractured dream logic of a David Lynch movie. It didn’t matter that every second of every song was pitched with the sort of relentless unblinking surface-level joy that appeared to overcompensate for some deep-set irreparable psychological trauma.
The key to Cocomelon’s success isn’t that it’s good, because no entity this determined to pump an endless stream of Johnny Johnny Yes Papa variations into an already anxious world can ever be thought of as good. No, the key to its success is that it’s just about reliable enough. YouTube, especially kid’s YouTube, is a terrifying wilderness. Unless you tread very, very carefully, you can end up watching hideous text-to-speech abominations or Numberblocks compilations where the Numberblocks all swear or – and this one is from personal experience – a thankfully now-deleted Paw Patrol tribute cartoon where Chase was electrocuted and tortured
But with Cocomelon, you know what you’re getting; a series of inoffensive, if slightly unsettling, songs that go on and on and on for long enough to let you sneak off and cook dinner. It’s the preschool equivalent of a mindfulness app, or a white noise machine, or a fairground hypnotist who seems just about friendly enough to look after your children while you nip away to the toilet. And that’s why Cocomelon is doing so well on Netflix. It isn’t because people like it. It’s because it’s a reliable enough stand-in when a parent just wants to go and do a poo alone for once in their godforsaken life.
