Richard Osman Pokes Fun At Netflix Chief Ted Sarandos’ Recipe For Streaming Success

Richard Osman may be turning his hit novel The Thursday Murder Club into a Netflix feature, but it has not stopped him from roasting the streamer’s chief executive.

During a jolly curtain closer at the RTS London Convention, Osman and his The Rest Is Entertainment podcast co-host Marina Hyde, cast a satirical eye over the day’s speakers.

More from Deadline

Osman poked fun at comments made by Ted Sarandos during his opening keynote, in which the Netflix co-CEO shared the secrets of streaming success to an audience of British television luminaries.

Sarandos added that “there’s no reason we couldn’t take 25%” audience share in the UK, which would more than double Netflix’s current viewership of 10%.

Lacing his comments with sarcasm, Osman joked: “We’ve all been in the business a long time and, by and large, we don’t really know what we’re doing. He knows how to turn 10% into 25%, so [this] was the great takeaway: by creating programs people love. Some of the terrible stuff we’ve been coming up with over the years, that’s all we need to do.”

In later remarks, Osman added: “In his defense, he did mention The Thursday Murder Club, so that was nice. That was my favorite bit of his speech, and he didn’t say: ‘I’m shutting it down.'”

Sarandos visited the set of Thursday Murder Club during his time in the UK. “I’ve seen the scope and ambition of these British-made shows and films first-hand,” he said. “This wealth of talent is a great British success story.”

Amblin is producing the adaptation of Osman’s bestselling series of murder mystery novels, and the project has assembled a stacked cast.

Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, and Celia Imrie star as friends in a retirement home who gather to solve murders for fun, but find themselves caught in a real case.

Other cast includes David Tennant, Jonathan Pryce, Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Richard E. Grant, Tom Ellis, Geoff Bell, Paul Freeman, Sarah Niles, and Ingrid Oliver.

Best of Deadline

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.