Breaking convention is a fantastic way to stand out among a vast ocean of television series hitting the airwaves and streaming services weekly. Thankfully, Netflix‘s new crime series Kaleidoscope hopes to change how audiences interact with episodic content. An eight-part heist series, Kaleidoscope, will be distributed to Netflix subscribers in a random viewing order. That’s right, folks. You can watch Kaleidoscope any way you please and still walk away with a cohesive narrative. At least that’s the hook of the series, which has yet to go into practice.
For the uninitiated, Kaleidoscope follows a master thief and his crew over 25 years as they attempt a $7 billion heist together. When Netflix subscribers view the series, they will feed random episodes, except for the final chapter, for reasons that should be obvious. Each episode title is associated with a different color, with “White: The Heist” being the last chapter.
You can view the episode titles for Kaleidoscope below:
“Yellow: 6 Weeks Before The Heist”
“Green: 7 Years Before the Heist”
“Blue: 5 Days Before the Heist”
“Violet: 24 Years Before the Heist”
“Orange: 3 Weeks Before the Heist”
“Red: The Morning After the Heist”
“Pink: 6 Months After”
“White: The Heist” (finale)
The story for Kaleidoscope loosely revolves around events following Hurricane Sandy, when $70 billion in bonds were rumored to be floating in the basement of the Depository Trust Company in Manhattan. The show features a rag-tag group of characters hoping to thwart top security teams, corporate goons, and the FBI.
Kaleidoscope stars Paz Vega (Spanglish, Rambo: Last Blood), Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad, The Mandalorian), Jai Courtney (The Terminal List, Jolt, Terminator Genisys), and Peter Mark Kendall (The Americans, Girls, Strange Angel).
Are you interested in seeing if Kaleidoscope can successfully execute its plan to serve the series to customers in a random order? Is this a bold approach to episodic storytelling, or does Kaleidoscope feel like a risky venture for Netflix? I’m curious about how this will turn out, and I enjoy a good heist story. I will check this out and let Netflix pick and choose which episodes I see and when.