When I first heard that Jason Bateman was to star as the leading man in a gritty drama about drugs and violence called Ozark, I had my reservations. I love Jason Bateman as much as the next person, but I thought it was going to be difficult to take him seriously.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that he, along with co-stars Laura Linney and Peter Mullan were excellent and that Ozark was one of the best shows on television. In fact, season 2 did the unthinkable and improved on their winning formula, knocking Breaking Bad and Westworld off the top spot in my mind for Greatest Series On TV.

However, we need to address the cinematography in Ozark. What is happening with the colour grading? While the composition, angles and creative approach to it’s shots are top notch, everything looks like it’s been filmed through a thick, blue glass bottle!

While it’s acknowledged that colour grading in film and television is getting more extreme (and more orange and blue), this was next level.

I recently got in a argument with a friend over iMessage about this and he disagreed, arguing that it was perfect. To prove my point, I ran a few of the Ozark screenshots through an average colour calculator and the results were very clear. Ozark is the bluest show on TV.

Take this one for starters:

Now, bear in mind that this is a scene that takes place outside, in the daytime. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the average colour of this shot.

How about that? That could be described as a blue/green, but I’m leaning towards more of a solid black!

Sure, that’s just an isolated example of the Ozark colour grading. So let’s take a look at another example.

Just another Ozark screencap I selected at random. This time, one of Peter Mullan and Lisa Emery (the terrifying Jacob and Darlene Snell). Again, they are standing outside and again, this is a shot in the daytime. Let’s see what we can see when we run this Ozark shot through the average colour calculator.

Interesting. Whereas the first example could realistically (at a stretch) be described as “containing some colour”, this example is straight up black. A scene, shot in the day time, under the sun, is essentially a solid black mass, devoid of all colour.

At this point in the argument, my friend posited on iMessage that this was all due to the fact that it was probably very overcast in the Ozarks. It’s true that the sun rarely appears to break from the clouds in the flagship Netflix series.

Coincidentally, it’s very overcast where I am today. Here is a photo taken out of my office window.

Now it’s immediately clear that I don’t work in an area of outstanding natural beauty like the Ozarks. In fact, I’ve heard my office park described (mostly by me) as the bleakest place on the planet. However, despite these circumstances, the average colour of my surroundings when compared to the Ozark colour grading is practically pastel.

It’s easy to argue that I’m being unfair to the Ozark cinematographer (and his post-production Ozark colour graders). Perhaps I’m cherry picking a few particularly stark examples. So as a final demonstration, let’s take a look at the average colour of the Google Image results page when you search for “ozark”.

Now despite the miles of white guttering between each image, which I have purposefully left in to prove a point, the results of the average colour calculator are clear. Ozark is the bluest show on television.

I thank you.