The Most Watched Netflix Shows and Films
Netflix has traditionally guarded its viewership data the way a bank guards its money. To some extent, that reflects just how valuable these numbers are to the company, and what a competitive advantage knowing what people are watching (and what people aren’t watching) gives them in the marketplace. But as the company has grown, demand from journalists and audiences for more information about exactly what shows and films are doing well on Netflix has grown with it. And now, it seems, we’re finally starting to get a better sense of the streaming service’s biggest hits.
Via The New York Times, we now have a pair of top ten lists — one for films and one for TV — reflecting the biggest total audiences on Netflix for each respective category, from October 2018 through September 2019. First, here are the top ten shows of the last 12 months:
- Stranger Things - 64 million
- Umbrella Academy - 45 million
- La Casa de Papel - 44 million
- You - 40 million
- Sex Education - 40 million
- Our Planet - 33 million
- Unbelievable - 32 million
- Dead to Me - 30 million
- When They See Us - 25 million
- Elite - 20 million
And here are the top films:
- Bird Box - 80 million
- Murder Mystery - 73 million
- Triple Frontier - 52 million
- The Perfect Date - 48 million
- Tall Girl - 41 million
- The Highwaymen - 40 million
- Secret Obsession - 40 million
- Always Be My Maybe - 32 million
- Otherhood - 29 million
- Fyre - 20 million
Some of these titles are pretty unsurprising; Stranger Things has been a hit since its first season, and the sheer number of tie-in products and merchandise would tell you it’s fairly popular. And Bird Box became one of the few Netflix original films to become a legitimate cultural phenomenon at the end of last year. Other titles on this list are a bit more shocking. 41 million people watched Tall Girl? If you’re wondering why Netflix has so many shows and films set in high school, that’s why. They are clearly watched by huge numbers of teens in Netflix’s audience. That’s indicative of the way younger viewers have largely abandoned traditional TV channels and cable for on demand streaming services.
Of course, these numbers don’t tell us how many people finished a series, or actually watched a movie instead of putting it on their TV while they read their laptop. It’s also now clear how many of these numbers were boosted by Netflix’s autoplay features. There’s a lot these numbers don’t say. But the things they do say will surely be reflected in the original content Netflix produces moving forward.
Gallery — The Best Shows on Netflix You’re Not Watching: