“Wednesday” continues posting huge numbers after three weeks on Netflix, beating out even the highly anticipated “Harry & Meghan” series on the streamer’s latest viewership rankings.
Tim Burton’s “Addams Family” offshoot starring Jenna Ortega as Wednesday has officially become the third title to cross 1 billion hours viewed on Netflix within one month — only “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things” Season 4 have also done so to date.
This also means that “Wednesday” has passed Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer” to become Netflix’s No. 2 most popular English-language series of all time. The company measures its Most Popular list based on each title’s viewership in its first 28 days of availability; “Dahmer” reached 856.2 million hours in that time, while “Wednesday” still has one more week to climb even higher. However, the series is now 352.1 million hours behind “Stranger Things” Season 4’s performance in its first 28 days, and with “Wednesday” racking up 269.7 million hours viewed during the Dec. 5-11 viewing window, it seems most likely that “Stranger Things” will hold onto its No. 1 title among English-language TV shows.
But it’s also important to consider that “Stranger Things” has a longer runtime — Season 4 runs for approximately 13 hours while “Wednesday” runs for 6.8 hours, giving the former a significant advantage when comparing viewing hours alone. Interestingly, Netflix estimates that a whopping 150 million households have viewed “Wednesday” (dividing 1.02 billion viewing hours by the 6.8-hour runtime). That’s already further along than “Stranger Things 4” was during its first 28 days, which comes out to an estimate of 104 million when dividing its 1.352 billion viewing hours by its 13-hour runtime.
“Harry & Meghan” took the No. 2 spot on Netflix’s weekly rankings with 81.6 million hours viewed in its first four days of availability — making it the streamer’s biggest documentary debut ever. An estimated 28 million households have tuned into the first three episodes — the only ones available, as the final three debut on Thursday. It’s presumable that the series will remain near the top of the chart for weeks to come. The second-highest view hours for a Netflix documentary premiere week (based on four days of viewing, which is what the “Harry & Meghan” number is based on) is essentially a tie between “Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez” and “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,” but those titles premiered before Netflix introduced its Top 10 lists based on hours viewed.
Coming in third on Netflix’s English-language TV shows for the week was the first part of the second and final season of “Firefly Lane,” the drama based on the novel of the same name, which had 50.35 million hours viewed Dec. 5-11. Fans also revisited Season 1, which entered the list at No. 5 with 20.94 million hours viewed. Popular thriller “1899” delivered 27.53 million hours viewed for the period, while “The Crown” Season 5 held its standing with 18.9 million hours viewed.
Meanwhile, “Too Hot to Handle” returned to the list, with Season 4 garnering 20.43 million hours viewed for the week. Rounding out the Top 10 English-language TV series were reality cooking show “Snack vs. Chef,” hosted by Megan Stalter and Hari Kondabolu (No. 8), followed by “Dead to Me” Season 4 (No. 9) and Season 4 of “Manifest” (No. 10).
See Netflix’s Top 10 lists for the week of Dec. 5-11 below, beginning with English-language series and followed by non-English-language TV shows, English-language movies and then non-English-language movies.
