In its first week of availability on Hulu, “Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini” reached 3.6 million views.
This marks the most-watched Hulu docuseries ever, according to the streamer, which calculates views by dividing the total amount of time a project is watched by its runtime.
As exclusively reported by PvNew, the most recent title Hulu touted as its nonfiction record-holder was “Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story,” the 2022 docuseries about the 1972 kidnapping of seven-year-old Steven Stayner. An exact number of views was not provided, though the streamer did share at the time that it calculated its rankings based on each title’s first month of viewership, rather than its first week as with “Perfect Wife.”
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“Perfect Wife,” which premiered on June 20, tells the story of the 2016 Sherri Papini kidnapping hoax. The official logline reads, “Keith and Sherri Papini’s seemingly idyllic family life is shattered when Sherri vanishes from their northern California neighborhood, triggering a frenzied search that becomes news around the world. With unprecedented access to Sherri’s family and friends — as well as the investigators who struggled for six years to solve the mystery of her disappearance — this limited documentary series intimately explores the jaw-dropping revelations of a relationship that wasn’t what it seemed.”
Hulu ordered “Perfect Wife” from executive producers Allison Berkley and Joseph Freed of Marwar Junction Productions in 2023, as exclusively reported by PvNew. Michael Beach Nichols (“Wrinkles the Clown,” “Welcome to Leith”) directed the series and executive produced alongside Erin Lee Carr(“Britney vs. Spears,” “The Girl From Plainville”). Rob Ford also executive produced.
