Pictures via Netflix
Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its top 10 stats page with 40 new hourly figures of the top movies and shows of the past seven days. Below, we’ve sifted through the latest numbers and picked out the biggest stories of the week, which include Dead Boy Detectives, The Asunta Case, Baby Reindeer, Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver, Hack Your Health, Deliver Me, and Brigands: The Quest for Gold.
In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from April 22nd, 2024, to April 28th, 2024, we’ll use “Complete Viewings Equivalent,” or CVE, expressed in millions. That means we divide the hours viewed announced by Netflix by the runtime of films or series. It allows for better comparisons between films and series, but it’s not an audience metric. It is the minimum number of viewings if they were all complete from the first second to the last of the film or season. Netflix refers to this metric on their top 10 site as “views.”
1. Dead Boy Detectives are effectively dead.
You don’t need to be a detective to conclude that Dead Boy Detectives is effectively dead on arrival, as the spin-off to The Sandman crashed and burned with only 3.1M CVEs over its first four days, one of the worst launches for a new English series released on a Thursday.
If we compare it to other series tonally similar, such as Lockwood & Co., Half-Bad (both of which were canceled), and The Sandman (which got renewed after some wait), the comparison hurts even more for Dead Boy Detectives.
Now, Netflix is going to take flack for this, as usual, with the same usual suspects:
The lack of advertising around the show (even if we have countless examples of series without promotion finding success or examples of series with a lot of promotion not doing great numbers)
Another complaint is that Netflix always cancels YA fantasy shows, which leads to people not investing in them, which drives low numbers and subsequent cancellations.
Some might even point out that Dead Boy Detectives is the second most-watched English show this week in the Top 10 TV charts in 56 countries. Still, the Top 10 is as good as the volume of hours viewed in a week, and last week was the lowest Top 10 of 2024 if you add all the titles in all four Top 10, with only 157.9 million views for all 40 titles.
It’s the same thing as the US box office, for instance. Being number 1 with 15M dollars can’t be better than being number 2 another week with 90M dollars. The overall environment picture is super important.
But fundamentally, these reasons are drops of water in a bucket. The public wants what the public wants, and after a dozen YA fantasy shows being released by Netflix, the public does not want to watch YA fantasy shows (unless your name is Wednesday). Now, will that stop Netflix from producing them? No, because it needs to make something for everyone, but that will not fundamentally change the root of the problem: YA fantasy is still a very niche genre, a genre that needs a massive hit on Netflix to get the ball rolling. Some might argue that One Piece or Avatar did this already, but they were arguably different titles.
What can the community do now to save the series? If the past is any indication, nothing at all. They can launch hashtags all they want, but unless the series does a Baby Reindeer (yes, it’s a thing; see later in the article), any changes won’t probably be meaningful enough to change the tide here. Even if people left the show playing in the background for days, it would still not get enough new viewers to be saved. The other problem is that the series is not produced by Netflix but by Warner Bros TV, which sold the rights to the series to Netflix after the series was commissioned for HBO Max. Very weak numbers, complicated financing, not a cheap series, you’ve got the perfect storm for a cancelation.
2. Baby Reindeer defies expectations in its third week.
Do you know how many binge-released Netflix original series (even new seasons) did a better third week than the second week since Netflix started publishing their Top 10 in June 2021? Two. Just two.
The first one is, you guessed it, Squid Game, which improved in week three by 27% compared to the numbers of its second week. The newest club member is the British hit phenomenon Baby Reindeer, which did 66% more in week three than the week before. That’s unheard of; that’s uncharted territory, and now, if it can keep up next week, it is a very strong contender for the all-time Top 10. All bets are off.
Just to put the number on a chart visually – just look how insane its trajectory is:
3. City Hunter does a good launch.
The Japanese new adaptation of the anime “City Hunter” did a good launch with 5.3M CVEs, the third-best launch for a new Japanese live-action film released on a Thursday.
4. The Asunta Case
To put into perspective the performance of the Spanish limited series The Asunta Case, it did more views in three days than Dead Boys Detectives in four days with a fraction of the marketing or promotional push. So let’s hear it louder for the people at the back: promotion means nothing on Netflix. It has very limited bearing on a show’s performance. Back to The Asunta Case, it launched with 5.4M CVEs, the second-best launch for a Spanish limited series released on a Friday.
5. An update on Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver
Last week, we wrote that sequels are usually “front-loaded,” meaning they tend to debut higher before holding less well than the first title. And that’s precisely what Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver did, which lost 17% in its second week. The comparison with the first film hurts a bit and shows early signs of a steep decay between the two films.
We are looking at a decay rate of approximately 35-45%, which does not bode well for any subsequent sequels envisioned by Snyder, especially not five or six films.
6. Hack Your Health can’t hack its viewing figures.
The health documentary Hack Your Health: The Secrets of Your Gut probably did not answer the reason for the butterflies you’re feeling in your stomach when you see that a new Top 10 report is out. Its first three days are a bit underwhelming, with only 4.4M CVEs.
7. Some international launches.
Let’s finish with a grab bag of the international series that launched last week. First up is the Italian series Brigands: The Quest for Gold, which did a decent launch even though comparisons are lacking for the international series released on a Tuesday.
The Swedish series Deliver Me might be renewed after its launch, but it’s far from done. It launched with 2.6M CVEs over its first five days.
Finally, the South Korean series Goodbye Earth started with 1.5M CVEs in its first three days, but that comes with a caveat: it’s a very long series, with episodes lasting up to 1h20, so that does it a disservice in the charts based on views. But it might hold well in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.
That’s all for this week, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.