Downton Abbey – Picture: ITV
Downton Abbey has slowly been relicensed to Netflix in many regions over the past few weeks and as a result, has seen a major jump in popularity. Here’s a look at the show’s resurgence in popularity over the past few weeks.
Now don’t go expecting Netflix to release any numbers publicly. They only release select figures for their Netflix Originals and never for licensed content.
But from a few other sources, we can determine the rise in popularity for the show.
Netflix US saw the re-addition to Downton Abbey on June 1st, 2021. It also then arrived on Netflix in almost all other Netflix regions on August 15th, 2021 including Netflix UK, CA, and Australia. The movie is also set to arrive on Netflix in the UK at the end of August 2021.
So, has Downton Abbey exploded in popularity? Let’s take a look at a few sources.
IMDb MovieMeter
First, let’s take a look at IMDb’s MovieMeter which tracks incoming traffic to the Downton Abbey page. We can see that since the addition of the show it peaked at #55 which is just shy of the #33 the series scored in late 2019 when the movie was released in theaters.
This number could go higher as the data available doesn’t include the show being added to Netflix internationally at present.
IMDb MovieMeter Performance for Downton Abbey
Google Trends for Downton Abbey
Google Trends also suggests the show’s search interest has risen although it’s nowhere near the levels that the show achieved around the time of the movie release.
This Google Trend has begun replicating around the world too although once again, nowhere near reaching the similar levels of the 2019 movie release.
Nielsen Data for Downton Abbey
Nielsen figures also suggest the show has done well thus far on Netflix although it exploded in popularity a couple of weeks after being added to Netflix.
This data comes from Nielsen’s top 10 data releases and only applies to the United States.
With all the Nielsen data released thus far, the show has racked up 4,658 million minutes of watch time.
Nielsen Data for Downton Abbey Performance on Netflix
Top 10 data via Netflix is a little less clear, however. In the United States, the series only spent three days in the US TV top 10. In the UK, however, it’s appeared in the top 10s every day since release so far.
Over the past year or so we’ve seen other licensed shows getting big rises in popularity after being added to Netflix. That includes Hannibal last June and Community added in April 2020.
One of the shows we’re eagerly waiting to see how it performs after being added to Netflix is Seinfeld. No release date has been set for the show just yet although interest has fallen according to some of the datasets we’ve used above.
Have you rediscovered Downton Abbey on Netflix or found it for the first time? Let us know in the comments.