Pictures: Netflix
A new batch of top 10s are in, and this week, we’ve got a lot to cover despite it being a very quiet week with actual viewership. Titles this week include the debuts of Lover Stalker Killer, One Day, and A Killer Paradox. Plus, we’ll cover Bhakshak and Ashes while also checking in on Lift plus Griselda. We will also take another look at the engagement report as it pertains to some older series.
Missed our report from last week? We covered the debuts of The Greatest Night in Pop, Orion and the Dark, and NASCAR: Full Speed.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from February 5th, 2024, to February 11th, 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.
1. Lover Stalker Killer is off to a killer start.
The fifth record of the year was broken last week as true crime documentary Lover Stalker Killer launched with a killer 10M CVEs over its first three days, the best launch for a Netflix documentary released on a Friday.
It beat the great documentary The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari and Downfall: the case against Boeing. On Netflix, (true) crime always pays.
Lover, Killer, Stalker – Millions of CVE vs other Netflix Original documentaries after 3 days
2. One Day hits the pavement.
You would have thought that releasing a romantic limited series based on a very famous novel just in time for Valentine’s Day would be enough to be a hit but One Day is here to prove us all wrong as the series launched with only 5.3M CVEs over its first four days, one of the worst opening for a British limited series.
There’s hope for it, however, as the reviews have been stellar, and the series currently has an 8.1/10 rating on IMDb. Valentine’s Day is also today so that the series might pick up the pace in next week’s charts.
First 4 days CVE viewership of One Day vs Bodies, Who is Erin Carter? and Obsession
3. A Killer Paradox is no killer at all.
Netflix has been churning out new South Korean series pretty regularly, and A Killer Paradox is the latest one to do ok, but not just about as it launched with 3.1M CVEs over its first three days, your run-of-the-mill launch for a South Korean series.
It will do better next week, as most Korean dramas often do, but that’s about it.
A Killer Paradox first 3 days CVE vs other Netflix Original Korean series
4. Bhakshak and Ashes do an OK launch.
It’s a week of “OK launches” for new international films.
The Indian film Bhakshak did just that, an OK launch with 2.4M CVEs over its first three days, on par with Dhamaka and Kathal – A Jackfruit Mystery. In the middle tier of Netflix Original Indian title launches but not quite on par with some of the bigger titles.
Over in Turkey, it’s a bit better for the Turkish romance film Ashes, which launched with 4.8M CVEs over the weekend. It’s not the best launch for a new Netflix Turkish film, but it is decent enough.
5. A check-up on Lift and Griselda
Lift and Griselda passed some thresholds last week that allows us to compare them to more titles. Action film Lift with Kevin Hart is in its fifth week on the charts, and after 28 days, I estimate that it did 97.4M CVEs, the thirteenth best launch ever for a new Netflix US film wedged between Murder Mystery 2 and 6 Underground.
Lift Netflix CVE viewership for first 28 days vs other Netflix Original movies.
It won’t be enough for the all-time top 10, but that’s already a strong contender for a spot in the Top 3 most-watched Netflix films 2024.
Over on the series’ front, Griselda is in its third week, and after 14 days, it reached 46.3M CVEs, the fourth-best launch for a Netflix US limited series, besting Inventing Anna just behind Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.
Griselda vs other Netflix Original limited series – First 14 Days
6. Survival of the Thickest is renewed.
It was one of the last new Netflix US series of 2023 for which we did not have any info, but Survival of the Thickest by and with Michelle Buteau was renewed yesterday, months after its premiere. Now, the reason for its renewal can’t only be explained to its audience as the series had one of the lowest launches of 2023 for a US Netflix series.
But as we have written many times here at What’s on Netflix, the audience is not the only parameter considered. It’s one of the most important but not the only one, as completion rates, stickiness of the content, and budget also factor in the renewal decision. Survival of the Thickest was probably one of the cheapest new US series of 2023, and its reviews were great. Plus, it is produced by A24, which already managed to get a second season order for Mo, another Netflix series that failed to make an impression in the charts.
If we take a step back on the whole 2023 slate of new Netflix US series, 20 new series were released globally. Out of those 20, nine ended as they were limited series, seven were renewed, and four were officially canceled (or presumed canceled in the case of Daddy Yankee’s Neon, which did not chart at all in Netflix’s Top 10 or Nielsen Top 10.).
That’s a 69% renewal rate among Netflix’s new US series of 2023, basically double the renewal rates of the 2020-2022 period.
COVID was a crazy time as it accelerated the cancelation of some series whilst, at the time, Netflix was churning out huge numbers of new shows. 2023, both in renewal rates and output, really was a return to the pre-pandemic and pre-streaming wars years with fewer shows doing better numbers and so being renewed more frequently.
7. Netflix Engagement Report Deep Dive: Netflix series canceled after two seasons before 2018.
Back at the beginning of Netflix’s push into original content, a second-season order was basically guaranteed, and the real test happened at the end of the second season. If you were renewed for a third season, congratulations, you were a bona fide Netflix hit. If you weren’t, though, it probably is because you would have gotten canceled at the end of the first season had Netflix not been so “generous” with its renewals at the time in the hope of attracting talent.
Five English-speaking Netflix series were canceled after two seasons before 2018. The first one is Marco Polo, Netflix’s Game of Thrones, as it was dubbed at the time. Haters, Back Off! was an attempt to capitalize on Miranda Sings, a Youtube sensation at the time. Flaked was a series with Will Arnett, who had quite an open table at Netflix at the time. The Get Down was a prestige TV show by visionary filmmaker Baz Luhrmann, which was reportedly very expensive with a first season cut in half (yes, just like now with the most successful Netflix series), but let’s just say it had two seasons. And finally, we had Ted Sarandos’s favorite series, Lady Dynamite, with Maria Bamford, which also got a second season.
Five years after their cancelation, which ones are still the most-watched? Well, we dove into the Engagement Report for the period from January to June 2023 and here’s what we found out.
Marco Polo is the most-watched of the five, with quite a margin. Having watched it last year, I can say it still holds up pretty well with a compelling story, great characters, and lavish sets. It was quite the bet at the time, thinking that American audiences, which were the most dominant group of Netflix subscribers at the time, would watch a series about a Mongol Emperor from the Middle Ages with an unknown cast, but people are still watching it, and it has a great IMDb rating too.
Haters Back Off! being second quite surprised me, but I might have an explanation as Colleen Ballinger, the star of the show and the creator of Miranda Sings, got caught in a grooming scandal at the beginning of 2023, which might have prompted some people to watch her show.
The Get Down is down in the ranking here, as I’m guessing the topic and Luhrmann’s flamboyant directing style might push some people away after a few episodes. And down, we have “Lady Dynamite”. Its two seasons were watched the equivalent of 194 and 134 times per day on average over the first six months of 2023, which is, as usual, not much in the grand scheme of things but quite a lot, too, when you think about it.
That’s all for this week; feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.