Pictured: Sex/Life, Outer Banks and Chris Rock Special
Welcome to your weekly roundup of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures for the week ending March 5, 2023.
Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its top 10 stats page with 40 new hourly figures from the best movies and shows from the past seven days. If you want to easily browse the top 10 hours data, visit our tool.
Note: In this report showing Netflix viewing hours from February 27, 2023 to March 5, 2023, we use “Complete Viewings Equivalent” or CVE, expressed in millions. This means that we divide the viewing hours announced by Netflix by the running time of films or series. It allows for better comparisons between films and series, but it is not an audience statistic. It is the minimum number of impressions if they were all completed from the first second to the last of the movie or season.
1. Outdoor benches Season 3 is still going strong.
Image: Netflix
Even if it lost -36% in its second week, Outdoor benches is still quite ahead of its second season after 11 days.
We’ll see how long it stays in the Top 10 because this week, you S4B will return in a few days.
As Netflix also points out in its press release, seasons 1 and 2 have seen massive increases in viewership.
Outer Banks Season 3 Vs Season 2 Viewers CVE
2. Murdaugh murders has gone haywire.
There’s no stopping Murdaugh murders for the second week, as it is now above 30 million CVEs after 12 days. To date, it is the second most watched documentary series of all time for Netflix, just behind Harry and Megan.
Of course, as we mentioned last week, the timing of this documentary series was perfect as the murders are constantly in the news following the conclusion of the trial last week.
Murdaugh Murders vs Harry & Meghan CVE Viewers
3. Sex/Life lacks passion for his return.
The first season of Sex/Life was released just around the time Netflix started releasing its Top 10 lists, so unfortunately we don’t have the numbers for the first week.
However, we know that it did pretty well at the time. That’s not something we’ll write about the launch of Season 2, which debuts after four days with a measly 8.5 million CVEs.
It could pick up the pace in its second week, and it’d be better if it wanted another season (not that it’s necessary, as the story apparently ends quite satisfactorily. Whatever that means.)
4. Chris Rock: Selective outrage is nowhere to be found in the worldwide Top 10.
When Chris Rock finishes his rant about Will Smith and the punch, he can take a moment to rant about the fact that his last specific Selective outrage (and the first live experiment for Netflix) failed to make the global Top 10 this week. It made the US top 10 lists and therefore collected a slew of articles. But if it did well, why didn’t it make it into the global top 10?
Firstly, Netflix decided to put it in the TV section where it faces series with much more hours to stream, an essential factor when we know that Netflix uses viewing hours for its Top 10.
Another reason is that the Saturday special aired live at the end of the week and the period covered by the Top 10.
So it’s not surprising not to see it in the global top 10 and even quite an achievement to note that it made it to the Top 10 TV in the US, ranking 7th out of 10 with only one hour long show and two days out of seven. We might see next week; who knows!
We’ll be back next week for more top 10 discoveries and analysis!