Netflix reveals weekly top 10 lists by number of hours viewed – Red Notice tops first movies list

Netflix has dramatically shifted how it approaches transparency on its most popular titles after a decade of being tight-lipped.

Netflix has delivered on its promise to be more transparent with an unprecedented reveal of its viewing metrics.

The streaming company – and its competitors – is notoriously unforthcoming about how many subscribers watched its titles. That changes this week.

Netflix has set up a new website which outlines its most watched 10 English and non-English language movies and TV shows, separated into four lists. The lists will be updated every Tuesday.

The streamer has also changed the metric by which it measures most-watched, shifting from its much-maligned previous methodology which counted an account as having watched a title if they made it past two minutes of a movie or the first episode of a series.

Netflix will instead rank its lists by the number of minutes watched per title. While it’s an imperfect system – because it puts at a disadvantage comedy series which tend to have shorter episodes – it’s a vast improvement on watched-two-minutes.

The new lists don’t differentiate between Netflix original programming and titles that have been licensed or acquired.

For the week ending November 14, the most popular movies and TV shows in the world on Netflix were:

TV (English):

Narcos: Mexico S3 – 50.29 million hours

Arcane S1 – 34.17 million hours

You S3 – 33.72 million hours

Maid – 29.4 million hours

Big Mouth S5 – 25.39 million hours

Dynasty S4 – 21.02 million hours

Locke & Key S2 – 18.77 million hours

Narcos: Mexico S1 – 15.57 million hours

You S2 – 15.52 million hours

You S1 – 14.57 million hours

Red Notice clocked up 148 million hours of viewing in the three days after its release. Picture: Frank Masi/Netflix

Movies (English):

Red Notice – 148.72 million hours

Love Hard – 58.56 million hours

The Harder They Fall – 33.06 million hours

Army of Thieves – 20.56 million hours

Father Christmas is Back – 13.78 million hours

211 – 7.90 million hours

Army of the Dead – 7.62 million hours

Passing – 7.49 million hours

Transformers: The Last Knight – 6.92 million hours

Jumanji: The Next Level – 6.76 million hours

TV (Non-English):

Squid Game S1 – 42.79 million hours

The King’s Affection S1 – 14.12 million hours

Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha S1 – 13.82 million hours

Carinha de Anjo S1 – 13.66 million hours

My Name S1 – 10.82 million hours

Where is Marta? – 8.64 million hours

The Five Juanas S1 – 8.49 million hours

The Club Part 1 – 7.86 million hours

Yo soy Betty, la fea S1 – 7.65 million hours

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Tanjiro Kamado, Unwavering Resolve Arc – 6.06 million hours

Supplied Episodics from Netflix series Squid Game.

Films (Non-English):

Yara – 17.95 million hours

7 Prisoners – 9.69 million hours

The Claus Family – 4.44 million hours

Meenakshi Sundareshwar – 4.41 million hours

The Forgotten Battle – 2.63 million hours

Stuck Together – 2.61 million hours

Lords of Scam – 2.12 million hours

Fierce – 1.80 million hours

Der Fall Collini – 1.59 million hours

Doctor (Tamil) – 1.43 million hours

An update of its most watched TV and films ever (based on hours watched in the first 28 days after release) revealed Squid Game has significantly overtaken Bridgerton, the previous topper.

Squid Game clocked in 1.65 billion hours, more than double Bridgerton’s 625 million.

“Figuring out how best to measure success in streaming is hard, and there’s no one perfect metric,” Netflix vice president of content strategy, planning and analysis Pablo Perez de Rosso said in a blog post.

“Having looked at the different options, we believe engagement, as measured by hours viewed, is a strong indicator of a title’s popularity, as well as overall member satisfaction, which is important for retention in subscription services.”

Netflix’s metric is currently not third-party verified, but the company has contracted EY to do an external audit with a report to be published in 2022.

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