In news that will excite anyone who spent a substantial chunk of their youth poring over the purple “Life” section of USA Today for Nielsen ratings and box office reports, Netflix has released a large chunk of its often-secret viewership data. The streaming service has long displayed shifting top 10 lists on its homepage, showing what’s currently most watched among their film and TV offerings. But this new data dump is an 18,000-row spreadsheet cataloging data for just about any movie or TV show over the course of January through June of this year.
So what, exactly, are the biggest shows and movies on Netflix? Many of the most popular shows feature or are aimed at young women. Anyone with access to social media or a Hot Topic will probably know that Wednesday, the service’s Addams Family-as-YA reboot, is a huge success; less merchandised but similarly high up the Netflix charts are Ginny & Georgia (essentially Netflix’s in-house Gilmore Girls), Outer Banks (a teen mystery series), Firefly Lane (a decades-spanning drama of female friendship), and the Korean drama series Crash Course in Romance. There’s also plenty of escapist action-adventure fare, like FUBAR (a father-daughter action-comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger that plays a bit like a True Lies sequel) and the limited series Kaleidoscope (a time-scrambled heist drama whose episodes can be watched in any order); plus more serious action-intrigue like The Night Agent (the most-watched Netflix Thing for this entire six-month period) and The Diplomat (with Keri Russell as a newly appointed US ambassador).
