Produced by the UK's Left Bank Productions out of Spain with a largely international cast, the seven-part limited-series thriller Who Is Erin Carter? was Netflix's top show last week, wracking up an impressive 75.4 million viewing hours and 13.2 million "views" in its first four days of release.
Starring Swedish actress Evin Ahmad as a Spanish school teacher with a sorted past that slowly unfurls before us, Erin Carter produced more engagement (i.e. hours streamed) for Netflix since Chris Hemsworth action sequel Extraction 2 debuted back in June.
Last week's installment: 'Depp v. Heard' Docuseries Puts Jury to Sleep -- Netflix Weekly Rankings for August 14-22
And the show wasn't even No. 1 for the week of August 21-27 in Netflix's biggest market, the U.S. That distinction belonged to the latest installment of Netflix's "Untold" sports documentary series, Untold: Swamp Kings, which follows black-hatted football coach Urban Meyer's aughts-era University of Florida dynasty. This latest four-part "untold" season includes Heisman-winning NFL flameout Tim Tebow but seems to conspicuously gloss over former tight end and convicted murderer Aaron Hernandez.
Untold: Swamp Things gathered 15.5 million viewing hours and 5 million views, according to Netflix's Global Top 10 ranker. That only ranked No. 4 amid Netflix's weekly ranking of English-language TV shows, which culls viewer data across more than 100 countries Netflix serves.
Overall, the 10 top-ranked English-language series in Netflix's top 10 for August 21-27 produced 21% less engagement than the comparable late-August list for 2022 -- although, the fact that Netflix now ranks shows by total views clouds that comparison a bit.
Meanwhile, for all the domestic chatter about Suits, the 12-year-old NBCUniversal TV show that's found rerun ratings resonance in the U.S. on both Peacock and Netflix this summer, that show ranked on Netflix's Global Top 10 just one time, back on the week of July 17-23, when it placed No. 8 among English-language TV shows with 20.3 million viewing hours.
So you can see where we're going with this -- you can't tell that much about the global streaming business based on Nielsen's weekly data, which is deeply flawed in methodology, transparency ... and finite geographical footprint. Suits has merely had a nice little resurgence in the U.S. this summer. It's not even close to a global hit.
Notably, Netflix's second biggest ratings earner last week was yet another successful scripted Korean show, Mask Girl, which captured 50.8 million streaming hours in its second week.
Now, here are charts for you to look at.
