The first season of “Bridgerton” was Netflix’s most-watched TV series ever, the streaming giant announced Monday.
A record 82 million subscribers watched the show for at least two minutes in its first 28 days on the platform, the company said.
Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos announced the streaming service’s top 10 most popular shows and movies at the Code Conference in California.
“Bridgerton,” a drama that captures 19th-century British aristocrats in search of love, premiered in December.
French crime-thriller “Lupin” and the first season of “The Witcher” tied for second on the top-ten shows list, with 76 million accounts tuning in to each.
As for movies, the action film “Extraction,” about a black-market mercenary tasked with rescuing a drug lord’s kidnapped son, earned the top spot — with 99 million accounts tuning in during its first 28 days, Netflix said.
Horror-thriller “Bird Box” took second with 89 million accounts watching, and action-comedy “Spenser Confidential” took third, according to the company.
Sarandos also revealed Netflix’s top ten lists as measured with a new metric: total amount of hours watched in their first 28 days of release.
It’s the first time Netflix has made that data public, and Sarandos said the company is committed to being more transparent about viewer metrics in the future.
“Bridgerton” took the No. 1 spot by that measure too, racking up 625 million hours of eyeballs while “Money Heist” and “Stranger Things” came in second-and third-place for shows.
By that measure, “Bird Box” was the most-watched movie on Netflix, followed by “Extraction” and “The Irishman.”
But Sarandos also teased that Netflix’s new Korean-language show “Squid Game,” which was released earlier this month, is on track to be its biggest show ever.
Netflix is putting billions of dollars toward the production of its own original series as it seeks to hold on to its lead in the so-called Streaming Wars with rivals Disney+, Amazon Prime TV, Apple TV+ and others that are trying to capture a share of the global market.