Pictured: Lupin, Fair Play and Ballerina – cr. Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the most important stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending October 8th, 2023. Lots to cover this week, including the first-week premieres of Lupin, Beckham, Ballerina, and Fair Play, plus check-ins with Sex Education, Nowhere, and Virgin River.
As always, in this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from October 2nd, 2023, to October 8th, 2023, we’ll use “Complete Viewings Equivalent,” or CVE, expressed in millions. That means we divide the hours viewed announced by Netflix by the runtime of films or series. It allows for better comparisons between films and series, but it’s not an audience metric. It is the minimum number of viewings if they were all complete from the first second to the last of the film or season.
The full top 40 for the week can be found on Netflix’s satellite site for the Top 10s, or you can browse through all hours for Netflix shows in our search tool.
1. Lupin sneaks into the Top 10.
French series “Lupin”, which is returning for its third series, is giving some air to Netflix France after a lackluster year for its Gallic series. The third season launched with 11.7M CVEs, the best launch for an international returning series released on a Thursday since June 2021 and the 8th best launch for any Netflix series released on a Thursday
Now, beyond that splashy headline, something darker is afoot as per my guesstimations, season 3 should have another huge drop compared to season 2’s viewership (around 35M CVEs after 28 days compared to more than 56M CVEs for season 2), which was already down significantly from season 1.
Now, this is only an early estimate, and we will see how this plays out in the coming weeks and if Lupin can pull a great viewership heist.
2. Fair Play is doing fairly good
I don’t know what expectations Netflix had for the “erotic” thriller Fair Play, but it seems to me that 12.6M CVEs over its first three days for a prestige play set in the world of finance and business with two quite unknown leads is not that bad.
It’s in the 13 best launches of the year for a US Netflix film so far, quite on par with You Are So Not Invited To My Bat-Mitzvah, which had a pretty decent career after its launch. So we’ll see.
3. Ballerina is out kicking and fighting.
Picture: Netflix
South Korean actioner “Ballerina” did a good launch with 10.1M CVEs, the fourth-best launch for a South Korean film released on a Friday since June 2021 and the second-best one of the year, behind Jung_E but besting Kill Boksoon.
4. “Beckham” is scoring another goal.
Besides being one of the greatest football players of all time, David Beckham also proved to be an endearing figure in its docuseries charting the course of their professional and personal life.
With 12.4M CVEs, it also did the 4th best launch for a Netflix docuseries released on a Wednesday and the best one for a sports docuseries. A true champ.
First 5 days viewership for Beckham vs other Netflix Original documentary series.
5. Sex Education season 4, 14 days later.
After three weeks in the charts, it’s time to compare how well season 4 of Sex Education is doing, and with an estimated 28.7M CVEs over its first 14 days, it is noticeably less than the performance of season 3 over the same period.
That might give us an indication as to why season 4 is the final season more than any creative reason behind this decision.
6. Virgin River season 5, 28 days later.
Another look back this week, but this time on how season 5 of the romantic drama Virgin River is doing in the charts. It’s been there for five weeks now, giving us the opportunity to estimate its 28-day number of CVEs.
As you can see here, season 5 is showing a slight sign of viewership decay from seasons 4 and 3, but it’s still quite minimal compared to other series so it should be good.
7. Nowhere on track for Netflix’s all-time top 10 list
Picture: Netflix
Nowhere is killing it out there.
After two weeks in the charts, it’s already in the all-time international Top 10, currently ranking 8th, and it is now shooting for the top spot, or at least one of the top three spots, since Troll seems quite unreachable. So, will it end 2nd or 3rd? That’s also something we will keep you appraised in the coming weeks. But be patient; we will only know for sure in 11 weeks!
That’s all for this week; feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.
For more insights and analysis from Frederic (in French), subscribe to the Netflix & Chiffres Substack.
Rating: TV-MA
