Pictured: Sex/Life, Outer Banks, and Chris Rock Special
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending March 5th, 2023.
Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its top 10 stats page with 40 new hourly figures of the top movies and shows of the past seven days. If you want to browse the top 10 hourly data easily, visit our tool.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from February 27th, 2023 to March 5th, 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.
1. Outer Banks season 3 is still going strong.
Picture: Netflix
Even if it lost -36% in its second week, Outer Banks is still quite ahead of its second season after 11 days.
We will see how long it stays in the Top 10, as this week, You S4B will return within the next few days.
As Netflix points out in its press release too, seasons 1 and 2 have seen a huge boost in viewership.
Outer Banks season 3 vs season 2 viewership CVE
2. Murdaugh Murders is on a rampage.
There’s no stopping Murdaugh Murders for its second week as it is now above the 30M CVEs mark after 12 days. So far, it’s the second most-watched documentary series of all time for Netflix, just behind Harry & Meghan.
Of course, as we mentioned last week, the timing of this documentary series was perfect timing given the murders are in the news constantly following the conclusion of the trial last week.
Murdaugh Murders vs Harry & Meghan CVE Viewership
3. Sex/Life lacks passion for its return.
The first season of Sex/Life was released just around the time that Netflix started to release the Top 10 lists so sadly, we don’t have the numbers for its first week.
However, we know that it did pretty well at the time. That’s not something we will write about the launch of Season 2 which debuts to a lackluster 8.5M CVEs after four days.
It might pick up the pace in its second week, and it’d better be if it wants another season (not that it is needed as the story ends apparently quite satisfyingly. Whatever that means.)
4. Chris Rock: Selective Outrage is nowhere to be seen in the worldwide Top 10.
When Chris Rock finishes their rant about Will Smith and the slap, he might take some time to rant about the fact that his last particular Selective Outrage (and the first live experiment for Netflix) did not make the global Top 10 this week. It did make the US top 10 lists and, therefore, garnered a slew of articles. But if it did well, why didn’t it enter the global top 10s?
First, Netflix decided to put it in the TV section where it has to face series with much more hours to stream, an essential factor when we know that Netflix uses hours viewed for its Top 10.
Another reason is that the special was broadcast live on Saturday at the very end of the week and the period that the Top 10 covers.
So, it’s not surprising not to see it in the worldwide top 10 and even quite an accomplishment to notice that it did make the Top 10 TV in the US, ranking 7th out of 10 with only one one-hour show and two days out of seven. We might see it next week; who knows!
We’ll be back next week for more top 10 discoveries and analysis!
Rating: TV-MA
