Netflix Top 10s: ‘My Brilliant Career’ Surges, and ‘Facing El Chapo’ Debuts Big Alongside ‘Blood Sacrifice’

Welcome to your slightly belated rundown of all the biggest stories from the Netflix top 10s for the week of August 17th through August 23rd, 2026. Below, we’ll take a look at the viewership stories that have caught our eyes, whether it’s updates on titles like My Brilliant Career, Don’t Say Good Luck, or My Life with the Walter Boys, or some of the other debuts from last week, including Facing El Chapo and Blood Sacrifice. 

If you’re looking for our coverage on Outer Banks season 5, we already did that last night. As a reminder, Outer Banks season 5 debuted at the #1 spot on Netflix’s English TV list with 9.4 million views (80.6 million viewing hours) in its opening week, but experienced a significant viewership decline compared to previous outings. This opening marks a roughly 46% drop from its series peak in season 3 (17.4 million views) and also falls short of seasons 2 and 4, albeit there are caveats there. 

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Facing El Chapo

Everyone has heard of El Chapo, and that’s what Netflix was counting on when it put this new Mexican film as its big Friday movie release, which traditionally goes to a big English-language film. It worked a treat and served as one of the best-performing movies from the region in quite some time and the biggest international Friday film for 2026:

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Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing

Netflix is double-dipping on the story of Boeing aircraft serving as a follow-up to the 2022 doc. Now we can’t compare this new doc to that one given that it released on a Friday (pulling in 4.94M views) whereas this one, which dropped last Wednesday, pulled in 4.7M views. That said, it’s clear the audience is a bit lower this time around. We can stack it up against some other Wednesday doc films, however:

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Blood Sacrifice

Over the weekend, Blood Sacrifice managed to unseat Outer Banks as the #1 show globally based on daily top 10 rankings, but as we learned yesterday, that was more of a weakness on the part of Outer Banks; it’s still commendable for Blood Sacrifice, which comes from the creator of Lupin. Debuting with 7M views, here’s how it stacks up:

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My Brilliant Career Viewing Hours Jump 52%

A good second week for My Brilliant Career, the Australian period drama that picked up strong reviews and has been getting positive word of mouth. While it’s ranking well against some Aussie series counterparts in recent years, it’s still a far stretch from comparing against some of the biggest Netflix period dramas in recent years.  

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Roommates and Don’t Say Good Luck are neck and neck

Last week, we covered how Don’t Say Good Luck had one of the weakest debuts for Netflix’s 2026 movie slate, but this week, it’s clawed back some momentum and now is exactly the same as Roommates, which is interesting given that both projects were Sandler movie vehicles for Adam’s daughters Sunny and Sadie. 

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A Check-In With My Life With The Walter Boys

It’s week 3 of My Life with the Walter Boys season 3, and it’s an interesting trajectory compared with seasons 2 and 1, but the show is definitely showing signs of decay, with viewership naturally front-loaded now that it’s three seasons in. As of week 3, the latest season is sitting at 173.4 million viewing hours and 22.0 million completed views.

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Full Top 10s for August 17th through August 23rd

English TV

Rank	Title	Hours	Views	Week #
1	Outer Banks: Season 5	80,600,000	9,400,000	1
2	My Brilliant Career: Season 1	21,800,000 (52.45%)	4,700,000	2
3	My Life With the Walter Boys: Season 3	33,900,000 (-50.51%)	4,300,000	3
4	Conversations with a Killer: The Charles Manson Tapes: Season 1	8,800,000 (-37.14%)	3,100,000	2
5	Tires: Season 3	13,800,000 (15.97%)	2,800,000	2
6	Raw: August 17, 2026	5,000,000 (11.11%)	2,700,000	1
7	I Will Find You: Limited Series	13,800,000 (-6.76%)	2,500,000	10
8	Seal Team: Season 1	36,400,000	2,300,000	1
9	Danny Go!: Season 1	4,000,000	2,000,000	9
10	The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare: Season 1	4,000,000 (-50.62%)	1,800,000	4

English Film

Rank	Title	Hours	Views	Week #
1	Don’t Say Good Luck	20,300,000 (58.59%)	12,800,000	2
2	The Last House	22,400,000 (-64.16%)	12,000,000	3
3	Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing	7,500,000	4,700,000	1
4	72 HOURS	7,000,000 (-33.33%)	4,000,000	5
5	The Dating App Killer: The Monica White Story	4,900,000	3,400,000	1
6	KPop Demon Hunters	5,200,000 (-5.45%)	3,100,000	62
7	Breaking In	4,500,000	3,100,000	1
8	To Catch a Cheater	4,400,000	3,000,000	1
9	Swapped	4,100,000	2,400,000	13
10	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	4,400,000 (-46.99%)	2,300,000	2

Non-English TV

Rank	Title	Hours	Views	Week #
1	Blood Sacrifice: Season 1	29,300,000	7,000,000	1
2	Our Sticky Love: Limited Series	43,300,000 (-50.80%)	3,700,000	3
3	Umthetho: Season 1	18,500,000 (107.87%)	3,500,000	2
4	Spooky in Love: Limited Series	33,900,000 (19.79%)	2,700,000	6
5	Moria: Season 1	10,900,000 (36.25%)	2,200,000	2
6	Operation Safed Sagar: The Highest Air Force Mission: Season 1	10,800,000 (-59.55%)	2,000,000	3
7	Badly in Love: Season 2	15,700,000 (0.64%)	1,900,000	3
8	My Daughter’s Father: Season 1	9,700,000 (-36.18%)	1,300,000	5
9	The Apartment Job: Limited Series	14,400,000	1,100,000	5
10	Teach You a Lesson: Limited Series	11,900,000	1,100,000	10

Non-English Film

Rank	Title	Hours	Views	Week #
1	Facing El Chapo	27,900,000	18,000,000	1
2	A Child of My Own	10,100,000 (23.17%)	6,200,000	2
3	The Wave	7,400,000	4,400,000	1
4	To the Max	8,200,000	4,400,000	1
5	Cocktail 2	10,100,000 (40.28%)	4,000,000	2
6	Nando Between Two Worlds – A Sintonia Film	7,100,000	3,900,000	2
7	Daddy’s in Trouble	5,200,000 (73.33%)	3,100,000	3
8	My Best Friend, His Girlfriend and Me	4,400,000 (25.71%)	2,700,000	2
9	Chompoo: Lost & Forgotten	2,500,000	1,800,000	1
10	Here the Whole Time	2,700,000	1,600,000	1

That’s it for this week – hopefully a regularly scheduled top 10 report next Tuesday!