Picture: Netflix
Happy Christmas, and according to Netflix, you may have been part of the viewership that made it the streamer’s biggest Christmas Day viewership to date. Lots of stories in the top 10s this week, with Stranger Things coming back with a massive bang, plus the debuts of Goodbye June and Cashero. Here are all the big Netflix top 10 stories for the week ending December 28th.
Unlike last year, Netflix has not yet released NFL Christmas Gameday numbers today, nor does it seem the broadcast was eligible for the daily US top 10s this year (albeit it did feature elsewhere). Netflix declined to comment, and we’ll let you know if and when we hear differently.
As always, let’s dig in with the weekly stats for the four different categories:
- English TV – 87,900,000 (Rank 3 of 132 weeks)
- English Film – 77,600,000 (Rank 61 of 132 weeks)
- Non-English TV – 25,400,000 (Rank 83 of 132 weeks)
- Non-English Film – 54,200,000 (Rank 20 of 132 weeks)
Let’s break down the top 10s:
English TV
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stranger Things 5 | 284,800,000 | 34,500,000 (320.73%) | 5 |
| 2 | Emily in Paris: Season 5 | 76,800,000 | 13,300,000 (-1.48%) | 2 |
| 3 | Dave Chappelle: The Unstoppable… | 11,600,000 | 9,200,000 (178.79%) | 2 |
| 4 | Man Vs Baby: Season 1 | 15,500,000 | 7,900,000 (-45.89%) | 3 |
| 5 | Stranger Things | 32,600,000 | 4,800,000 (-41.46%) | 19 |
| 6 | Stranger Things 4 | 53,300,000 | 4,100,000 (-50.00%) | 25 |
| 7 | Sean Combs: The Reckoning: Season 1 | 15,200,000 | 3,700,000 (-41.27%) | 4 |
| 8 | Stranger Things 3 | 27,300,000 | 3,600,000 (-56.10%) | 17 |
| 9 | Stranger Things 2 | 28,300,000 | 3,600,000 (-56.10%) | 17 |
| 10 | Fireplace for Your Home: Crackling Birchwood Fireplace | 3,200,000 | 3,200,000 | 4 |
English Film
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch | 23,700,000 | 16,500,000 (103.70%) | 14 |
| 2 | Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery | 28,700,000 | 11,800,000 (-43.54%) | 3 |
| 3 | KPop Demon Hunters | 15,100,000 | 9,100,000 (15.19%) | 28 |
| 4 | How the Grinch Stole Christmas | 13,300,000 | 7,700,000 | 8 |
| 5 | Goodbye June | 13,600,000 | 7,000,000 | 1 |
| 6 | My Secret Santa | 10,200,000 | 6,700,000 (-9.46%) | 4 |
| 7 | The Christmas Chronicles | 10,100,000 | 5,800,000 (65.71%) | 9 |
| 8 | Wrath of Man | 9,300,000 | 4,700,000 | 1 |
| 9 | Tomb Raider | 8,200,000 | 4,200,000 | 2 |
| 10 | Jingle Bell Heist | 6,600,000 | 4,100,000 | 3 |
Non-English TV
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Culinary Class Wars: Season 2 | 44,800,000 | 4,700,000 (-14.55%) | 2 |
| 2 | Cashero: Limited Series | 26,500,000 | 3,800,000 | 1 |
| 3 | Dynamite Kiss: Limited Series | 50,800,000 | 3,300,000 (-8.33%) | 7 |
| 4 | The Accident: Season 2 | 10,300,000 | 2,300,000 (-46.51%) | 3 |
| 5 | City of Shadows: Limited Series | 10,400,000 | 2,200,000 (-51.11%) | 3 |
| 6 | Idol I: 시즌 1 | 4,200,000 | 2,100,000 | 1 |
| 7 | Badly in Love: Season 1 | 14,000,000 | 1,900,000 (-13.64%) | 3 |
| 8 | The Great Indian Kapil Show: Season 4 | 3,900,000 | 1,700,000 | 1 |
| 9 | The Price of Confession: Season 1 | 17,500,000 | 1,700,000 (-37.04%) | 4 |
| 10 | Record of Ragnarok: Season 3 | 10,400,000 | 1,700,000 (-48.48%) | 3 |
Non-English Film
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Great Flood | 60,100,000 | 33,100,000 (18.64%) | 2 |
| 2 | A Time For Bravery | 14,700,000 | 8,200,000 (164.52%) | 2 |
| 3 | Raat Akeli Hai – The Bansal Murders | 8,500,000 | 3,700,000 | 2 |
| 4 | Troll 2 | 4,600,000 | 2,600,000 (-16.13%) | 4 |
| 5 | 10DANCE | 3,500,000 | 1,600,000 (-38.46%) | 2 |
| 6 | RaPo 22 | 3,500,000 | 1,300,000 | 1 |
| 7 | Jumbo | 1,900,000 | 1,100,000 | 1 |
| 8 | Dangal | 2,400,000 | 900,000 | 1 |
| 9 | Gatao: Big Brothers | 1,800,000 | 900,000 | 1 |
| 10 | La Tahzan: Cinta, Dosa, Luka | 1,900,000 | 800,000 (-27.27%) | 2 |
1. Stranger Things Gets A Big (Expected Bump) With Volume 2 Release
Stranger Things Volume 2 returned on Christmas Day with a primetime release, and that’s led, naturally, to a massive boost in hours watched for the series. In fact, it saw a 632% boost in week 5. Sadly, Netflix didn’t do anything to help us better understand the split season, other than stating, “Volume 2 of the new season made December 25 Netflix’s most-watched Christmas Day ever globally.”
Here’s the table as it stands as of week 5, with hours watched now hitting 773.8 million viewing hours:
| Week in Top 10 | Week Period | Hours Viewed | Views / CVE | Weekly Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nov 23 to Nov 30, 2025 | 284,200,000 (New) | 59,600,000 | 1 |
| 2 | Nov 30 to Dec 7, 2025 | 112,700,000 (-60%) | 23,600,000 | 1 |
| 3 | Dec 7 to Dec 14, 2025 | 53,200,000 (-53%) | 11,200,000 | 3 |
| 4 | Dec 14 to Dec 21, 2025 | 38,900,000 (-27%) | 8,200,000 | 4 |
| 5 | Dec 21 to Dec 28, 2025 | 284,800,000 (+632%) | 34,500,000 | 1 |
As we’ve covered multiple times with split seasons, comparing views is futile because the calculation changes significantly with each new episode release. That’s because the runtime gets large and is applied to viewing hours of both volumes 1 and 2. Likewise, it’ll get even messier next week when we have viewing hours for the finale mixed in.
Stacking up the hours watched, you can see below that season 4 had an advantage with its episode releases (7 for part 1 and 2 for part 2), meaning it had the opportunity to get a huge build in hours. Stranger Things S5 will likely now begin very quickly, catching up, particularly with the finale on the way. For comparison’s sake, I’ve also included Squid Game season 1 to show you how a traditional show picks up hours without an episode split in the middle.
One way to compare split seasons somewhat on a 1:1 basis is a method devised by Frederic of Netflix and Chiffres, which adds up all the hours and divides by the runtime of volumes 1 and 2 at the week of release. Using this method, you arrive at 773.8M hours watched, which, when applied to the runtime of 8 hours and 15 minutes, yields 93.8M views. That puts it ahead of every other split season, including season 4. Again, this method isn’t perfect, given that, as you can see from the graph above, part 2 of season 4 didn’t come out until week 6.
Split season views – Picture Credit: What’s on Netflix
2. Goodbye June Debuts Low
Picture: Netflix
Kate Winslet’s directorial debut, Goodbye June, premiered on Christmas Eve. It didn’t do much business on Netflix, ranking near the bottom among English-language movies released on Wednesdays over the past few years. It ranked #5 for English movies for the week with 13.6M hours watched equating to 7M views.
For the most part, only Christmas movies, British movies, and rom-coms are released on Wednesdays now, while most high-profile movies still release on Fridays.
3. The Great Flood Gets Bigger And Already Eying Spot On Netflix’s All-Time Most Watched List
Last week, we covered how The Great Flood set a record as the biggest Korean movie released on a Friday. Its record is further extended this week as it gained a nearly 20% bump in viewing hours, which is unheard of as international films of this nature usually level out fairly quickly. Not the case here. As it stands in week 2, the movie is up to 110.7M hours watched and 61M views.
Now the question becomes, is the movie eying a spot on Netflix’s all-time most-watched list for non-English movies? The answer is yes! Depending on its performance in the weeks to come, it could easily be eying a spot in the top 5 or even rival Troll for the crown if it plays its cards right:
4. A Time For Bravery Sees Big Boost in Week 2
The Mexican crime-comedy got off to a pretty poor start in the top 10s but saw a 163% rise in viewing hours in its second full week on the platform. That’s still not enough to put it above some of its other Mexican counterparts in recent years, but it’s an interesting jump:
5. Cashero Debuts Strong
We’ve seen from our own traffic in the run-up to release that Cashero was going to be a hit, and it delivered, beating out most other limited series from South Korea by a fair bit. Sure, it got a favorable Christmas release, but it still delivered.
6. A Couple Check-Ins
Sorry to say, but we’re calling time on Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and labeling it one of the biggest disappointments of 2025. It’s lagging substantially behind the second movie, with only 52.9M views, which means by week 3 (give or take a few days) it’s down 51%.
Emily in Paris, as we covered last week, has dropped a bit compared to prior seasons, and that trend holds in week 2, but it’s nothing disastrous, and we’re still fully expecting it to land a season 6 renewal (albeit the show is likely coming to an end soon enough).
That’s it for this week – we’ll be back next week for more on the top 10s but keep an eye out for the biggest flops and disappointments coming up tomorrow and the biggest winners in the weeks to come!
