Pictured: Lift, Boy Swallows Universe, and Detective Forst – Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending January 14th, 2024. This week, we’ll be cover Lift, Boy Swallows Universe, Detective Forst, Sonic Prime, Pete Davidson’s new stand-up, Love is Blind: Sweden, The Trust, plus a check-in with Berlin and Fool Me Once.
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, which has just been updated with even more data from the Nielsen top 10s.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from January 8th, 2024 to January 14th, 2024, 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. Lift is lifting off alright.
Kevin Hart still has it as his latest action heist film, Lift, which flew high for its first weekend, with 32.8M CVEs, the 13th-best launch for any Netflix film released on a Friday over the last two and a half years.
A solid B-Tier start, probably exactly what Netflix thought it would do in the middle of January.
2. Boy Swallows Universe only has a small universe of watchers so far.
Australian limited series Boy Swallows Universe is quite a hard sell with its enigmatic title and pitch, and it showed for its first four days with only 3.6M CVEs and the worst launch of an English-speaking Netflix limited series released on a Thursday since 2023.
Now, there’s a bright star in this universe, and it’s that the series is very, very well received by the public (8.2/10 on IMDb so far, a stellar average), and it’s just one whim of the algorithm away from becoming a sleeper hit.
3. Detective Forst had a great launch.
European detectives set in snowy landscapes are a surefire draw on Netflix, with the Polish series Detective Fors” launching with 4.8M CVEs over its first four days and the best launch for a European series released on a Thursday.
4. There’s nothing Turbo about Pete Davidson’s latest comedy special.
One great side effect of the new methodology used by Netflix for its Top 10 is that comedy specials are featured more and more and that it gives us quite a ranking of how big (or not) some stand-up performers are.
Dave Chappelle is huge. Ricky Gervais is big. But what about Pete Davidson?
His latest special, Turbo Fonzarelli, was not very big, as it launched with just 2.3M CVEs over its first six days. That ranks just under Amy Schumer but far from the leaders of the category, Tom Segura and Trevor Noah.
5. Love is Blind: Sweden is taking things slow.
Love is Blind is going European.
After the OG Love is Blind set in the US, Love is Blind: Brazil and Love is Blind: Japan, it’s now Sweden’s turn to experiment if love truly is blind.
Released over a few weeks, the first episodes of this season launched with 1.1M CVEs, which is quite low. But it’s also just a third of what the launch of Season 5 of Love is Blind did, which seems quite good, all things considered.
6. The Trust
Weekly reality TV shows are not that common on Netflix, so it’s hard to tell if The Trust is doing well. It’s doing considerably less than Squid Game: The Challenge, but that was a phenomenon and doesn’t seem like an entirely fair comparison.
It’s also doing quite less than The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On, so let’s just put a pin on it for the time being and see if it soars in the next few weeks.
7. Sonic Prime’s fans are here for the season 3.
The animated series Sonic Prime is a great example of decay rates between seasons, as the series had a huge drop-off between season 1 and season 2, going from 7.8M CVEs to 2.4M CVEs. Season 3 just launched and it started with 2.1M CVEs, just a notch under the launch of season 2 indicating that fans are still here.
8. Berlin and Fool Me Once are rushing toward the all-time Top 10. Society of the Snow is already there.
Two series have been really overperforming since the beginning of 2024, and the first one is Harlan Coben’s Fool Me Once, which reached 61M CVEs after its first two weeks.
If you wondered if that’s a lot, that’s the fourth best launch for a new series on Netflix released since June 2021, behind Wednesday, Squid Game, and Dahmer but in front of “The Night Agent or Queen Charlotte. Yup, that’s high.
It is still 20M CVEs shy of the all-time Top 10, but there are still 11 weeks to go, so there’s a very good chance it will make it there, and that would be the first big surprise of 2024.
On the international side, Berlin is also going strong, being the second best-launch for a new international series released since June 2021, behind Squid Game. I hope you like Money Heist because we’re probably getting a lot of spin-offs, sequels, and prequels set in that universe. “Berling” should enter the all-time Top 10 in two weeks’ time maximum, and it could be high on the list.
Another one that made the list of all-time performers is the Spanish prestige film Society of the Snow, which broke into the all-time Top 10 after only ten days. That’s a fantastic achievement, and the Academy Awards are just around the corner, which could provide it a boost to go as high as number 3 or 4 on the all-time Top 10. Very impressive start of the year for Netflix programs all around.
9. Netflix Engagement Report Deep Dive: March 2015.
In March 2015, Netflix’s Original programs were in their infancy, with just a handful of shows and films released each month. Two premiered that month, the first season of Bloodline with Kyle Chandler, Ben Mendelsohn and Linda Cardellini but also the first season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a sitcom with Ellie Kemper about a cult survivor discovering life for the first time, famously rejected by NBC Universal before finding a new home at Netflix. More than eight years after their release, how are both faring on the service? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Season 1 of Bloodline was watched the equivalent of 1.87M times over the first six months of 2023, nearly double what season 1 of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt did. That’s between 5,000 and 10,000 viewing of the whole series per day, eight years after their release, which seems good. “Bloodline” ran for three (good) seasons, while Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt ran for four seasons and an interactive special.
That’s all for this week, feel free to let us know what you think in the comments below.
Netflix Synopsis: "Eight thieves take hostages and lock themselves in the Royal Mint of Spain as a criminal mastermind manipulates the police to carry out his plan."
