Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10 hourly figures drop for the week ending January 15th, 2023.
Netflix updates its top 10 stats page weekly 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 January 9th, 2023, to January 15th, 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. Season 2 of Vikings: Valhalla has a subdued launch.
Season 1 of “Vikings Valhalla” started big in January 2022, so much so that the series was renewed for two other seasons, a rare feat for Netflix. Season 2 launched last week and was much more subdued, with only 8.6M CVEs after four days, when Season 1 logged 11.9M CVEs after three.
If a third season hadn’t been already greenlit and shot, I would have been very pessimistic about its renewal chances. So let’s hope the story will wrap up nicely in season 3 because, at this rate, season 4 is unlikely.
2. The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker hitches a ride to the top of the charts
Sometimes, you need a title such as The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker to break a record. The documentary launched last Tuesday and logged 15M CVEs in its first six days making it the best launch for any documentary released on a Tuesday. Move over Jennifer Lopez and Halftime, here comes Kai, the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker.
The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker CVE first 6 days
3. Netflix’s big new sports docu-series Break Point flops
Break Point – Picture: Netflix
Break Point was supposed to be to tennis what Formula 1: Drive to Survive had been to Formula 1 but the docuseries did not make the Top this week.
Granted, with only five episodes under its belt, it is at a disadvantage when Netflix counts hours viewed, but still, the series did not manage to break into any weekly Top 10 in the world.
4. A tale of two series: Mo is renewed and Uncoupled is canceled.
Word came last week of two decisions from Netflix about some American series that launched this summer : “Mo” and “Uncoupled”.
Neither of those two did particularly well in the weekly Tops (Uncoupled only appeared in its second week). Given Netflix’s particularly bloody track record these past few weeks, those two series were a goner for me.
But Mo was renewed for a final season unexpectedly while Uncoupled was indeed canceled.
In these streaming reports, we often resort to numbers to explain cancellations and renewal decisions, but in the case of Mo, numbers are just non-existent. In an article about the renewal, Netflix did write about the critical accolades received by Mo and its creator Mo Amer.
Its budget is also visibly quite low when you use three main factors: Viewership, budget, and critical accolades – the series clearly hits two of the three, which is enough to get a renewal from Netflix.
These decisions enable us to start drawing up a scorecard for Netflix’s 2022 US lineup for series that can be summarized as such:
(Green : renewed / Orange : Unknown / Black : Ended, limited series / Red : Cancelled)
Lo and behold, all the series that did the most viewership in 2022 (and were not limited series for the most part) have been renewed. My oh my, how unexpected is that? And the canceled series are mostly the ones that did not do so well. Shocking, I know. Mo seems to be the exception to the rule, so well done, Mo.
