Partner Track – Picture: Netflix
Netflix’s latest legal drama is now streaming and following in the footsteps of The Lincoln Lawyer, adapts a popular book and is almost certainly eyeing a second season at Netflix but it was not meant to be. In November 2022, Netflix canceled the series.
Based on the Helen Wan 2013 novel The Partner, the series stars Arden Cho, Alexandra Turshen, Bradley Gibson, Dominic Sherwood, and Rob Heaps.
All 10 episodes of season 1 landed on Netflix on August 26th, 2022 globally. It debuted with mixed to positive reviews. It sits at a 62% critics rating on RottenTomatoes as of November 8th, 2022, with viewer scores around the same.
On the critic’s side, opinions varied from the San Francisco Chronicle referring to it as perfect background noise. At the same time, Nina Metz at the Chicago Tribune said the show is “engrossing enough to keep you watching.”
Partner Track Netflix Renewal Status
Has Partner Track been renewed for season 2?
Official Renewal Status: Canceled.
Despite being lauded internally at Netflix with a lot of buzz from Netflix’s head of drama, Deadline reported on November 8th, alongside a busy election day and Disney news that Partner Track would not be returning to Netflix for a season 2.
Per Deadline’s report, “the streamer had commissioned a writer’s room which was up and running, working on ideas for a potential second season.”
It also stated that the show was relatively cheap compared to other shows, but viewership was still not enough to warrant a second season.
Indeed, that was the case in an interview with Jinny Howe shortly after the show’s premiere. Netflix’s head of drama, Jinny Howe, spoke to Deadline on August 27th, and the article stated that “executives are high on Partner Track, and the series is looking good for a Season 2 renewal.”
Partner Track. Arden Cho as Ingrid Yun in episode 101 of Partner Track. Cr. Vanessa Clifton/Netflix © 2022
Renewals come down to several factors. Three internal metrics have been touted as to why a show will get renewed or canceled. These are “adjusted view share,” an “efficiency score,” and “impact value.”
While we as outsiders aren’t able to calculate these metrics, what we can look at as outsiders includes Netflix’s top 10 metrics, hourly figures, third-party data (including hours watched and completion data), and external demand sources which we’ll do below.
How well is Partner Track performing on Netflix?
Let’s begin with data from Netflix themselves via their top 10 site.
Between August 21st and September 11th (the show didn’t rank in its first week of being on Netflix) the show clocked up 66.01 million hours in total.
| Week Period | Hours Viewed(M) | Rank | Week in Top 10 |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 21st, 2022 to August 28th, 2022 | 16,660,000 | 7 | 1 |
| August 28th, 2022 to September 4th, 2022 | 31,140,000 (+87%) | 4 | 2 |
| September 4th, 2022 to September 11th, 2022 | 18,210,000 (-42%) | 6 | 3 |
Rightly or wrongly, the show is most comparable to the earlier release in 2022 of The Lincoln Lawyer. Both are dramas with legal aspects (although some would argue the show is more of a romantic comedy) with 10 episodes and are relatively close to each other in runtime.
As the chart below demonstrates, the show did not get off to the best of starts (we’ve added Pieces of Her as another comparison).
Top 10 hourly chart for Partner Track
We featured the debut of Partner Track in our Top 10 Report that uses CVE metrics to see how well the show performed on a level playing field. The show debuted just ahead of Cowboy Bebop but notably behind the likes of Archive 81, Heartstopper, and In From The Cold.
Debut on Netflix Top 10s for Partner Track
In another top 10 report we published, you can see how well Partner Track did compared to other series with those in green being renewed and those in red canceled.
Raw top 10s via FlixPatrol can also help us understand how well the show performs. We can see from the heatmap above that the show is performing best in the United States, Canada, the Nordic regions, and Eastern Europe.
According to their data, the show peaked on day 3 of being on the service but has held relatively well since.
Popularity map for FlixPatrol
What we expected from Partner Track season 2 on Netflix
If the show does get renewed? Where can we expect the show to head next?
By the end of the 10 episodes, Ingrid is left disappointed after her mission to get a partner fails at Parsons Valentine & Hunt and was ultimately derailed by Jeff Murphy. The same Jeff Murphy she’d had a relationship with off and on again throughout season 1. That’s even after all her hard work to rise up above all of the roadblocks placed in her way throughout the first season.
Georgia Lee spoke to Deadline shortly following the release of season 1 and discussed where they’d head in season 2. Here’s some of the key points discussed:
- Don’t expect the relationship between Ingrid and Murphy to be repaired anytime soon.
- On romances, Lee said, “I would like to say that Ingrid chooses not Team Murphy or Team Nick or Team Z, she chooses herself. That’s her ultimate journey.”
- Lee didn’t rule out the possibility of bringing back Nick (played by Rob Heaps).
- Expect more from the Rachel-Tyler-Ingrid trio.
Would you have liked to have seen more episodes of Netflix’s Partner Track? Let us know in the comments.
