Picture: Nick Wall/Netflix
What an incredibly busy week in the Netflix top 10s! Lots of big stories as Netflix debuts a bunch of new titles like English-language titles like North of North and the latest seventh season of Black Mirror. That’s in addition to new international titles like The Gardener from Spain. Plus, there are other stories, such as The Electric State, getting trounced in viewership by the Sofia Carson rom-com The Life List.
Note: In this report of Netflix’s hours viewed from April 7th, 2025 ,to April 13th, 2025, 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 second of the film or season.
1. Pulse, No Good Deed, and The Residence Renewal Updates
When it comes to decisions about renewals and cancellations, previous comparisons are usually a good indicator of what Netflix will do. As of now, three new US series have unknown fates: The Residence, Pulse, and No Good Deed. If we look at previous comps, it stands to reason that cancellations might be on the cards for them as they’re all trending below Obliterated, a show that had a higher number of views but was ultimately canceled.
Now, that’s where the “views” count as defined by Netflix does not show the whole picture. Let’s take Obliterated for instance. Per my estimates, it totaled 16M views after its first 14 days, but two series with 16M views can have wildly different actual viewership. The Views are an average based on the total hours viewed related to the runtime of the series. It might mean that all the episodes were watched the equivalent of 16M times, but it can also mean that the first episode was watched the equivalent of 24M times, with each following episode losing viewership until the final episode having only 8M views. In both cases, that’s 16M views total but if you’re Netflix and have to renew one show among the two, you will renew the one that lost none of its audience because that’s an audience you can count on for the next season and you will cancel the series that lost two thirds of its audience, even if in the Top 10 charts, both series did absolutely the same number of views.
That’s why the Obliterated line is only showing one side of the equation, and probably why A Man on the Inside was renewed in the end, whilst Obliterated was canceled. Pulse and The Residence might have a better retention over the course of their season, with more people finishing the series than Obliterated, even if their view count is less important. That’s what might save both series in the end, but as for No Good Deed, it’s a bit too close to the cancellation zone and a bit too long since its release, with no news about its fate to get a reprieve.
2. The Life List kicks The Electric State.
Over its first 14 days, Sofia Carson’s The Life List did what was unthinkable just a few months ago, besting mega-blockbuster The Electric State with an estimated 61.9M CVEs. Repeat after me this evergreen mantra: Netflix subscribers will watch what they want to watch.
3. Black Mirror returns
Black Mirror is back for a seventh season—a remarkable run for a Netflix series, even if, to be fair, it was only picked up by Netflix starting with season 3. Season 7 generated some buzz, notably with its two different versions of the same episode designed to stir controversy on social media. However, its launch has been somewhat less impressive, showing a significant drop compared to the season six debut, with 7.1 million CVEs in its first four days.
But the strength of Black Mirror lies in its anthology format, which makes it largely immune to the main pitfall faced by most other series: the need to have seen previous episodes to understand the overarching plot. Its creator, Charlie Brooker, can take a few years off and come back with new concepts, so I’d be surprised to hear anything about the show’s future in the coming weeks.
4. Adolescence takes #3 spot in the all-time top 10 list
Adolescence continues its run and is now in its fifth week in Netflix’s Top 10. Based on that, I can estimate its 28-day total at around 119.2 million CVEs, making it the fourth-best 28-day launch for a Netflix series. Comparing it with similar series, its 91-day total should land somewhere between 140 and 192 million CVEs, and I’m betting on a final tally between 142 and 150 million—equivalent to one Netflix subscription out of every two!
5. North of North
The small Canadian series North of North faces several headwinds this week in the Top 10, which help explain its modest debut. First, it centers on a young Inuit woman in the Canadian Far North—hardly the most commercially appealing premise. It’s also a Netflix co-production of a show that had already aired on Canadian television several weeks ago. That means its primary territory likely didn’t contribute much to its initial numbers, which might explain the low launch figure of around 3 million EVCs. That said, I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, and with a solid IMDb score of 7.8/10, it might pick up some steam.
6. The Gardener
The Spanish miniseries The Gardener is off to a blazing start, with 7.7 million EVCs in just three days—making it the second-best launch for a new Spanish series released on a Friday since June 2021, just behind Berlin.
7. How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)
Was it really necessary to produce a final season of the German series How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) nearly four years after the previous one (which was also supposed to be the final season)? Probably not, since this new season’s launch is significantly weaker than that of season 3 back in summer 2021. It’s time to let this series go (fast).
8. The Dad Quest
Netflix Mexico is on fire in 2025 since its latest film, The Dad Quest, launched with 9 million CVEs in five days, making it the best debut for a Mexican film released on a Wednesday in my dataset, and the fifth-best among all Latin American films.
9. Meet the Khumalos
On the South African side, Netflix’s hot property remains the Kandasamys franchise, which began as a successful theatrical release telling the story of South Africans of Indian descent. Netflix has since released several sequels internationally, and last week saw the debut of Meet the Khumalos, directed by the same filmmaker behind The Kandasamys. The connection? The new film is essentially a remake of the original, but set in suburban Durban. And it seems to be working well, with a launch of 4.8 million CVEs in just three days—making it the fifth-best opening for an African film released on a Friday on Netflix.
10. Bad Influence
This week’s true crime docuseries dives into the dark side of child influencers on social media—and it seems to be resonating with subscribers, as it scored the ninth-best launch for a docuseries released on a Wednesday since June 2021.
11. Is Netflix pivoting to limited series?
Looking at the release schedule for the coming weeks, it’s clear that the number of miniseries is relatively high. It feels like Netflix is increasingly favoring limited series—and when I checked the global release data, that impression held up: in 2016, only 10% of new Netflix series were miniseries, whereas in early 2025, that figure has risen to 44.9%, meaning nearly one out of every two new series falls into that category.
The appeal of a miniseries for Netflix is quite obvious: the story wraps up neatly at the end of the season, leaving no sense of incompletion for the viewer who invested time in watching it. The trade press (or certain French bloggers focused on streaming data) can’t headline with the usual news that Netflix has canceled yet another series. However, if the show is successful, it can still be renewed in different ways—either in an anthology format (as is likely the case for a second season of Adolescence, which should be greenlit, or shows like Beef or Monsters before it) or in a classic serialized format, leaving just a small opening for future developments, like The Gardener this week. Everyone wins, and it seems Netflix is heading in this direction if we look at the numbers.
That’s it for our bumper top 10 report this week – see you next!
