Adolescence Rises To No. 2 On Netflix's All-Time Top 10, Passing Stranger Things 4 — And There It Will Stay
Adolescence's growth spurt has reached a new — and final? — milestone.
The real-time, continuous-take, four-part miniseries to date has delivered 141.2 million views on Netflix, pushing it ahead of Stranger Things Season 4 (140.7 million views) on the streaming giant's all-time Most Popular TV Shows (English).
Adolescence now only trails the very dominant Wednesday Season 1 (252.1 million views).
(Netflix defines a "view" as total minutes streamed divided by total running time, which in Adolescence's cast is a tight and highly bingeable four hours.)
Now rounding out Netflix's English TV Top 10 chart are DAHMER: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (115.6 million views), Bridgerton Season 1 (113.3 million views), The Queen's Gambit (112.8 million views), Bridgerton Season 3 (106 million views), The Night Agent Season 1 (98.2 million views), Fool Me Once (98.2 million views) and Stranger Things 3 (94. 8 million views).
Adolescence in its first week of eligibility debuted at No. 2 on Nielsen's U.S. ranking of streaming originals (for the week of March 10), with 907 million minutes viewed across four hour-long episodes. Not long after, it muscled past the Prime Video hit Reacher to claim No. 1 on Nielsen's U.S. ranking of streaming originals (for the week of March 17).
Nielsen noted that about 58% of its viewers were adults 35-64, and Hispanic viewers accounted for 29% of the audience.
Adolescence tells the story of how a family's world is turned upside down when 13-year-old Jamie Miller (played by newcomer Owen Cooper) is arrested for the murder of a girl who goes to his school. Series co-creator Stephen Graham (Code 404) plays Jamie's father Eddie, Ashley Walters (Top Boy) stars as Detective Inspector Luke Bascombe, and Erin Doherty (The Crown) plays Briony Ariston, the psychologist assigned to Jamie's case.
The Season 1 cast also included Faye Marsay (Andor), Christine Tremarco (Emmerdale Farm), Mark Stanley (Sanditon), Jo Hartley (After Life) and newcomer Amélie Pease.
In the four-part limited series directed by Philip Barantini, each episode is famously filmed in one unflinching continuous shot (though each episode required many takes).