The second season of the Shonda Rhimes produced period drama Bridgerton generated just over 193 million viewing hours on Netflix in its first three days on the platform, making it the world's most streamed show for the week of March 21-27 and putting the Season 2 on pace to shatter the first-28-days-on-Netflix record set last year by Bridgerton Season 1.
Among Netflix's English language TV shows last week, Season 1 of Bridgerton ranked No. 3 overall, capturing another 32.3 million viewing hours. All told, Season 1 gathered nearly 625.5 million hours of watching in its first four weeks on Netflix from December 2020 - January 2021, an all-time best for a Netflix English-language show.
Korean-language dystopian sci-fi drama Squid Game has the record for the best premiere numbers of any Netflix show after four weeks, set last year when it accumulated over 1.65 billion viewing hours in 28 days.
As for $100 million producer Rhimes, she's starting to stack hits, with limited biopic series Inventing Anna finishing No. 5 on Netflix's English-language TV show ranker for March 21-27 with another 30 million viewing hours. Debuting in early February, the series about real-life fake German heiress Anna Delvey had Netflix's fourth-best English-language TV series debut ever.
Notably, of the 10 English-language TV series ranked on Netflix's Global Top 10 for March 21-27, three belonged to Rhimes.
Yeah, we can navel-gaze all we want to about the death of the Oscars and theatrical story-telling in general, but Rhimes is proving, almost single-handedly, that the visual medium is perhaps more powerful than ever at capturing a mass audience. (Woh, deep thoughts for a weekly department! I'll stop that right now.)
Meanwhile, among films, Ryan Reynolds comedy-action-sci-fi drama The Adam Project added another 31.7 million viewing hours to its total from March 21-27, finishing as the No. 1 English-language film. The Adam Project now has Netflix's seventh biggest first-28-days debut for an English-language film ever, with 209.5 million streaming hours after just 16 days of release.
