After hovering there or thereabouts, The Handmaid’s Tale tops the Nielsens for the week 17-23 May
The Nielsens for May 17-23 have been analysed, dissected and subjected to other indignities, all in the name of bringing you the story behind the basic data. This week our analysts took a field trip and calculated trends and triumphs via the use of Poohsticks — other methods exist. We called it with our thoughts on last week’s data — apart from misjudging the effect of an imminent arrival (more below).
First the data
As ever we start with the data, mention that it’s for the US and we added the column marked with ‘*’.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | HULU | The Handmaid’s Tale | 42 | 50 | 516 | 10,320,000 |
| 2 | NETFLIX | Who Killed Sara | 18 | 40 | 500 | 12,500,000 |
| 3 | NETFLIX | Jupiter’s Legacy | 8 | 45 | 405 | 9,000,000 |
| 4 | NETFLIX | Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous | 26 | 25 | 379 | 15,160,000 |
| 5 | NETFLIX | The Upshaws | 10 | 25 | 357 | 14,280,000 |
| 6 | NETFLIX | Lucifer | 77 | 50 | 321 | 6,420,000 |
| 7 | AMAZON | The Underground Railroad | 10 | 55 | 289 | 5,254,545 |
| 8 | NETFLIX | Halston | 5 | 45 | 211 | 4,688,889 |
| 9 | NETFLIX | Shadow And Bone | 8 | 50 | 199 | 3,980,000 |
| 10 | NETFLIX | Castlevania | 32 | 25 | 188 | 7,520,000 |
The Handmaid’s Tale tops the chart (finally)
It’s a narrow win (by the minutes column) for Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but look where the episode watch data takes you — both Who Killed Sara? and The Upshaws did better in terms of episodes. We didn’t have any insight into the likely popularity of Who Killed Sara? — we wonder if there’ a particular US demographic at play, as it’s a Mexican show, possibly with a more natural audience than we might suspect.
What else is in the data?
We misjudged the appeal of The Upshaws, and note again how Jupiter’s Legacy outdoes Shadow and Bone, yet the first is cancelled, the second renewed. Look at the data though, compared to last week (over one billion minutes!) Jupiter’s Legacy managed less than half the audience, where Handmaid’s Tale dropped from 584 to 516 million.
We also misjudged Lucifer — this data is from the week before the release of season 5B, so it’s people rewatching to get in the mood.
What will next week bring?
We’re biased. We predict a massive storming of the chart by Lucifer as implied by the Parrot ratings we’ve already talked about. We hope the fascinating Underground Railroad continues its run in the top 10, and wonder of Halston will make another week.
Whatever happens, we’ll bring you our analysis next week.