Handmaids Tale second for the second week in a row in this week’s Nielsens — we explore deeper
The Nielsens for the week 3-9 of May are out, and show The Handmaid’s Tale second again, losing out by another very small margin. As usual we’ll take you deeper into the data thanks to our elite team of data mining engineers. [They also model the weather using our CultBox supercomputer and booked today off for a Bar-B-Q (socially distanced) — given the rain here at CultBox we wonder just how good they really are…]
The data
First our usual reminder. These are US figures and don’t cover all streamers. We add columns marked with ‘*’ to help look into the underlying story. We only use data put in the public domain.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | # Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Series Watches* | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NETFLIX | Jupiter’s Legacy | 8 | 45 | 696 | 1,933,333 | 15,466,667 |
| 2 | HULU | The Handmaid’s Tale | 40 | 50 | 690 | 345,000 | 13,800,000 |
| 3 | NETFLIX | Selena: The Series | 18 | 35 | 639 | 1,014,286 | 18,257,143 |
| 4 | NETFLIX | Shadow And Bone | 8 | 50 | 555 | 1,387,500 | 11,100,000 |
| 5 | NETFLIX | The Sons Of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness | 4 | 60 | 461 | 1,920,833 | 7,683,333 |
| 6 | NETFLIX | The Circle | 25 | 55 | 456 | 331,636 | 8,290,909 |
| 7 | DISNEY+ | Star Wars: The Bad Batch | 2 | 52 | 251 | 2,413,462 | 4,826,923 |
| 8 | NETFLIX | The Crown | 40 | 55** | 210 | 95,455 | 3,818,182 |
| 9 | DISNEY+ | The Falcon And The Winter Soldier | 6 | 50 | 204 | 680,000 | 4,080,000 |
| 10 | NETFLIX | Lucifer | 77 | 50 | 190 | 49,351 | 3,800,000 |
**Star Wars: The Bad Batch launched with a double length episodes, so this number is created to make the arithmetic work!
Handmaid’s Tale second — what about first?
Why did we not lead with Jupiter’s Legacy? Well, you may not have noticed, but Jupiter’s Legacy has been cancelled. Some good ratings aren’t enough (ask The Irregulars) and Netflix has demographic access, and can see if a few people are watching a whole series, or a lot of people turning off early. It’s also the second week in a row The Handmaid’s Tale has just come second, this week by around 1% of the total minutes viewed. As we suggested last week, Shadow and Bone is not #1, though we see this as a big drop in viewers (and we’re late with our review!)
What next?
We expect The Handmaid’s Tale to take #1, or at least hold #2. Jupiter’s Legacy may hold on but a drop won’t surprise us at all. Our favourite Lucifer is hovering at the bottom, but is (on this data) three weeks from having the season 5B figures. We expect Disney+ to be back to only one show in the chart, The Crown to linger, and we’ll keep an eye on Selena. Whatever happens, we’ll bring it to you next week.