The Nielsen ratings covering Christmas 2021 are out and The Witcher tops the chart with larger audience viewing than the next three titles combined
We have the festive Nielsens and it’s great news for Netflix and The Witcher. Last time we thought The Witcher might well retain its table leading position, but also pointed out upcoming the arrival of Emily in Paris. What we didn’t expect was just how large a gap we might see. More on that later, for now we’ve found an advanced AI running an abandoned spaceship in orbit around a strange black monolith. We asked it to have a look at the data, but it apologised and told us it can’t do that. One of the analysts did volunteer to enter the monolith, but we decided insurance wouldn’t cover and accidental transcendentalism, so decided to fire up a BBC Micro we keep for emergencies. This still let us carry out our normal number crunching, so without further ado…
The Nielsen data
As ever, it’s US data, historic and we add the columns marked ‘*’.
| Rank | Streamer | Series | #Episodes | Ep length (mins)* | Total Minutes (Millions) | Episode Watches* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Netflix | The Witcher | 16 | 60 | 2,734 | 45,566,667 |
| 2 | Netflix | Emily In Paris | 20 | 30 | 938 | 31,266,667 |
| 3 | Disney+ | Hawkeye | 6 | 50 | 938 | 18,760,000 |
| 4 | Amazon | The Wheel Of Time | 8 | 60 | 638 | 10,633,333 |
| 5 | Netflix | Lost In Space | 28 | 55 | 490 | 8,909,091 |
| 6 | Netflix | The Great British Baking Show | 75 | 75 | 256 | 3,413,333 |
| 7 | Netflix | Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous | 37 | 24 | 211 | 8,791,667 |
| 8 | Netflix | Marvel’s Daredevil | 39 | 50 | 195 | 3,900,000 |
| 9 | Netflix | Jim Gaffigan: Comedy Monster | 1 | 70 | 186 | 2,657,143 |
| 10 | Netflix | Money Heist | 46 | 50 | 183 | 3,660,000 |
The Witcher tops the list
It’s a very comfortable win as The Witcher tops the list and a big increase over last week’s 2,191. Sadly (as noted last time as well) we don’t know how much the show was watched by country outside of the US, and Netflix’s own data for the period only goes so far. It’s impressive though.
What else happened?
Essentially, Emily in Paris arrived and took the #2 position. Surprisingly (given the Netflix Top 10 data linked above), it didn’t do better than it seems like it could have (and I don’t believe all the viewers are in France!), but I note the episode length is against it. If you look at our episode watches column, it’s a far closer result for Emily. We were pleased to see Hawkeye gather pace (last week it only rated 580 millions), so plenty of people have caught up and watched the final episode. In contrast it’s another drop for Lost in Space, but a good leap in numbers for The Wheel of Time.
What can we look forward to?
Netflix’s own data for the next period (including New Year), suggests Cobra is the new force to be reckoned with, and the gap between The Witcher and Emily in Paris is much tighter. New series Stay Close may well appear.Hawkeye has finished its short six episode run, so may drop.
Whatever happens, we’ll bring our usual insight next time.