Wednesday was as big as it gets for Netflix last week.
The modernized Addams Family spinoff series, created by Alfred Gough (a writer on summer blockbusters including Spider-Man and Aquaman whose TV credits include Smallville and Into the Badlands) and starring Jena Ortega in the titular comedic role of Wednesday Adams, captured just over 341.2 million streaming hours on Netflix in only four days on the platform during the week of Nov. 21-23.
The benchmarks achieved for Wednesday were myriad:
* It was the biggest one-week performance of 2022 for Netflix so far, eclipsing the season 2 premiere of Bridgerton and last summer's debuts for both stanzas of the Stranger Things: Season 5.
* Wednesday had the biggest debut audience ever on Netflix, searching back to June 2021 when Netflix began publishing its weekly Global Top 10 rankings for series and shows.
* Wednesday also had the biggest one-week audience for Netflix since October 2021, when local-language Korean sci-fi smash Squid Game drew just over 412 million viewing hours in its fourth week. Squid Game: Season 1 still has Netflix's biggest audience week on public record (571.8 million viewing hours for the week of Sept. 27 - Oct. 3, 2021), but it only premiered to an audience of just over 63 million viewing hours.
Like most Netflix hits, Wednesday didn't receive a lot of critical warmth, evidenced by its 70% Rotten Tomatoes score. But it's clearly resonating.
Lost in the big wave that was Wednesday -- sorry, the SoCal-based Next TV was a huge fan of the Jan Michael Vincent surfing classic coming up -- was sci-fi series 1899, which was Netflix's second most watched show last week with 87.9 million viewing hours. That represented 11% audience growth over 1899's premiere week.
Not fairing as well was season 5 of The Crown, which lost half of its audience from its second week on Netflix with 42.3 million viewing hours in week 3.
Dead to Me: Season 3, meanwhile, grew its audience only marginally to 33.3 million viewing hours in week 2 on Netflix. Dead to Me appears DOA to us.
Among Netflix movies, whimsical comedy Slumberland starring Jason Momoa led Netflix's English-language film rankings for Nov. 21-27, capturing 45.4 million viewing hours -- a 36% uptick over its premiere a week earlier.
And among foreign language TV fare on Netflix, the sixth season of Spanish youth crime drama Elite had a similar audience uptick, capturing 48.3 million viewing hours in its second week on the platform.
