'Wednesday' Comes Up a Day Late and a Dollar Short of 'Stranger Things' All-Time Debut Title -- Netflix Weekly Rankings for Dec. 12-18
Tim Burton-directed 'Addams Family' reimagining just had the second best season for a U.S. series on Netflix ever
![Netflix series 'Big Wednesday'](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4JfKyVfLZqnFuzDXwZ3BCi-320-80.jpg)
Wednesday, the modern-day reimagining of 1960s-era monster-themed family sitcom The Addams Family, will finish with the second biggest first-28-days audience ever for a full season of a U.S. Netflix TV series.
The dark comedy, which had half of its eight first-season episodes directed by Tim Burton, drew nearly 174 million hours of viewing across Netflix's global footprint from Dec. 12-18, making it once again the most watched show on Netflix last week.
Through its first 24 days of release, Wednesday (which debuted Nov. 23) captured over 1.196 billion viewing hours.
Netflix's all-time single-season champ for U.S. TV shows remains season 4 of Stranger Things, which captured 1.352 million viewing hours, but was released in two volumes last summer spanning a whopping 56 days of accounting.
Given the same wonky two-segment accounting over a doubly long period that Stranger Things: Season 4 enjoyed, some might consider Wednesday to be the all-time ratings champion.
Korean dystopian drama Squid Game remains Netflix's all-time ratings champ across all programming categories.
At No. 2 last week, limited nonfiction series Harry & Meghan did something that the also recently released season 5 of The Crown never could accomplish -- grow its audience from week to week. The intimate look at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex expanded its consumption to 97.7 million viewing hours from Dec. 12-18.
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Meanwhile, the debut of new Netflix original series The Recruit, which stars Noah Centineo as a hard-to-kill CIA lawyer, debuted in third place with 52.3 million viewing hours.
Notable was the absolute cratering of season 2 of Katherine Heigl/Sarah Chalke melodrama Firefly Lane, which lost nearly half of its disappointing debut audience in week 2 with just 26.6 million viewing hours.
In other categories measured by Netflix, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio led English-language films, growing its disappointing week 1 viewership only marginally with 39.4 million viewing hours.
Daniel Frankel is the managing editor of Next TV, an internet publishing vertical focused on the business of video streaming. A Los Angeles-based writer and editor who has covered the media and technology industries for more than two decades, Daniel has worked on staff for publications including E! Online, Electronic Media, Mediaweek, Variety, paidContent and GigaOm. You can start living a healthier life with greater wealth and prosperity by following Daniel on Twitter today!