Netflix doesn’t like giving out numbers — we still don’t know exactly how many South Africans are on the platform, for example. But the company has revealed that in 2017, users around the world were watching over 140-million hours of content a day. And according to the company? It all amounted to over a billion a week.
But that’s not all its year-end blog post revealed — so here are some of the more interesting facts.
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There was a user who watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl every day for the entire year. My guess for the masochist? The hosts of the podcast The Black Pearl Show, in which the film was broken down minute-for-minute between December 2016 and November 2017.
One Netflix user watched Pirates of the Caribbean every day for 365 days, another binged from Antarctica
Another interesting user comes all the way from Antarctica, bingeing none other than Shameless — and when you think about it, it makes sense for a long-running show with an ensemble cast to be first choice while trying to shoo away the cold loneliness. I hope that user is doing okay.
Moving away from the bleakness, mockumentary American Vandal (one of the best shows on the platform, if you ask me) was the most “devoured” show of the year — which, in non-PR speak, is the show that saw the most users watching for over two hours a day.
Behind American Vandal was Brazilian dystopia 3%, 13 Reasons Why, Anne with an E, and Riverdale. The Mexican political drama Ingobernable came in sixth as the only other non-English series on the list, but it may have been helped by local Mexican users, who had the most members watching Netflix everyday.
Other shows, though, were best watched slowly for less than two hours a day. Taking home the top spot? The dense The Crown, because one episode is all you need to be ready for sleep. But it’s not only lavish productions that were savoured — animated shows Big Mouth and Neo Yokio came in second and third spot respectively, because both shows, in their own ways, are a lot to take in.
Now I’m just waiting for confirmation the German sci-fi Dark has been renewed. Please, Netflix. Sense8‘s cancellation was all I could take this year.
