Baby Reindeer is the latest surprise megahit from Netflix, a show that arrived with little fanfare but racked up a 97% score from critics and has been absolutely planted at #1 on Netflix’s most-watched shows list since a few days after it arrived on April 11, three weeks ago.
Now we have some new data from Netflix showing just how much Baby Reindeer continues to dominate every other show on Netflix, despite this being week three of its release. Netflix’s own provided numbers show that Baby Reindeer has 87.4 million hours viewed and 22 million viewers total. For the week of April 22 to April 28, that is miles above the #2 show, Dead Boy Detectives, with 22.2 million hours viewed and just 3.1 million views overall. Baby Reindeer, approaching a month after release, is getting seven times the viewers of Netflix’s next-closest show.
And it’s not just viewing hours, the show has now gotten itself into solid contention in the limited series Emmy race, with Martha Scott’s Jessica Gunning an easy nominee for Best Actress in that category. Unfortunate if she has to go up against Shogun’s Anna Sawai, that may prove problematic for her. It also stands to reason we could see a nomination for Donny Dunn’s Richard Gadd as well.
This is absolutely not a show that is going to get a second season, despite this viewership. If you didn’t know better you might think there could be another chapter of the saga or at least a new stalking case an anthology. But no, definitely not, this is based on the real-life experiences of Richard Gadd and the very real stalking and abuse he suffered. It’s true life, not fiction, and as such this story ends here and it would not be appropriate for it to be continued in some way. It’s presented as a limited series and unlike some shows that eventually shed that classification, this one will not.
I don’t know what will be the show that finally unseats Baby Reindeer from its top spot, but at least currently you can see that nothing is even close. The biggest Netflix show of May is easily Bridgerton season 3, though that doesn’t arrive until May 16. Before that, we’ll see. Selling the OC? A comedy special? Unclear.
Regardless, this is a huge success for Netflix, a quality series that I cannot recommend to everyone because of its subject matter, but it’s a high water mark for series quality on a service that needs more offerings at that level.
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