Apple Continues to Punch Above Its Weight, Claiming Three of Top 5 Shows
And while Amazon Prime isn’t yet #2 on the leaderboards, its new shows like Lost Flowers of Alice Hart are more beloved than those of any other streamer
We’ve recently made some adjustments to the Engagement metric that we use to compare the performances of TV’s hottest shows to one another. The new and improved metric applies to more recent shows and weighs sentiment — i.e., the ratio of Likes, Loves, and Favorites to Dislikes — more heavily. We think this small adjustment will give our readers a better sense of the constantly evolving streaming landscape, but it also explains why the leaderboards this month see a lot of shows rising upward onto the charts, replacing older shows that no longer qualify, like Wednesday.
That change has been beneficial for Apple TV+, which had three shows in the Top 5 last month: Hijack (which rose 16 spots to take #2 in August), Silo, and Shrinking. Disney+’s Secret Invasion also saw a surprising bump after the end of its first season — even if we’d stuck to the old Engagement metric, the Samuel L. Jackson-led Marvel series would have qualified for the Top 20. Plus, Only Murders in the Building got a bump in sentiment (if not Engagement) with the premiere of its third season; The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart had a promising debut; and the status of Ahsoka remains murky three episodes into its run.
THE LEADERBOARDS: TOP SHOWS
Photo: Daisy Jones & the Six, Amazon
Apple managed a surprising feat in August by putting five shows in the Top 20, including leaderboard first-timers The Crowded Room and Platonic. It still couldn’t match the power of streaming juggernaut Netflix, which took seven of the Top 20 spots in August. When it comes to how viewers actually feel about streamers’ popular new shows, though, another platform has them both beat: Amazon Prime Video.
The five most new popular shows on Amazon had an average sentiment score of 87%, which means that for every 13 Dislikes one of these shows got, there were another 87 Likes, Loves, and Favorites. Leading for Amazon in August was Daisy Jones & the Six, which had a 94% positive reception from Watchworthy users even though its Engagement levels weren’t high enough to crack the Top 20. Averaging at 69% positive sentiment, Max’s Top 5 shows had the lowest sentiment of any platform’s, though it also had the show with the highest sentiment of the month: The Last of Us had a very impressive 96% sentiment score.
While Hulu again went without a show in the Top 20, its two leading series — Will Trent and Not Dead Yet — both have remarkably high sentiment scores (92% and 95%, respectively), even though both are broadcast shows consumed by an audience of streamers. We’ve consistently noticed that the traditional broadcast TV genres cord-cutters seem to miss the most are police procedurals and sitcoms.
THE LEADERBOARDS: TOP PLATFORMS
Photo: Silo, Apple TV+
Amazon Prime didn’t quite overtake Hulu as the #2 streamer in August, though it did move incrementally closer — its total share of Engagement rose by 0.34 percentage points, while Hulu’s fell by 0.15. On the other hand, Amazon’s library, the largest library of all the Streaming War competitors, is also the highest-rated by users, who give all the platform’s 2,347 titles an average sentiment score of 83.4%.
Apple TV+ still has the unenviable position of last place on the leaderboards, but there’s a major caveat: its library is over 16 times smaller than that of its closest competitor. In fact, the average Apple series gets more Engagement than the average show on any other platform: 42% more than the average Netflix series.
NEW PREMIERES
Photo: The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, Amazon Prime Video
The only premiere to break into the Top 20 in August was The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, an epic Australian melodrama that boasts a commanding performance from Sigourney Weaver and an impressive sentiment score of 92%. That’s the fifth highest score in the Top 20, trailing The Last of Us, Silo, The Diplomat, and Beef.
Other big premieres included Twisted Metal on Peacock, an adaptation of the classic video game that stars Anthony Mackie and Thomas Haden Church. Though the show hasn’t received rave reviews from critics, it’s won over our users, who gave it a sentiment score of 93%. The show currently sits at #31 on the leaderboards, but if Twisted Metal builds on its appeal and gets a few more Watchlist adds, searches, and other forms of Engagement in September, it could be the second Peacock series to earn itself a spot on the Top 20 this year.
Finally, there’s Ahsoka, the latest Star Wars series from Disney+. The show is currently ranked #27 on the leaderboards with a sentiment score of 77.8%. That may seem a tad low for a Star Wars show, but it’s important to keep in mind the show premiered August 22 and didn’t have too much time to accumulate Engagement. Obi-Wan Kenobi failed to crack the Top 20 the month of its premiere in May 2022, but made its way all the way to #5 the following June with a 94% sentiment score. Disney+ is surely hoping something similar or better happens with Ahsoka, and if the metrics the streamer released regarding the show’s debut are accurate, its hopes will likely be realized.
RETURNING SHOWS
Photo: Only Murders in the Building, Hulu
Back for a third season, true crime satire Only Murders in the Building had a sentiment score of 84% in August. That’s good news for the show, given that in the month of its second season premiere back in June 2022 it had a middling score of 70%. We credit new cast member Meryl Streep with the Season 3 bump. Why? Because the show hit a high point in terms of sentiment in March 2023, when the first trailer for the new season featuring Streep was released.
The latest incarnation of Futurama was celebrated by our users, who gave the show 95% positive sentiment in August after the show was rebooted as a Hulu original. The return of Billions on Showtime for a seventh season saw a sentiment score of 84%, while the third and final season of Apple’s Physical was welcomed with a disappointing score of 64%.
Our Methodology
In 30 seconds, our Watchworthy recommendation app learns your taste in TV and gives every show a “Worthy Score” specifically for you: the higher a given show’s Worthy Score, the more likely it is you will enjoy that show. Each month we track user engagement across thousands of series for every major streaming service. All of these signals are combined into a single metric called Watchworthy Engagement. This enables Ranker to determine which service’s content has the highest engagement — in other words, the streaming platforms who are winning the Streaming Wars.
The Top 20 shows measures which new series are garnering the most Engagement from our users month to month. The most Watchworthy platform measures Engagement across all TV shows, new and old, and aggregates them according to the platform they stream on.