Streaming Wars • August 2022
A Week After Season 2 Finale, Only Murders Tops Charts for First Time Ever
The comedy’s victory was the exception to August’s rule, with superheroes and dragons seizing most of the month’s top spots.
Only Murders in the Building was the most familiar face on the Watchworthy leaderboards in August, as the show hasn’t been out of the Top 20 since it premiered in September 2021. The rest of the Most Watchworthy Series in August were largely newer players, including debuts House of the Dragon, The Sandman, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, The Resort, A League of Their Own, and Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin. The 74th Primetime Emmy nominations did little to boost the fortunes of nominees, save for Severance, which leapt back onto the leaderboards all the way into the Top 5.
Photo: Only Murders in the Building, Hulu
Only Murders Tops Charts For First Time In Its Last Month
Hulu’s runaway hit Only Murders in the Building closed its second season just a week before the one-year anniversary of its first season’s debut. Now officially a year old, Only Murders will no longer qualify for the Watchworthy leaderboards going forward, but the comedy/mystery went out with a bang, recording its first-ever month at #1. The series has always been a favorite of Watchworthy users, debuting at #4 the month of its premiere last year, but was unable to overthrow the unstoppable Loki or, until very recently, the buzzy The Summer I Turned Pretty. The fact that Only Murders is leaving the leaderboards is less than welcome news for Hulu, however — The Bear, The Old Man, The Dropout, Abbott Elementary, and Maggie all dropped from the Top 20 in August, while Dopesick fell six spots. A lot of Hulu’s hope in September rests on the shoulders of The Patient, a dark drama that boasts serious talent in the form of stars Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson, as well as in its creators Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields, the team behind The Americans.
Photo: House of the Dragon, HBO Max
Blockbusters Return to Dominate End of Summer
It seems the surprising trend toward lower-budget dramas in July has reversed, with superheroes, spinoffs, and big-budget blockbusters returning to the fore, thanks in part to a series of high-profile TV premieres. Disney’s MCU shows all saw major gains in August, with the major exception of Ms. Marvel, which fell out of the Top 20 after finishing fourth in July. Meanwhile, Peacemaker continued its six-month streak on the Top 20, and Netflix’s The Sandman logged an impressive debut at #3. But superheroes aren’t the only heavy hitters in August. HBO had two successful prequels in August: House of the Dragon nearly nabbed the top spot, while Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin debuted at #14. With The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premiering in September, we’re unlikely to see this trend reverse as the month continues.
Photo: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime
Mixed Month for Amazon Still Sets Streamer Up for Success in September
August brought its share of troubles for Amazon, knocking The Summer I Turned Pretty down to #15 after two consecutive months in the top spot and pushing last month’s successful debut The Terminal List off the face of the Watchworthy leaderboards. The platform also dropped behind HBO Max in terms of total Engagement share after two months at #3. Still, a strong premiere month for A League of their Own and a surge of renewed interest in Reacher suggests that when Lord of the Rings steps onto the leaderboards in September, it’ll have strong support from a range of popular new series on Amazon Prime.
Photo: Severance, Apple TV+
With Emmy Nominations Out, Severance Is the Only Winner on Watchworthy
What do Abbott Elementary, The Dropout, and The White Lotus have in common? They’re all nominees for major Emmy awards this year — and they all dropped out of the Watchworthy Top 20 between July and August. Squid Game also tumbled two spots after being nominated for outstanding drama series. Severance made the largest jump, rising 16 spots to #5 in August, though Only Murders in the Building was also an exception to this year’s “Emmys curse,” as it’s up for outstanding comedy series this year.
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 (premiered two years ago or later) 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.
