Streaming Wars • February 2023
What the Surprising Rise of Poker Face Could Mean for the Future of Streaming
Plus, The Last of Us seizes the top spot and Apple TV originals crowd the Top 20.
HBO’s The Last of Us proved it’s a true hit by moving up three spots from January to become the #1 most Watchworthy show in February. But the more surprising move was Poker Face’s jump up 24 spots to reach #5, the highest any Peacock original has ever reached on the leaderboards and the first Top 20 spot the platform has claimed since August of last year. The success of the hourlong whodunit suggests that episodic TV — a format that has long been ignored by streaming originals — may be exactly what cord-cutters are craving.
Meanwhile, other new shows that popped onto the leaderboards in January struggled in February, finding their spots on the Top 20 taken by popular prestige shows from 2022. Mainstays like Reacher aged out of the competition, and with more popular shows like Severance and Moon Knight approaching their one-year anniversaries, it looks like there may be some free real estate on the leaderboards opening fairly soon.
Photo: Poker Face, Peacock
Poker Face Could Herald New Age of Episodic Streaming TV
There are certainly exceptions, but for the most part, the streaming era of television has been defined by serialized television — shows that tell their stories over the course of multiple episodes. Episodic TV, a term that refers to shows whose stories are mostly told over the course of single episodes, remains popular on broadcast television, but conventional wisdom among streamers like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max has told us that the way to make a hit is to stretch stories out. Poker Face is a streaming original that borrows from mystery-of-the-week classics like Columbo, and its success flies in the face of that conventional wisdom.
Of course, Poker Face has a lot going for it, including a popular star in Natasha Lyonne and a popular writer/director in Rian Johnson. But it’s also exclusively available on Peacock, a streamer that doesn’t have the same subscriber base as competitors like Netflix. We shouldn’t read too much into the show’s performance until we see if it’s able to maintain momentum next month, but alongside recent sitcom hits like Abbott Elementary, this procedural indicates an appetite among streamers for comfort TV that you can drop into any time and enjoy.
Photo: Shrinking, Apple TV+
Apple TV+ Has Record Three Shows on Top 20
One-time top spot claimant Severance ranked #11 in February, despite qualifying as a current show for only part of the month (it first premiered on February 18 of last year). Bookending the Emmy nominee on the leaderboards are new series Shrinking at #6 and true crime drama Black Bird at #14. Apple usually has one or two shows on the leaderboards, but the streamer is beginning to perform similarly to other, more established competitors. Its shows now reach the Top 20 the month of their debut as opposed to a month or two afterward, go as high as #1, and stick around the leaderboards for months at a time. It’s been a long journey, but Apple is blazing a trail that other streamers like Paramount+ and Peacock will likely want to follow.
Photo: Kaleidoscope, Netflix
January’s New Shows Are No-Shows in February
Kaleidoscope, Mayfair Witches, The Witcher: Blood Origin, and That ’90s Show were all being discussed in January as potentially perennial successes, but February has tossed cold water on them all. None of these series remained in the Top 20 last month. That ’90s Show did worse than it did in January, when it qualified for only half the month, while The Witcher: Blood Origin placed below #50. 1923 fared the best of January’s leaderboard debuts, falling only six spots to #20. Funnily enough, Harrison Ford went from never having a lead TV role to having two in the Top 20 this month: 1923 and Shrinking.
Photo: The Last of Us, HBO Max
HBO’s Leaner Approach Apparent on Leaderboards
HBO is certainly still a major competitor in the streaming wars, after lodging back-to-back victories in 2023 with two different shows. But the streamer’s recent effort to cut down on costs has led to a rather top-heavy strategy: those champions are the only two shows of HBO’s on the Top 20, and other than The Staircase at #27, HBO doesn’t have another show in the Top 50. The problem with an approach that favors a few big-budget hits is that, once enthusiasm wanes, the platform will cease to be a part of the conversation. The return of Succession next month will be a boon to the prestige hitmaker (though, as an older show, it won’t qualify for these leaderboards), but it’s worth noting that, except for The Staircase, none of these shows are HBO Max Originals.
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.
