Streaming Wars • November 2021
Chucky and Dexter Slash Netflix’s Lead
A new crop of fall shows destabilized the Watchworthy leaderboards this month, with series from NBC and Showtime stealing ground from bigger streaming services. But despite Disney+ dropping in engagement from last month, the service’s Marvel shows were strong competitors in November, thanks to the premiere of its latest series, Hawkeye.
Photo: Hawkeye, Disney+
For Disney+, A Premiering Tide Lifts All Boats
Hawkeye, the latest Marvel series from Disney+ that sees Jeremy Renner reprising his MCU role, debuted on the Watchworthy charts at #13, despite premiering late in the month. But what’s more notable is what the premiere did for other Marvel shows: Loki toppled Squid Game to become the #1 most Watchworthy show for the second time since it premiered, while WandaVision rose again to crack the Top 3. Assuming Hawkeye continues to build buzz throughout next month, this could spell big things for Disney+ in December.
Photo: Dexter: New Blood, Showtime
TV Slashers Thrive Well After Spooky Season
The end of the Halloween season didn’t hurt the prospects of new series Chucky and Dexter: New Blood, both of which are reboots of beloved serial killer characters. That said, many of the horror shows that excelled in October — including Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and I Know What You Did Last Summer — dropped out of the Top 20 in November. Only time will tell if Showtime and NBC, the respective producers of New Blood and Chucky, will benefit from these new shows for longer than a month.
Photo: Mayor of Kingstown, Paramount+
Jeremy Renner Leads Two Shows to Strong Debuts
Hawkeye needed just one week to reach #13 on the Watchworthy charts. Similarly, The Mayor of Kingstown, a gritty crime thriller about America’s prison industry, debuted at #18 after premiering halfway through November. Both shows star Jeremy Renner, who has built his career largely off film appearances and hasn’t starred in a TV series since 2009’s The Unusuals. It’s a promising sign for Renner in an age when more and more prestigious movie stars are making the transition to television.
Photo: Cowboy Bebop, Netflix
New Netflix Series Fail To Crack Top 20
Netflix originals like Arcane and Cowboy Bebop had their series premieres this month, alongside the second season of 2020’s breakout hit Tiger King. But none of them managed to crack the Top 20 or even the Top 50 during a month when plenty of new shows performed well. One bright spot for Netflix in an otherwise lackluster month is The Chair, a workplace dramedy about the first female head of a prestigious college’s English department. The show somehow managed to shoot up to #15, despite premiering back in August.
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.
