In a sign of the complex media times, the drama Good Girls has become a big draw for Netflix at the same time it is a multi-season hit for NBC.
The show topped Nielsen’s streaming ratings for the week of February 15 to 21. The measurement firm ranks Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney+ titles viewed in the U.S. via a TV set.
In 2017, before it had its own streaming outlet in Peacock, NBCUniversal entered into a deal with Netflix for Good Girls, giving it a streaming home before it aired. The show features a trio of women (Christina Hendricks, Retta and Mae Whitman) who get caught up in criminal activity that takes them well beyond their suburban milieu.
At the time of the deal, Netflix was taking a new approach to shows with global ambitions, teaming with U.S. studios to co-fund series. Generally, but not in every case, the shows have also appeared on other linear or streaming outlets in the U.S.
Peacock, which launched in mid-2020, has regained rights to some series that once streamed elsewhere — notably, The Office — and features home-grown shows like Parks and Recreation. But the recent rise in media companies’ own services follows years of licensing and third-party deals reflected in the current absence of Good Girls from Peacock. Netflix, whose TV operations are led by former Universal Television chief Bela Bajaria, spearheaded the co-production push. Among the prominent shows following the model were Star Trek: Discovery and USA’s The Sinner, which came in at No. 8 on the weekly Nielsen list.
Season 4 of Good Girls premiered on NBC on March 7, which clearly drove interest in past seasons on Netflix. Plenty of networks have stoked interest in current series in similar fashion via Netflix over the years. That strategy was once trumpeted by network executives, but it gets much less mention now that media companies are trying to scale their own streaming competitors.
Elsewhere on the Nielsen chart, Marvel’s WandaVision continued to give Disney+ the lone non-Netflix title in the top 10. Its 720 minutes of viewing across seven half-hour episodes was its best tally yet and Nielsen said it was the second most-watched title by men, after Good Girls.
Original Netflix film I Care a Lot drew a robust 790 minutes of total viewing. Star Rosamund Pike won a Golden Globe last month for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy but did not receive a nomination for the Oscars earlier this week.
One film that did garner a lot of Oscar attention, Nomadland, began streaming on Hulu in February as it continued to play in theaters. The film registered 132 million minutes of viewing, good for eighth place on Nielsen’s separate ranking of most-streamed movies.
Below is the full, combined list of original and acquired series as well as movies, with number of episodes and total minutes of streaming. Except as otherwise noted, all titles are Netflix.
Good Girls – 34 episodes, 1.1B minutes
Grey’s Anatomy – 366 eps., 892M min.
Criminal Minds – 303 eps., 877M min.
ICarly– 60 eps., 863M min.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel– 4 eps., 806M min.
I Care a Lot – film, 790M min.
Firefly Lane – 10 eps., 780M min.
The Sinner – 24 eps., 744M min.
WandaVision (Disney+) – 7 eps., 720M min.
Schitt’s Creek – 80 eps., 692M min.