Netflix makes UK’s TV top 10 for first time with Glass Onion
Netflix programmes have been included in the ratings since November 2022.
Netflix has made it into the UK’s weekly top 10 most watched TV programmes for the first time since its viewing figures became publicly available.
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery attracted an average TV audience of 6.7 million in the week to December 25, enough to place it at number five in the chart.
The film also appears in the top 10 for the following week, this time at number eight with an average of 5.2 million viewers.
The figures have been published by Barb, the audience research body for the UK TV industry, as part of a release of official ratings for the whole Christmas and new year period.
Glass Onion premiered on Netflix on December 23, having previously been released in cinemas for just one week at the end of November.
It stars Daniel Craig as the enigmatic detective Benoit Blanc, a role he first played in 2019’s Knives Out, along with an all-star cast including Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae, Edward Norton and Leslie Odom Jr.
Both films were written and directed by Rian Johnson.
Netflix, one of the world’s largest video on-demand streaming services, signed up to Barb in October 2022 and its viewing figures have been included in Barb’s data since early November.
Before then, ratings for Netflix programmes – which are streamed online rather than broadcast on a channel – were not publicly available.
Barb’s data for streamed programmes is calculated using the average audience for the first seven days after release – if the programme is launched in the middle of a calendar week – or across a full calendar week of availability.
It only includes viewing on TV sets, which means the actual number of people to have watched the programmes may be higher.
The first Netflix show to make it into Barb’s top 50 was the comedy horror series Wednesday, which appeared twice in the chart for the week ending November 27, at number 37 (episode one, an average of 3.7 million TV viewers) and number 49 (episode two, 3.2 million).
Before Knives Out, the highest-ranking Netflix show was Harry & Meghan, the documentary about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, with episode one charting at number 17 in the week ending December 11 with 4.5 million viewers.
The newly released Barb data also shows the four programmes with higher ratings than Glass Onion in the week ending December 25 were all on BBC1: Strictly Come Dancing (6.9 million), the film The Boy, The Mole, The Fox & The Horse (7.2 million), Call The Midwife (7.8 million) and the King’s Christmas Broadcast (9.5 million).
The figures confirm the highest ratings in 2022 for a broadcast on a single TV channel was 16.1 million, which was the average audience for ITV’s coverage of the World Cup match between England and France on December 10.
But the biggest combined TV audience was the 26.2 million who watched the Queen’s funeral service on September 19, which was shown on more than 50 channels in the UK.
This is one of the largest TV audiences in the UK since comparable records began in 1981.
All of Barb’s official ratings are consolidated figures, meaning they include people who recorded and watched the broadcast up to seven days later.
Ratings for programmes on TV channels also include viewing on tablets, PCs and smartphones.
