"The Witcher"

John Latchem

January 3, 2023

Netflix’s supernatural thriller “Stranger Things” remained No. 1 on Parrot Analytics’ digital originals U.S. rankings the week ended Dec. 30. The series had a 3.9% rise in demand expressions, the proprietary metric Parrot uses to gauge a show’s popularity, giving it 71.7 times the demand of an average series. “Stranger Things” was No. 2 on Parrot’s list of overall TV shows.

Netflix’s “The Witcher” climbed two spots to No. 2 on the digital originals chart, with an 11.3% rise in demand expressions, giving it 43.4 times average demand. Buzz for the series increased with Dec. 25 debut of prequel series “The Witcher: Blood Origin,” as Parrot’s metrics often find a way to register more demand for a parent series rather than a newer spinoff even as it is airing.

Another Netflix series, the “Addams Family”-inspired “Wednesday,” dropped back to No. 3 on the digital originals chart. The show, about the misadventures of the Addams daughter at a boarding school, had a 12.3% drop in demand expressions, giving it 43.3 times the demand of an average series.

No. 4 was the Disney+ “Star Wars” series “The Mandalorian,” which had a 0.9% drop in demand expressions to give it 39.4 times average demand.

HBO Max’s superhero series “Titans” remained No. 5 with a 2.3% drop in demand expressions, giving it 37.4 times average demand. The show recently concluded the first half of its sixth season, with the remaining episodes due later this year.

The week’s biggest gainers on the digital originals charts were two more Netflix shows. in this week’s ranking of streaming original series are also both Netflix originals. “Alice in Borderland” jumped to No. 7, from No. 85 a week earlier, after its second season premiere Dec. 22 spurred a 155.6% rise in demand expressions to give it 33.1 times average demand. The series, based on a Japanese manga, is a thriller about a group trapped in an abandoned Tokyo forced to compete in dangerous games.

“Emily in Paris” climbed nine spots to No. 8 following the Dec. 21 premiere of its third season, with a 42.1% rise in demand expressions and 31.8 times average demand. 

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A “digital original” is Parrot’s term for a multi-episode series in which the most recent season was first made available on a streaming platform such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu or Disney+.

The No. 1 overall TV series in terms of online demand was “SpongeBob SquarePants” with 79.4 times average demand.

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Media Play News has teamed with Parrot Analytics to provide readers with a weekly top 10 of the most popular digital original TV series in the United States, based on the firm’s proprietary metric called Demand Expressions, which measures demand for TV content in a given market through a wide variety of data sources, including video streaming, social media activity, photo sharing, blogging, commenting on fan and critic rating platforms, and downloading and streaming via peer-to-peer protocols and file sharing sites. Results are expressed as a comparison with the average demand for a TV show of any kind in the market.