Netflix have announced Beat Luke Littler, a one-night live darts spectacular on October 30th where 20 amateur dart players play against him in one leg of 501 and if they win they win £501,000. Auditions in London and Manchester (alright, Andy Burnham) and open to all – you can apply here if you want.

Given that darts is all about consistency, as years of Bronze Bully has showed us, someone throwing darts fairly cold is going to be at a disadvantage against someone who has been throwing for a while so you’d assume most of the twenty contestants are going to be disadvantaged and your best shot is to be one of the early ones. What if someone manages to win early, does the broadcast stop there? Can they afford multiple winners? Wasn’t peak Littler about 18 months ago? So many questions!

You’ve undoubtably heard the news that three-time World’s Strongest Man Tom Stoltman is joining Gladiators which begins filming this weekend – no idea what his name will be, I would presume it would reference his WSM-past so something like Atlas, probably (“He knows Fingal’s Fingers better than anyone it’s… HUSAFELL!”), but it will be interesting to see how he adapts from Strongman to things that require a bit more agility and certainly more shock and impact – will he get Powerball? I’m guessing he’s not going to be doing The Wall any time soon. you’d presume he’ll never lose Duel. Is he going to be more liable to injury? Don’t know, but I’m sure stories will come out on The Socials across the next fortnight. There’s also a new event coming, you’d hope more than one but supposedly not.

Well it was probably too good to be true, Netflix will be releasing annual reports from Q1 2027 (i.e. they’ve had a slump) so let’s appreciate these numbers whilst we can. You can download the latest set here.

Top performer of the 2026 intake is Bridgerton S4, a total of 889.8m hrs and an effective viewership (i.e. hours watched divded by runtime) of 100.2m people, although the show with the highest effective viewership was His & Hers with 104m viewers. As ussual we’ll delve into the competitive unscripted and of interest pile – these are raw numbers, shows released towards the end of the period will have a shorter sampling time than those that have had the full six months.

Unlocked: A Jail Experiment S2 7/1/26 32.7m hrs, 5.5m viewers
Love Is Blind Germany S2 8/1/26 32m, 3.4m
Kill Tony: Once Upon A Time In Texas 12/1/26 6.4m, 2.8m
Single’s Inferno S5 20/1/26 167.3m, 10m
Star Search: Episodes start at 3.8m, 2.6m viewers and then falls off to well under a million viewers quickly – The Final did 600k.
Skyscraper Live 24/1/26 24.4m 12.6m
Is It Cake? Valentines S1 4/2/26 6.2m, 8.3m
Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model 16/2/26 62.4m, 22.4m
Agents of Mystery S2 27/2/26 11.0m, 1.5m
Love Is Blind Sweden S3 12/3/26 28.7m, 2.3m
Temptation Island S2 10/4/26 58.3m, 6.7m
Million Dollar Secret S2 15/4/26 58.2m, 7.5m
Funny AF With Kevin Hart – starts 8m+ viewers, live Finale 3.7m viewers
Love is Blind Poland S1 6/5/26 37.4m, 3.3m
Pop Culture Jeopardy 11/5/26 5.7m, 600k
Outlast: The Jungle S1 10/6/26 58.1m, 8.1m
Lock Upp S1 27/6/26 6.7m, 1.5m
Love Is Blind: Argentina S2 28/6/26 1.0m, 300k

I’ve almost certainly missed things of interest so if you can think of something to add let me know.

What have we learned? Nothing has really jumped out numbers wise these first six months outside of Single’s Inferno. Pop Culture Jeopardy as expected from a daily quiz, even with Jeopardy‘s mighty brand behind it a bit of a bomb – lower than What’s In The Box, lower than Cheat with Danny Dyer. Not great. Netflix’s reality TV industry docs continue to do well. Their foray into live stuff has been extremely variable – difficult to suggest Star Search is a hit really even if it started off pretty well, but Funny AF With Kevin Hart, even if it didn’t main its initial interest, still did business throughout. Almost 13m people watched Skyscraper Live, although how much of that was live I don’t know. Million Dollar Secret is down about 20% on its first series but it’s still at a decent level (in terms of viewership hours it’s just above where Battle Camp was when it got cancelled, but it’s effective viewership is still quite a bit higher). It’s actually been almost two years since the last series of Outlast, it’s been rewarded with 10m extra hours over that series’ initial numbers.

Taking a look at stuff that was released towards the end of last year, What’s In The Box? added added another 7.8m hours taking it to 17.1m hours, which you can’t really suggest is good but is probably Netflix’s best performing quiz. Culinary Class Wars S2 needn’t have worried, it’s added a further 139m hours to add to the 88m it got in the last fortnight of last year. Simon Cowell: The Next Act added 11.4m hours to take it to 30.7m hrs, again not really a hit, but maybe not a bomb either. Squid Game: The Challenge S2 only added a further 11.3m hrs to go to 68m – as we said last time, decent numbers by general standards but a humungous drop by it own standard. Physical Asia over the 150m mark – will be very interesting to see how all the upcoming localised versions do.

If you want to see what things have done in total between 2023 and 2026, Netflix now have a searchable database.

Unofficial ranking of Netflix quiz shows:

1) What’s In The Box? 17.1m hrs, 3.8m viewers (effective)
2) Bullsh*t: The Game Show 13.1m hrs, 2.4m viewers
3) Cheat 8m hrs, 1.1m viewers
4) Pop Culture Jeopardy 5.7m hrs, 600k viewers

Bless them for trying though.

Tonight at 8:35pm before the England vs Norway match they’re showing a ten-minute preview of upcoming Saturday night reality show The Box with Gary Lineker, to give everyone a chance to write it off early presumably. Boxsen is in fact a Norwegian format so that is some fun synergy they’re probably not going to mention.

I’ve seen a bit of Boxsen and it’s… fine – celebs doing a variety of physical and mental tasks, the idea being they’ve got to figure out what needs doing and quickly get on with it, sometimes the situations they find themselves in are surprising (on top of a tower! In the middle of an ice hockey game!). Like every new Next Big Thing show I struggle to see it being the next big thing – it’s had some success in other Scandinavian countries but done rather less well in Benelux countries I understand. What NTA Best Host Gary Lineker is going to bring to proceedings I don’t know.

Edit: Also a repeat before France vs Spain coverage on Tuesday just before 7pm. About an hour before the game actually starts.

The Button liiiiiiivvveess.