OK! They’ve just released the back half of 2025 stats for Netflix – that’s everything watched worldwide from 1st July 2025-31st December 2025. Top of the shop in terms of hours viewed with 964,100,000 hrs and an effective audience (hours divided by runtime) of 123.9m is Wednesday Season 2, Stranger Things 5 running up with 879,700,000 hrs and 93.5m viewers but that needs caveating in that the whole series of that hadn’t been released in the timeframe, and that it only had a month to rack up numbers as oppsed to Wedesday which had been out since August. Squid Game Season 3 484.3m hrs, 79m viewers and Alice in Borderland Season 3 did 166.6m hrs and 25.3m viewers. At lease that’s in terms of TV shows, KPop Demon Hunters has has 481.6m views in the period.
Those are the headlines, now let’s dive into the unscripted stuff that we like, as well as anything else that catches our eye. This is list is for new Netflix Originals released in the time period just in date order, we’ll go through some older shows afterwards. Shows with an asterisk were NOT released Worldwide, so you can interpret those numbers as you will:
Too Hot To Handle Spain S1 (*): 13/6/2025, 6.5m hrs, 1.1m viewers (effective)
The Ultimatum: Queer Love S2 (*): 25/6/2025, 27.5m hrs, 3.1m
Squid Game In Conversation: 27/6/2025, 2.3m hrs, 4.2m
Too Hot To Handle Italy S1 (*): 18/7/2025, 20.9m, 3.3m
Final Draft S1 (*): 12/8/2025, 28.7m hrs, 5.3m
Love Is Blind UK S2: 13/8/2025, 87.7m, 8.2m
Fit For TV: The Reality Of The Biggest Loser: 15/8/2025, 48.4m hrs, 23.0m
The Thursday Murder Club: 28/8/2025,137.5m hrs, 68.8m
The Great British Baking Show, Collection 13 (*): 5/9/2025, 53.8m, 5.4m
Love is Blind France S1 (*): 10/9/2025, 39.2m hrs, 4.0m
Love is Blind Brazil S5 (*): 10/9/2025, 33.0m hrs, 3.3m
Next Gen Chef S1 (*): 17/9/2025, 36.0m hrs, 5.7m
Inside: USA S1 (*): 21/9/2025, 17.4m hrs, 2.7m
Crime Scene Zero S1 (*): 23/9/2025, 28.5m, 2.1m
Love is Blind S9 (*): 1/10/2025, 161.6m hrs, 11.8m
Is It Cake? Halloween S1 (*): 8/10/2025, 30.1m hrs, 11.5m
Selling Sunset S9 (*): 29/10/2025, 73.8m hrs, 10.5m
Physical Asia S1 (*) 28/10/2025, 135.4m hrs, 9.4m
Rhythm and Flow France S4 (*): 31/10/2025, 17.4m, 2.2m
Squid Game: The Challenge S2 (*): 4/11/2025, 57.0m hrs, 7.7m
Selling The OC S4 (*): 12/11/2025, 29.5m hrs, 5.7m
Last Samurai Standing S1: 13/11/2025. 108.3m hrs, 21.0m
The Great British Baking Show: Holidays: S8 (*): 20/11/2025, 5.5m hrs, 2.8m
Is It Cake? Holiday: S2 (*): 25/11/2025, 18.2m hrs, 9.0m
Love Is Blind Italy S1 (*): 1/12/2025, 26.8m hrs, 2.6m
Simon Cowell: The Next Act: 10/12/2025, 19.3m hrs, 4.0m
Culinary Class Wars S2 (*): 16/12/2025, 88.5m hrs, 6.6m
What’s In The Box? (*) 17/12/2025, 9.3m hrs, 2.1m
A couple of stand out numbers there – those numbers for Squid Game: The Challenge 2 would ordinarily be considered alright, but they did come off the back of a first series that posted 270m hrs in its first window – down about 80%! Physical Asia has done very well – roughly level with series two of Physical 100. It only had two weeks to register, but I think the limp numbers for What’s In The Box speak for themselves. 23m viewers for Fit For TV, I have to say Netflix does do these warts-and-all reality TV docs pretty well and they seem to work out pretty well for them. Simon Cowell’s next act is busking, by the looks of things. Culinary Class Wars down on its sensational first season numbers, but at almost 90m hrs I don’t think they’re panicking, in actual fact the third season is in production. Incidentally, and not listed as it’s not a Netflix original, Beat the Lotto only did 200,000 viewers. Watch it it’s great!
Let’s now take a look at shows that came out in the first half of the year and see what an additional six months has done for them. We know Celebrity Bear Hunt is axed, it added 3.6m hrs and half a million viewers for a total of 30.2m hrs and 4.2m effective viewers. Million Dollar Secret added a further 18.2m hrs to reach 96.8m hrs, 13.7m viewers. Battle Camp added 13.9m hrs taking it up to 69.4m hrs – not heard if this is returning yet, it was previously in cuspy territory but it’s probably done well enough all-in. The Devil’s Plan S2 a further 10.9m hrs to up up to 72.2m hrs and 4.0m viewers – will be coming back for a third series. Not always easy to know what counts as enough of a success for Korean shows, Devil’s Plan probably well enough even on general release, but Crime Scene Zero and Agents of Mystery both returning on much lower numbers, but I suppose as long as they are successful in their main market.
Well those are certainly some numbers! Is there anything interesting that we’ve missed? Download the spreadsheet for yourselves from Netflix.