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Netflix’s Most-Watched Titles in the First Half of 2023

Netflix’s first catalogue-wide engagement report put The Night Agent season 1 at the top with 812 million hours viewed in the first half of 2023.
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Netflix’s The Night Agent season 1 led its global rankings for January 1 through June 30, 2023, with 812 million hours viewed. The figure came from Netflix’s first catalogue-wide What We Watched engagement report—not a count of unique viewers—and the report included both original and licensed titles.

What Netflix’s report covered

Netflix published its first What We Watched: A Netflix Engagement Report on December 12, 2023. It covered viewing from January through June 2023 and was intended as a twice-yearly account of engagement across the service, rather than another weekly Top 10 update. Netflix said it included more than 18,000 titles, representing approximately 99% of viewing in the period, and nearly 100 billion hours watched. Titles needed to have been watched for more than 50,000 hours to appear. The catalogue included Netflix originals and licensed films and series. Netflix’s report and methodology

The 30 leading titles by hours viewed

This is the global ranking reported for January–June 2023. The measure is total hours viewed, rounded by Netflix to the nearest 100,000 hours; it is not a ranking of unique viewers.

Rank Title Hours viewed
1 The Night Agent season 1 812 million
2 Ginny & Georgia season 2 665 million
3 The Glory season 1 622 million
4 Wednesday season 1 507 million
5 Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story 503 million
6 You season 4 440 million
7 La Reina del Sur season 3 429 million
8 Outer Banks season 3 402 million
9 Ginny & Georgia season 1 302 million
10 FUBAR season 1 266 million
11 The Mother 249 million
12 Manifest season 4 235 million
13 Kaleidoscope 223 million
14 Firefly Lane season 2 214 million
15 Physical: 100 season 1 213 million
16 Crash Course in Romance season 1 213 million
17 Love Is Blind season 4 210 million
18 Beef season 1 211 million
19 The Diplomat season 1 209 million
20 Luther: The Fallen Sun 209 million
21 Vikings: Valhalla season 2 202 million
22 Extraction 2 201 million
23 XO, Kitty season 1 200 million
24 Doctor Cha season 1 194 million
25 Shadow and Bone season 2 192 million
26 Sweet Tooth season 2 182 million
27 You People 181 million
28 Perfect Match season 1 179 million
29 Outer Banks season 2 175 million
30 All of Us Are Dead season 1 165 million

Title totals and the reported top 30 are also reproduced in contemporary coverage of the ranking.

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What the list says about Netflix viewing

Both breakouts and established series drew large audiences

The Night Agent, The Glory, Beef and The Diplomat appeared alongside returning seasons of Ginny & Georgia, You and Outer Banks. The two seasons of Ginny & Georgia appearing separately also show why season-level entries should not be merged into a single franchise total when describing this ranking.

Viewing crossed language and national boundaries

Netflix said non-English-language stories made up 30% of all viewing during the six-month period. The top 30 included Korean titles such as The Glory, Physical: 100, Crash Course in Romance and Doctor Cha, as well as Spanish-language La Reina del Sur. These are global results, not a U.S.-only chart.

Films and licensed titles mattered too

Films in the top 30 included The Mother at 249 million hours, Luther: The Fallen Sun at 209 million, Extraction 2 at 201 million and You People at 181 million. The report’s catalogue-wide scope also made visible viewing of licensed programming; it was not an originals-only leaderboard.

Older releases kept attracting viewers

Netflix highlighted the continued viewing life of titles beyond launch. All Quiet on the Western Front, which premiered in October 2022, accumulated 80 million hours during the first half of 2023. That example is not a top-30 entry, but it illustrates the report’s broader point: a title can continue to contribute engagement well after its initial release.

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How to interpret the hours—and the later update

Hours viewed measure time spent watching, not the number of distinct people who watched. A viewer may watch several episodes, stop and resume, or rewatch; the total does not reveal how many unique subscribers or household members saw a title. The six-month window also gives earlier releases more time to accumulate hours than titles arriving near the end of June.

Raw hours can favor longer films or seasons over shorter ones, and they do not by themselves show how many viewers completed a title. In May 2024, Netflix updated the report format to include runtime and “views,” calculated as hours viewed divided by runtime, and to separate film and series rankings. That later measure is not interchangeable with the original first-half 2023 hours ranking. Netflix’s report explains the update and its methodology.

Why Netflix publishing the data mattered

Netflix had previously disclosed audience figures selectively; this release offered a much broader look across its catalogue to creators, studios, rights holders and the public. The timing was notable amid the 2023 Hollywood writers’ and actors’ disputes, when access to streaming audience information was a prominent industry issue. A broad report can help show the reach of licensed titles, non-English programming and older seasons alongside new originals.

It does not disclose the complete business case behind a title. Viewing totals alone do not establish profitability, subscriber acquisition or retention, production economics, completion rates, or why a series was renewed or cancelled. For example, Shadow and Bone season 2 appeared in the ranking and was later cancelled; that outcome cannot be explained from its hours figure alone.

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