In this article we look at the top breakout shows of the past week. Breakout shows are the most in-demand series that have premiered in the past 100 days.
How I Met Your Father, entered the top ten ranking this week after hovering below 20x the average series demand for most of its season. The season finale was released on March 15th and drove demand for the show to the highest levels it has reached since premiering. The show has been renewed for a second season despite a number of negative reviews that have criticized the show’s reworking of the original series format as a shallow nostalgia play.
If How I Met Your Father (HIMYF) has been criticized for copying the original too closely, Bel-Air is an example of a show that has dramatically reimagined its source material (and received a fair amount of criticism for going too far). The data from the past few weeks suggests that Bel-Air’s approach is paying off. While both Bel-Air and HIMYF saw a burst of nostalgia driven interest for their premieres, they have taken different trajectories since then. Demand for HIMYF sagged following its premiere while Bel-Air has grown its demand and held onto those gains. The lesson? Nostalgia can be a powerful starting point for a reboot, but a show needs more than that to succeed.
Our Flag Means Death, the pirate comedy from HBO Max, grew its demand by an impressive 24% from last week and moved into second place. Similar to 1883 and The Gilded Age, this series is a period piece but it shows how a historical setting can be as effectively used for a comedy as a drama.
Two platforms in particular have had several of the most in-demand premieres recently. This week HBO/HBO Max and Hulu each had three original series among the top ten. All other platforms represented in this chart had only one show make the cut this week. Netflix’s most in-demand new series, Inventing Anna, ranked as the 10th most in-demand breakout series, with its demand rapidly falling. Hulu has had a string of successes with its original series since late last year as it focuses on original content to hedge against the risk of losing the rights to licensed shows that make up the bulk of its catalog.
