On December 8th 2017, Netflix released season two of The Crown, their drama inspired by the story of Queen Elizabeth II. The long and rich history of Britain’s monarchy is one that has attracted a lot of attention from the TV industry over the years. While the real-life Queen is a fixture of British Christmas Day TV schedules, does Netflix’s dramatic version also attract audiences? We have used demand data to investigate!
Demand for The Crown in the UK
To start, let us first go to the homeland of the Queen, The United King, to benchmark The Crown against similar titles.
By UK demand in 2017, The Crown was indeed the most in-demand drama based around UK kings and queens. It had 2.5 times the demand of the next most popular drama, ITV’s Victoria, which released its own season two starting on August 27th, 2017. While these titles focus on Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria respectively, the other three shows – The Tudors, The White Queen and Wolf Hall – all feature the Tudor dynasty of the 15th to 16th centuries. From our demand analysis, it seems that more recent monarchs are a more popular subject than medieval ones, although in fairness the Tudor titles all ended before the other two titles have started airing. Let us know compare The Crown‘s UK demand with that observed in the rest of the world.
UK Demand for The Crown vs International Demand
As The Crown focuses on the British head of state, it is reasonable to assume that the demand per capita would be highest there. However, this would be forgetting that the British Monarchy is still the head of state of multiple countries, and through the British Empire it has a legacy in many more. These areas of the world may also be especially interested in the royals.
Parrot Analytics demand data bears this out; of the top 10 countries by demand per capita for The Crown in 2017, only Panama has never been British-controlled either as part of the Empire or as a protectorate.
The country with the highest demand per capita for the show is the Mediterranean island of Malta, where the show clearly gained a loyal following after the island was featured in the show early on.
Diving deeper into the data, we can compare the relative demand for all the shows that we previously looked at in the UK but this time in the five largest English-speaking markets.
Of these markets, the UK has the most demand per capita for The Crown but New Zealand’s comparatively high demand for Wolf Hall and Victoria means it is the most enthusiastic for all the Monarchy shows combined. Meanwhile, although the United States famously rejected rule by the British Crown, it is in fact Canadian audiences who are the least taken by dramatic tales of king and queens. Let’s now end this investigation by quickly checking seeing how popular a show might be that features a real princess-to-be!
Demand for Real Royalty vs Royal Dramas
So, how does demand for a non-royal actress telling a real queen’s story compare to a real royal actress (royal to be, at least) telling a New York lawyer’s story…? We are, of course, talking about Suits.
It turns out that in the UK in 2017, the Meghan Markle-starring Suits has a comfortable lead over The Crown, so it looks like the real princess-to-be wins this one!
