New shows dominated the top digital original series this week, as per our television series popularity measurement system. Demand for the fifth season of House of Cards, with new showrunners Frank Pugliese and Melissa James Gibson, rose by 230% from last week to become the most popular digital original. In the first full month after its season one release, The Handmaid’s Tale from Hulu, had only 5% less demand than Netflix’s latest hit.
Orange is the New Black and 13 Reasons Why also stayed consistent as the third and fourth-most popular series, but two cancelled series (Sense8 and Bloodline) lurked in the chart this week. We do not expect demand for these two series to increase over the next week. The second-oldest show on the list, Orange is the New Black, had 114% more demand than the newest show, The Keepers.
Our television series popularity measurement system also revealed that Marvel’s Iron Fist and The Last Kingdom also descended in the rankings, and Netflix’s Master of None, whose second season was released on May 12, ranked in tenth place.
Overall, the top shows also remained fairly static. Demand for HBO’s Game of Thrones dropped slightly as news about spin-offs circulated before its final season had aired, but AMC’s The Walking Dead was still the top show by a large margin. In contrast, FOX’s hit series Prison Break aired its season finale on May 30, causing its demand to rise by 21% from last week. Several other finales boosted their shows into the top ten this week: the latest season of CW’s The Flash, moving into sixth place, and Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars is scheduled to finish for the year on June 27, moving it to fifth place.
