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EXCLUSIVE: In a week that controversy surrounding Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story was generating headlines aplenty for Netflix, an old British show quietly slipped into the streamer’s UK top 10, neatly demonstrating something of a 2024 viewing trend.
The Toby Jones-starring drama series Capital premiered on the BBC in 2015 and yet here it was sitting sixth in Netflix’s most-watched list after being acquired by the streamer almost a decade later.
The show made a bit of a splash when it launched on the BBC years ago, but didn’t exactly go gangbusters. Yet in the past few weeks, the internet has been awash with article headlines such as “Netflix has just quietly added a forgotten BBC masterpiece” in relation to the rather parochial Capital, which starred Jones as one of the residents of a road in South London who starts receiving unsettling postcards.
Capital’s success is no one-off in this era of cannibalized viewing. While it has long been said that audiences turn to familiarity when faced with an over-abundance of choice — look no further than Suits — Deadline analysis supplied by Digital-i shows 2024 has been the year viewers opted for older shows that they may have missed first time around. The firm views this as a UK version of the ‘Netflix accelerator effect’, which was first noticed when Suits soared to the top of the U.S. rankings.
According to Digital-i’s research, 10 of the 11 most-watched shows licensed by Netflix in Britain this year premiered before 2020 on their respective networks. This ranges from Channel 4’s Deadwater Fell, which launched just before the pandemic and is the top-rated with 1.7 million views after its first 28 days, all the way back to ITV’s James Corden-starring sitcom Fat Friends, which first aired in 2000. Others to have amassed solid viewership include BBC series Gunpowder, which starred Kit Harington and aired in 2017, and Channel 5 true crime series Missing or Murdered from five years ago. At last count, 17.3 million UK households had Netflix subs, according to Barb.
This year so far, three licensed British shows have made it into the Netflix UK top 30: Deadwater Fell and ITV double Honour (1.7 million views) and Cleaning Up (1.2 million views). No licensed shows made the top 30 in 2023 and none even made the top 50 in 2022.
Digital-i’s deep dive unearthed some impressive statistics when comparing these Brit shows with American mega-hits. Deadwater Fell, Honour and Cleaning Up had more views after 28 days than splashy originals such as Ripley, while Deadwater Fell and Honour managed to beat the heavily-marketed fourth season of Emily In Paris‘ first tranche of episodes.
Liza Marshall, who runs Honour producer Hera Pictures, said Honour and another Hera-produced Netflix acquisition, Sky’s Temple, “reached a brand new audience who missed them during their original broadcast.”
“The renewed interest from both audiences and the press has been akin to the buzz of a new show launch, underscoring the power of platforms like Netflix to breathe new life into British series with compelling storytelling and home grown stars,” Marshall, a former Channel 4 Head of Drama, told Deadline.
‘Brassic‘ goes big
Netflix declined to comment for this article but Digital-i puts the trend in part down to a dip in broadcast TV viewing over the past few years from young people, meaning that they may have missed these older shows when they first aired, which backs up Marshall’s claim. Netflix has, at the same time, further curated its algorithm to favor local fare.
Both of these factors might go some way to explaining the runaway success of Sky series Brassic on Netflix these past few months.
Netflix picked up Danny Brocklehurst and Joe Gilgun’s dramedy about a band of misfits in August ahead of the launch of Season 6 on Sky, and since then Brassic has been killing it on the platform. For two weeks back in early September, seasons of Brassic comprised nearly half of the top 10 Netflix most-watched, sitting ahead of hits like Love is Blind: UK, Emily in Paris and Kaos. It’s no wonder tabloids were posting articles headlined: “Netflix viewers hail ‘crazy’ series starring Michelle Keegan as fans insist: ‘This is mental, but I love it’.” It’s also no wonder the show has just been re-upped for Season 7.
Matt Ross, Chief Analytics Officer at Digital-i, said the power of licensed shows is proof of Netflix responding to the current landscape in a “sustainable and cost-efficient way.”
“By bringing together the best of the UK’s local content output from previous decades, Netflix is establishing itself not just as a creator of fresh, original content, but also as an aggregator,” he added. “For audiences experiencing decision fatigue, the addition of long-running, familiar shows helps streamline their viewing experience, making it easier to decide what to watch between high-profile original launches.”
The strategic shift followed months of uproar sparked by last year’s Hollywood labor strikes, which saw original Stateside production virtually shut down. We revealed recently this led American viewers to flock to British originals like Bridgerton, Baby Reindeer and Prime Video’s Clarkson’s Farm.
“The slowdown didn’t significantly affect overall viewing levels, thanks to the enduring popularity of older shows and films,” said Ross. “Licensed content consistently drives high volumes of engagement, with viewers often tuning in to watch a few episodes each evening, effectively curating their own schedules. For streamers growing their advertising businesses, licensed content is an invaluable tool for generating sustained and frequent engagement.”
For the latter quarter of this year, the ‘licensed local’ trend is showing little sign of abating.
Leading the Netflix UK top 10 at the start of November was not The Diplomat, nor was it Outer Banks or The Lincoln Lawyer. It was, in fact, My Wife My Abuser: Captured on Camera, a documentary Netflix picked up from Channel 5.
