How a Hit Travels
Netflix weekly Top 10 · 266 weeks
One global audience—or overlapping ones?
A series can reach many countries at once, build an audience across successive weeks, or return to the charts long after its first run. Netflix’s national Top 10 lists let us follow those different paths to becoming a hit.
We followed 13,319 title and season identities across 94 countries and territories, from Jul 4, 2021 throughAug 2, 2026. The result is an atlas of published rankings, not a census of viewing.
These lists report rank within each country. Use them to compare where and when a title appeared; country-level audience totals are not provided.
Read the measurement notesAct 0 · one title, one week
Four national lists, then twenty-five.
Crash Course in Romance first appeared in four published national Top 10 lists in the week ending January 22, 2023. Step forward and the observed footprint changes.
Act 0 · the observable sequence
A ranking footprint accumulates.
By its seventh observed week, the series appeared in twenty-five country charts. Each new point marks the first week it reached that country’s published Top 10.
Act 1 · what popular means here
Rank is ordinal. Audience size is missing.
Netflix reports global engagement for global leaders. Its country files report rank only. No. 1 in India cannot be compared with No. 1 in Denmark as a count of viewers.
Act 2 · the map stops being enough
Keep the countries. Change the question.
Countries sit near one another when they often rank the same titles in the same weeks. The weighting gives less importance to titles that appear almost everywhere. Look for groups with similar rankings.
Act 3 · four observed shapes
Hits do not share one itinerary.
Compare five features of each title’s run: weekly reach, new countries, regional reach, weeks in each local chart and separate returns to the rankings.
Act 4 · a bridge is observed
Begin with sequence, not a cause.
The series starts with four countries in its first observed week. Step forward to see where its Top 10 presence expands next, using the same country positions throughout.
Act 4 · the accumulated footprint
Thirty-four countries eventually ranked it.
The later run reaches several groups of countries with different viewing rankings. That broad spread is visible in the lists; explaining it would also require information about availability, promotion and distribution.
Act 5 · one global list
Country charts contain stories the global list does not.
The Rookie season one accumulated 303 country-weeks across 80 countries without a matching global Top 10 row in this snapshot. Adjust the threshold: the boundary remains selective.
303 country-weeksThe Rookie — Season 1; no matching global-list row
Act 6 · are the neighborhoods real?
The answer depends on what counts as similar.
The two layouts define similarity differently. Equal presence counts every shared appearance equally. Distinctive rank gives stronger ranks more weight and reduces the effect of widely shared hits. Switch between them to see which relationships persist.
33 /17 edgesequal-presence / distinctive-rank specifications
Act 7 · your turn
Release the reader into the evidence.
Search for a title. See where it appeared, how quickly it reached those country charts, and which country relationships are strongest under either definition.
Open the title explorerFour different journeys
A hit leaves more than one kind of trace
Compare how quickly each title spread, how long it stayed and where it returned. The labels describe those patterns in the rankings.
Open-ended explorer · ten illustrative profiles
Choose a title and follow its run.
Explore ten journeys selected from the full snapshot. Choose a title, country or week to follow its appearances across the linked views.
Crash Course in Romance — Limited Series
GEOGRAPHIC POSITION2 of 24 reference countries visible by week 1Select a country for exact values. Distance is approximate; edges are not influence paths.
Weekly comparison
Weekly observed country reach
Numerator: country charts containing the title. Denominator: country charts published for the category in that week. Rank is never converted to viewers.
Compare up to three titles
Compare journey fingerprints
Add up to three titles to align their scales.
The titles the global list leaves out
A title can travel widely without reaching the global Top 10.
These titles appeared in national lists without a matching entry in the global Top 10. Raise the minimum number of country-weeks to see how widespread that pattern can be.
14 title identities meet this floor and lack a matching global row.
The Rookie — Season 1
- Countries
- 80
- Country-weeks
- 303
- Active weeks
- 53
The Good Doctor — Season 3
- Countries
- 60
- Country-weeks
- 397
- Active weeks
- 55
Escape Room: Tournament Of Champions
- Countries
- 83
- Country-weeks
- 147
- Active weeks
- 48
The Good Doctor — Season 4
- Countries
- 63
- Country-weeks
- 299
- Active weeks
- 71
Clifford the Big Red Dog
- Countries
- 74
- Country-weeks
- 152
- Active weeks
- 26
Knights of the Zodiac
- Countries
- 75
- Country-weeks
- 120
- Active weeks
- 27
Heatwave
- Countries
- 71
- Country-weeks
- 115
- Active weeks
- 18
The Black Phone
- Countries
- 69
- Country-weeks
- 102
- Active weeks
- 31
Scream
- Countries
- 67
- Country-weeks
- 108
- Active weeks
- 24
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
- Countries
- 66
- Country-weeks
- 108
- Active weeks
- 34
Blumhouse's Fantasy Island
- Countries
- 64
- Country-weeks
- 108
- Active weeks
- 27
Abigail
- Countries
- 61
- Country-weeks
- 128
- Active weeks
- 32
The Meg
- Countries
- 58
- Country-weeks
- 156
- Active weeks
- 41
The Rookie — Season 2
- Countries
- 54
- Country-weeks
- 192
- Active weeks
- 39
Specification check
How the definition changes the map
17 relationships remain in both the equal-presence and distinctive-rank four-nearest graphs. The full set of coordinates is frozen in the snapshot so toggling the definition produces a reproducible comparison.
Equal presence
Cosine similarity over shared title-week presence; every Top 10 appearance has equal weight.
33 mutual-neighbor relationshipsDistinctive rank
Cosine similarity over rank points multiplied by inverse title-week ubiquity.
17 mutual-neighbor relationshipsMethod · evidence · limits
How the atlas was built
The charts use a saved copy of the weekly rankings. The included build script shows how those files become the measures and layouts used here. Source file hashes identify the exact downloads.
Observed reach and persistence
Weekly reach is the number of countries ranking a title divided by the number of countries publishing that category’s list that week. Persistence is ranked weeks per reached country. Simultaneity is eventual country reach first observed in weeks one or two.
Country similarity
Each country is a vector of title-week observations. Equal presence assigns one to every appearance. Distinctive rank assigns (11 − rank) × log((available countries + 1) / (countries ranking the title + 1)). Pair scores are cosine similarity. Only mutual four-nearest relationships scoring at least 0.10 are drawn.
Identity and missingness
Television is kept at season or limited-series level; films remain individual titles. Missing rank is censored: a title may have been unavailable, promoted differently, watched below the cutoff, or absent for another unmeasured reason.
What this cannot establish
The rankings do not establish country audience size, exposure, subscriber share, sentiment, language availability, or causal transmission. The 24-country visual reference set is a legible projection of metrics computed from the full public file.
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