'Adolescence', 'Back in Action' and 'Squid Game' Are Netflix's Most-Viewed Titles From 2025's First Half

So far in 2025, you've also been streaming 'Zero Day', 'Missing You', 'STRAW' and 'The Life List' in a big way.
Sarah Ward
Published on July 18, 2025

As well as collecting 13 Emmy nominations, the largest haul of any Netflix series in 2025, Adolescence is also officially the platform's most-watched TV show from the first six months of the year. If it felt like everyone you knew has been talking about the excellent four-part British series since it debuted in mid-March, that's why, notching up 144,800,000 views.

Netflix has just unveiled its January–June 2025 Engagement Report, which outlines exactly what everyone has been checking out on the streamer to within 99 percent of all viewing. Over that time, audiences caught more than 95-billion hours of the service's series and movies. The most-watched title overall: Cameron Diaz (Annie)- and Jamie Foxx (Tin Soldier)-starring action-comedy Back in Action with 164,700,000 views.

Back to the small screen, the second and third most-watched shows will come as no surprise if you're a Squid Game obsessive who needed to know how the deadly contest continued after season one, then how it came to an end. Season two ranks second with 117,300,000 views, and season three — which only released on Friday, June 27, and broke viewership and ranking records in the process — is in third place with 71,500,000 views. Season one, from 2021, also made 2025's list so far, sitting 12th with 42,000,000 views.

Political thriller Zero Day and Harlan Coben adaptation Missing You round out the top five TV-wise, followed by true-crime docuseries American Murder: Gabby Petito, then Ms. Rachel, Sirens, the second season of The Night Agent and the third run of Ginny & Georgia. American Primeval, Running Point, The Four Seasons and Cassandra also ranked in the top 15.

From Netflix's film slate, STRAW, The Life List, Exterritorial and Havoc followed Back in Action in the top five, with The Secret Life of Pets 2, The Electric State, Counterattack // Contraataque, Ad Vitam and Despicable Me 4 all sitting in the top ten. From there came The Secret Life of Pets, Kinda Pregnant, Nonnas, iHostage and La Dolce Villa. And yes, family-friendly fare did particularly well — in fact, The Boss Baby, Minions, Shrek, Plankton: The Movie, Despicable Me 3, Despicable Me 2 and Shrek 2 are also in the top 25.

As the fondness for older all-ages flicks illustrates, Netflix viewers aren't just checking out new releases. Across the platform's originals — which doesn't apply to the bulk of those animated movies, though — around half of the titles on the list, TV and film alike, initially debuted in 2023 or prior. Think: Orange Is the New Black, Ozark, Money Heist, Red Notice and Leo, for starters.

Also, across new and older series and features, more than a third were titles in languages other than English — so if you caught South Korea's When Life Gives You Tangerines and The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call, Denmark's Secrets We Keep, Norway's Number 24 or Colombia's Medusa, for example, you had company.

Check out trailers for some of Netflix's big January–June 2025 titles above and below:

For more information about the most-viewed Netflix titles from January–June 2025, head to the Netflix website.

Published on July 18, 2025 by Sarah Ward
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