Overview
If there was ever a year to see if you could stream every film and television show ever, it's the one that we've just lived through. We've all heard the jokes about 'finishing Netflix', which have felt particularly accurate in 2020. But, en masse, Kiwis have been gravitating to the same movies and TV programs over the past 12 months — and Netflix has just revealed the 17 most popular titles.
The streaming platform hasn't detailed them in order, so no one flick or series tops the list. But it has broken down 2020's huge hits by genre, naming a film and show in each — except in the reality TV field, for self-explanatory reasons. The big trends: stars and twists. Famous faces and thorny stories feature prominently, as you probably noticed all year based on Netflix's in-platform top ten feature.
So, what were we all watching? In the action genre, Kiwis feasted their eyeballs on Chris Hemsworth vehicle Extraction and superhero seriesUmbrella Academy. We went light and fluffy in the comedy category, thanks to Holidate and Emily in Paris. In the horror realm, Ghosts of War and The Haunting of Bly Manor emerged victorious.
When it came to drama, Kiwis couldn't get enough of Enola Holmes and The Queen's Gambit (if you've been scoping out chess sets for Christmas, you know that's true). Spenser Confidential and Ozark were the top thrillers, The Princess Switch: Switched Again and Dash & Lily the most popular romances, and SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run and Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous the kid-friendly hits. Too Hot to Handle took the reality TV crown, while, doco-wise, everyone watched The Social Dilemma. And Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, of course, because no one can now remember a time when we didn't know who Joe Exotic was.
Netflix didn't announce any figures to go with this list, so we don't know just how many people watched any of the above. And, obviously, popularity isn't the same as quality. Some of the above hits are great, and some are downright terrible. If Extraction and the Mark Wahlberg-starring Spenser Confidential didn't release in March and April, when the world was going into lockdown, maybe they wouldn't have attracted so many eyeballs, for instance.
In other trends, Kiwis watched 60 percent more flicks and series in languages other than English compared to 2019, doubled our viewing of Korean dramas and checked out more than twice as much anime as well.
For more information about Netflix, or to stream any of the above shows and films, head to the streaming platform's website.
Top image: Phil Bray/Netflix.