Netflix’s newest original drama was the most-watched TV show across all streaming platforms last week, as “The Gentlemen” drew more viewership than Hulu’s hugely popular “Shōgun” series and Peacock’s Liane Moriarty’s new adaptation “Apples Never Fall,” but still fell to the movie “Poor” in terms of overall popularity.
“The Gentlemen” first premiered on March 7 and topped Netflix’s charts with 215. 7 million hours viewed in its first two weeks, enough to make the series the most-watched series across all platforms in the week of March 14-20, according to analytics firm Reelgood.
“Shōgun” on Hulu was the second most-watched show of the week (the fourth week in a row, in the top 10), followed by “Apples Never Fall” on Peacock, “Manhunt” on Apple TV, and “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV” on Max, a documentary featuring several disturbing revelations on the sets of popular Nickelodeon shows like “Drake”
Despite the resounding good fortune of “The Gentlemen,” its popularity wasn’t enough to surpass that of the Oscar-winning film “Poor Things” and earn the title of most-watched name of the week, according to Reelgood.
Hulu’s “Poor Things,” which earned Emma Stone the Oscar for best actress, the most-watched name last week and the most-watched movie, was followed by “Oppenheimer” on Peacock, “American Fiction” on Fubo TV, Max’s “Dune: Part One” and “Damsel,” Millie Bobthrough Brown’s new movie on Netflix.
Netflix’s new screener, “The Gentlemen,” is similar to, though has little to do with, the 2020 film of the same title. Both come from the brain of Guy Ritchie and focus on the concept of an underground marijuana empire, but they don’t have the same characters and the plots don’t build on each other. The film starred Matthew McConaughey as a hashish magnate named Michael Pearson who paid aristocrats for the use of his land to grow his produce. The series focuses on one such aristocrat, the Duke of Halstead, whose second son (Theo James) inherits his entire estate and then discovers that he is now part of a weed-growing empire run by criminal mastermind Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario). ). The similarities are obvious, but the stories don’t intertwine and the characters don’t overlap. So far, both titles have been won in similar ways through the public. Although the film was not a huge success (it grossed $36. 4 million at the domestic box office), it pleased audiences with a 75% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and an 84% audience score. The TV show “The Gentlemen” recently earned a critic score of 70% and an audience score of 86%.
Two of the main cast members of “The Gentlemen” have experience as stars of popular young adult franchises, but they are rival series. Scodelario, the lead actress in the film adaptations of “The Maze Runner” that began in 2013, and Theo James rose to fame as the star of the series “Divergent” from 2014 to 2016.