Streaming top 10s: Well this is awkward

Nielsen’s streaming ratings have a lag of four weeks. It’s due partly to it taking a while to collect streaming data, and partly due to an agreement the company has with its clients — i.e., the media giants whose streaming shows and movies are being measured.

Normally, that’s not such a big deal. It’d be nice to know who’s watching what a little sooner, but the schedule is the schedule and we roll with it.

But once in a while, we get a situation like this week, and it is weird. Netflix’s new drama The Boroughs — about supernatural forces haunting a retirement community and boasting a top-notch cast (Geena Davis, Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Clarke Peters, Bill Pullman and Denis O’Hare) — premiered in the No. 2 overall spot for the week of May 18-24. It had 1.2 billion minutes of watch time in the U.S., a pretty strong showing.

Except that on Wednesday, Netflix canceled The Boroughs after its lone season. The show got very good reviews and has been in Netflix’s internal top 10 series for the past four weeks, but apparently that wasn’t enough to keep it alive. The four-weeks-later release of the Nielsen numbers just made the cancellation that much more of a head-scratcher.

My Hollywood Reporter colleague Tony Maglio has some good details about why The Boroughs got the axe — it was pretty expensive, for one thing. Netflix may also still be a little salty about Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, who exec produced The Boroughs, leaving for a deal at Paramount. Whatever the reason, it’s a bum deal for the show’s cast and crew.

The streaming top 10s for May 18-24 are below. And my apologies that this is hitting your inboxes kind of late. I spent most of the day covering the opening ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which was very cool but made for a long one.

*Speaking of odd: I mentioned this last week, but Nemesis creator Courtney A. Kemp moved on from Netflix right after Nemesis premiered, signing a deal with Apple TV. No word from Netflix yet on the show’s future, which currently has five straight weeks in Netflix’s top 10.

**This is a feature-film continuation of the Jack Ryan series, with John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce and a few other cast members from the show reprising their roles.

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*Prime’s hockey romance grew by about a third in its second week.

**This set of ratings is five weeks out from The Pitt’s season finale. That it’s still hanging in the charts is pretty remarkable. It’s in the realm of Stranger Things, Wednesday and Squid Game in terms of post-finale longevity.

***This show is a superhero dramedy from South Korea and one of a few shows and movies from that country that have attracted good-sized audiences in the states.

*Yes, this is the forever-running A&E true crime show, which received a Netflix bump after some of it library premiered there on May 13. Other seasons stream on several other platforms.

**The first chart appearance for Marshals, which also had big on-air ratings this season.

*As you can see, there’s a big gap between the three movies that made the overall top 10 (The Crash, GOAT and Jack Ryan: Ghost War) and the rest of the movie rankings.

**Nope was added to Netflix May 18, which means it was likely in the “New on Netflix” scroll on people’s home screens, which might have then pushed it into the streamer’s top movies list. If the usual pattern holds, it might get another week in the top 10 before dropping off.

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