New show knocks ‘Monsters’ off the top of Netflix chart
Headline-grabbing true crime has proven itself to be a difficult thing to dislodge from the top of the Netflix viewership charts, but Nobody Wants This has wasted little time in knocking the latest run of Ryan Murphy’s Monsters from its perch.
The prolific creator’s dramatisation of the murders committed by siblings Erik and Lyle Menendez has been the top-viewed episodic title on the platform since premiering on September 19th, with Murphy igniting controversy along the way after the subjects spoke out and decried its sensationalist nature.
Of course, that only served to pique interest even further, not that Monsters needed the boost when Murphy has become a brand unto himself through his lucrative first-look development deal with Netflix, while tales of murder and the macabre are constantly among the streamer’s top draws.
However, Monsters‘ reign has ended after less than two weeks, and it’s been dislodged by another stable element of Netflix’s original output: frothy romance with a pair of recognisable stars in the lead. Debuting on September 26th, Erin Foster’s Nobody Wants This has wasted little time in reaching the summit.
Headlined by Kristen Bell and Adam Brody, the pair play a sex and dating podcaster who doesn’t buy into organised religion and a charming rabbi, respectively, and it doesn’t take a genius to see where things start heading once the pair get past their initial meet-cute.
It’s perfectly designed to be binged over the course of a weekend, which seems to be exactly what subscribers have been doing. The success of Nobody Wants This reiterates the strength of light and fluffy romance by dethroning the second instalment of the Monsters anthology to become the most-watched TV show on Netflix worldwide.
If there’s one thing capable of defeating murder in a head-to-head battle on Netflix, then it’s romance, and Nobody Wants This also carries the additional benefit of having cross-generational appeal thanks to Bell and Brody having been staples of 2000s teen TV thanks to their career-launching roles in Veronica Mars and The OC, which puts their collaboration in the sweet spot of unfolding in a genre users can’t resist while enticing those who grew up with the stars with the prospect of seeing them share the screen.
Partially inspired by creator and showrunner Foster’s own life – much like Bell’s Joanne, she hosts a podcast with her sister and converted to Judaism before marrying her husband – that balance between reality and fiction has turned out to be a winning combination.