Netflix’s limited series The Watcher has been a resounding success, to say the least. It has now been announced that the show is the most popular title on the streaming service at the moment, racking up 273.2 million hours of watch time.
Per a new report in Deadline, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brenner’s mystery clocked up another 148.2 million hours of watch time from fans in the last week, which built on the 125 million hours it welcomed in its debut week of release.
What has made the show such a success is the fact that it is based on the true story of ‘The Watcher’, who terrorised a family who had just moved into a beautiful colonial home in Westfield, New Jersey, in 2014 with a series of letters and horrific actions.
Then, the events were popularised by a successful article, ‘The Haunting of a Dream House’ that Reeves Wiedeman published in The Cut in 2018.
Of course, Murphy’s show takes some artistic liberties, but that does not detract away from the fact that intrigue is kept at boiling point across its seven episodes, meaning that the viewer is always hooked, needing to get to the bottom of the mystery that is comprised of so many shocking twists. Adding to the brilliance of The Watcher is the cast, with Naomi Watts, Bobby Cannavale, Mia Farrow, Jennifer Coolidge and Noma Dumezweni all excellent.
The Watcher has been so successful that it even knocked Murphy’s other new hit show, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, starring Evan Peters, off the Netflix top spot after 21 days there.
Ryan Murphy recently sat down with The Hollywood Reporter, and revealed that he loved Wideman’s story to the extent that he offered to work on it without compensation. “‘I said, ‘I’m such a fan of this piece and I’m such a fan of this genre that I will write this for free; just let me write it’ …And so that’s how I got involved,” he said.
