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Some of the most-watched TV shows right now are on a streamer that just launched

Published Aug 1st, 2020 9:49PM EDT
Most watched TV shows
Image: AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File

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  • NBC’s new streaming service Peacock only launched a couple of weeks ago, but already a few of its exclusive titles have crept up our list of the most-watched TV shows across all major streaming services right now.
  • The rest of this week’s list of the most-watched TV shows is dominated by titles from services like Netflix and Amazon.
  • This week’s list of shows comes via the streaming search engine service Reelgood.

The first thing I did when NBC’s new streaming service Peacock went live on July 15 — and quickly availed itself as a more than serviceable complement to a Netflix subscription — was to dive straight into The Capture, a thriller imported from the UK that I’ve already raved is a must-watch. Lead actress Holliday Grainger is fantastic as an ambitious detective inspector who realizes with classic British stiff-upper-lip professionalism how in over her head she is when she has to go up against the shadowy, black arts world of techno-centric espionage. I was thoroughly satisfied as this series about fake news and the creeping authoritarianism of our tech overlords and spy agencies drew to a close, and I can’t wait for the show (one of a handful of Peacock originals) to return.

Meantime, plenty of you out there apparently feel something similar. Following Peacock’s July 15 debut, with more than 20,000 hours of movies and shows to watch, the service’s app quickly garnered 10 million downloads, according to App Annie. Moreover, some of the most-watched TV shows right now across all major services are actually Peacock titles.

That’s according to the team at Reelgood, the streaming search engine service which shared with BGR data on what its millions of monthly users were bingeing the most of for the week covering July 23-29 (the full rundown of which is available at the bottom of this post).

Two Peacock titles catapulted themselves right into the Top 5 titles on this week’s list, and they include Paramount Network’s Yellowstone — a drama Peacock is carrying about a family of ranchers, starring Kevin Costner — as well as the Peacock original series Brave New World. The latter is an adaptation of the Aldous Huxley classic novel of the same name, imagining a dystopian future for humanity.

Peacock wisely avoided the “copy Netflix” strategy that so many other streamers have tried, choosing instead of dumping money into tons of original series that may or may not hit the mark — which is a lot easier said than done, and even Netflix whiffs on this now and then — the service instead prepared less than a dozen original titles that would be ready to go at launch. And some of them, like The Capture, were merely imported as opposed to being developed specifically for the service.

Not that any of that matters to whether you enjoy this thing or not. As we said, the service has a huge library of series (including a free tier), with the shows including Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, and even The Office starting next year. About that — when The Office does move over to Peacock starting in January, it will stream with never-before-seen content (although we don’t know specifically what that entails yet).

Image source: App Annie

In terms of what else is extra-popular among streaming audiences right now — no surprise, the list below is dominated by mostly Netflix originals (like Dark, Fear City, and The Umbrella Academy) while series from other streamers have also cracked into the Top 10, including Amazon’s Hanna and The Boys.

Check out the full list of the most-watched TV shows across the major streaming services, compiled by the team at Reelgood for the week of July 23-29:

  1. Dark
  2. Yellowstone
  3. Fear City: New York vs The Mafia
  4. Brave New World
  5. Hanna
  6. The Umbrella Academy
  7. Rick and Morty
  8. The Boys
  9. Cursed
  10. The Alienist
  11. Kingdom
  12. Down to Earth with Zac Efron
  13. Doom Patrol
  14. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark
  15. Breaking Bad
Andy Meek Trending News Editor

Andy Meek is a reporter based in Memphis who has covered media, entertainment, and culture for over 20 years. His work has appeared in outlets including The Guardian, Forbes, and The Financial Times, and he’s written for BGR since 2015. Andy's coverage includes technology and entertainment, and he has a particular interest in all things streaming.

Over the years, he’s interviewed legendary figures in entertainment and tech that range from Stan Lee to John McAfee, Peter Thiel, and Reed Hastings.