Netflix is out with its latest weekly snapshot of the biggest TV shows on the platform, and there’s a new winner this week: It’s creator Erin Foster’s romantic comedy series Nobody Wants This, finally dislodging showrunner Ryan Murphy’s latest project, the continuation of his Monsters anthology, from the top spot.
The series stars two early 2000s TV darlings — Kristen Bell of Veronica Mars, and Adam Brody of The O.C. — and expanded its number of hours viewed over last week, when the show made a first appearance on the global Top 10 chart (albeit with only four days of viewership under its belt at that point, as opposed to its first full week now). Hitting #1 in both the US and the world makes it Netflix’s hottest show at the moment and all but guarantees a second season, the announcement of which could come any day now.
Netflix Top 10 shows (Sept. 30-Oct. 6)
Here’s a look at this week’s complete list of the Top 10 English-language shows on Netflix.
- Nobody Wants This — 15.9 million views
- Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story — 13.1 million views
- Love is Blind (Season 7) — 5.2 million views
- Heartstopper (Season 3) — 4.5 million views
- The Perfect Couple — 3.8 million views
- Mr. McMahon — 3.4 million views
- The Amazing Digital Circus (Season 1) — 3.4 million views
- Unsolved Mysteries (Volume 5) — 2.8 million views
- Emily in Paris (Season 4) — 2.6 million views
- Prison Break (Season 1) — 2.3 million views
To learn more about some of this week’s other most-watched series, you can go deeper by checking out our previous coverage of several of the Netflix originals on this list — including Emily in Paris, as well as the murder mystery drama The Perfect Couple. For now, though, let’s focus on the biggest Netflix TV series in the world at the moment.
Nobody Wants This — #1 on Netflix
Our previous coverage of Nobody Wants This is available right here. In short, the show (which is a Top 10 Netflix series this week in 89 countries) stars Bell and Brody as an agnostic woman and an unconventional rabbi who fall in love despite their obvious differences — a dynamic that also loosely mirrors Foster’s real-life relationship with her husband.
It was easy for Foster to write about her relationship failures in the past because “being with the wrong person is actually really easy,” she said in an interview for Netflix’s Skip Intro podcast. “You can blame them for everything. When someone’s cheating, lying, betraying you, not holding up their end –– everything is their fault and you’re perfect.
“And then you get together with someone who is healthy and loving and emotionally present, and you realize that you are not perfect and that you can’t storm out of a room in an argument. You can’t say nasty shit to them when you’re fighting. You have to be a real person and it’s way harder. And I was like, ‘OK, that’s interesting to write about.’ ”
A brief synopsis of the plot for Nobody Wants This: The two lead characters meet at a party — and when the unlikely pair walk out together, it’s clear that there are sparks between them. Never mind all the normal obstacles to modern love, including their differing outlooks on life as well as their well-meaning but sabotage-y families. The show, needless to say, makes for a feel-good binge of the highest order.
From my previous review of the show: “What I like about what Foster has created here is that the show doesn’t make any kind of grand statement about politics or religion or love. It’s two likable people realizing that their life might be better together, damn their obstacles and differences. Their realization is that love doesn’t have to be a Smiths song. It’s about contentment and slowing down enough to listen to your heart. Even if you’re a non-believer who falls for a rabbi.”
