Fresh off of its massive haul of Emmy nominations this week, here’s another point in support of an argument I made in a recent post — about the cable network FX starting to feel like the new HBO: Once again, FX’s The Bear is the biggest streaming TV show that’s out right now, based on the latest viewing data from the streaming search engine Reelgood.
At this point, the network has actually been batting 1,000 for quite a while now. FX shows like Atlanta, The Old Man (one of my personal favorite spy shows), Justified, Shogun, The Americans, and, of course, The Bear have combined to make the network feel absolutely indispensable in our fractured streaming era. And speaking of The Bear, it bagged a record-setting 23 Emmy nominations earlier this week. That’s the most in a single year, ever, for a series designated as a comedy (a label I sort of quibble with for the show, but that’s neither here nor there).
It’s no surprise to me at all that The Bear is still riding high, according to Reelgood’s data. Reelgood, by the way, says that it monitors 20 million viewing decisions each month across every streaming platform in the US — from Apple TV+ to Max, Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, and more. And for the 7-day period that ended on July 17, the 10 TV series that topped Reelgood’s latest chart are as follows:
- The Bear (FX/Hulu)
- Presumed Innocent (Apple TV+)
- Sunny (Apple TV+)
- The Boys (Prime Video)
- House of the Dragon (HBO/Max)
- My Lady Jane (Prime Video)
- Evil (Paramount+)
- Your Honor (Netflix)
- The Acolyte (Disney+)
- Sausage Party: Foodtopia (Prime VIdeo)
The Bear’s dominance again this week is to be expected, never mind the fact that its third season is proving to be its most divisive yet. For example, its Season 3 critics’ score currently stands at a respectable 89% on Rotten Tomatoes — compared to a pretty terrible 53% audience score, based on more than 1,000 user ratings.
That said, I expect the show to remain at #1 for at least a couple more weeks, if not more.
Meanwhile, one additional TV show I want to single out from the Reelgood list above is Apple TV+’s new Sunny, which I’ve immensely enjoyed so far. It’s sort of like an adult (and darker) version of Big Hero 6, and stars Rashida Jones as Suzie Sakamoto — a grieving woman whose husband and son have died in a mysterious plane crash.
As a consolation of sorts, Sakamoto’s employer gifts her one of the humanoid companion robots that he’d been working on. That robot is the “Sunny” of the title. Created by Katie Robbins and based on the novel Dark Manual, the show has many different levels to it — one of which is that it foreshadows a future wherein robot helpers live alongside humans, who treat the robots as shiny pets even though they might, in fact, augur something dark and sinister.
