All of a sudden, it feels like Netflix’s Turkish content has become some of the most popular on the streaming platform. It was only a few months ago, for example, that we wrote about Shahmaran — a Turkish Netflix series based on Middle Eastern myths — that had managed to break into the US Top 10. And the company’s Turkish productions have only continued to ramp up since then — such that, now, another of these series is among the biggest in the world on Netflix.
Who Were We Running From debuted at the end of March. And, based on Netflix’s latest weekly chart data, it’s among the most-watched shows globally for the second week in a row. For the latest 7-day period that ended on April 2, for example, Who Were We Running From pulled in 35.8 million hours viewed, making it the #1 non-English show in the world (for comparison, that amount of viewership would have put the show at #3 on the English chart, just behind Love is Blind Season 4).
Another important note about the show’s performance, by way of contextualizing just how big of a Netflix series this is at the moment: It’s currently outperforming The Glory, one of Netflix’s biggest Korean dramas ever. The latter has been on Netflix’s global Top 10 chart for 9 weeks, and for the latest weekly reporting period, it pulled in 26.7 million hours viewed.
Here, meanwhile, is the official logline for the 7-episode Who Were We Running From:
“A mother & young daughter have an unbreakable bond. They have been on the run for a while, staying in luxury hotels, keeping on the move … But as the luxury hotels get replaced with seedy motels, it becomes clear that it’s not a fairytale. When we find out that there is a trail of dead bodies behind, we realize that maybe, the mother isn’t the prey but the hunter. What will be their way out?”
The basis for this Netflix series is a sequence of events that happened to Turkish author Perihan Magden, who was arrested and put on trial for an article she wrote in support of a conscientious objector. The thrust of her article ran contrary to the idea of the country’s mandatory military service.
Below, meanwhile, check out more images from the Who Were We Running From series courtesy of Netflix.
