Is your favourite Netflix show the most addictive of them all?
Across the country today, people are sitting at their office desks, counting down the hours until they can go home, crawl in to bed, and binge-watch their current Netflix series all weekend long.
Don’t pretend you’ve never done it. We all know that kind of proud/ kind of ashamed feeling when the screen fades to black, and you see your reflection, motionless, entranced, and definitely not ready to go ‘Back to Browse’ until All. Episodes. Are. Watched.
But just how long does it take for a series to entice you in to a marathon session? New data published by Netflix, the streaming giant with over 65-million users, is telling us exactly that.
From January to July this year, Netflix studied the viewing habits of its subscribers across 16 countries, including the UK, US and Ireland.
And now, the company has revealed the point at which the average user (in the 70% majority) became hooked on a first series and binge-watched it until its end.
The results ranged from a lighting-fast two episodes, for smash-hit crime drama, Breaking Bad, to a more leisurely eight, for long-running comedy How I Met Your Mother.
Here’s a breakdown of how long it took Netflix’s most popular shows to hook in their audience:
Breaking Bad - Episode 2 Dexter - Episode 3 Gossip Girl - Episode 3 How I Met Your Mother - Episode 8 House of Cards - Episode 3 Mad Men - Episode 6 Orange Is The New Black - Episode 3 Once Upon A Time - Episode 6 Pretty Little Liars - Episode 4 Scandal - Episode 2 Suits - Episode 2 The Walking Dead - Episode 2 Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt - Episode 4
‘We found that no one was ever hooked on the pilot,’ said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer for Netflix.
‘This gives us confidence that giving our members all episodes at once is more aligned with how fans are made.’
And we whole-heartedly agree. Safe in the knowledge that developing an all-encompassing obsession with fictional people after a few hours is the norm, we’re limbering up for a serious Netflix marathon this weekend.