The Night Agent surpasses Wednesday, You, and more as Netflix's most-watched show of 2023

The Night Agent has raced far ahead of its competitors on Netflix’s list of viewers. Netflix has taken the initiative towards transparency to reveal viewing data for the first half of 2023 in a report titled What We Watched. The published data consisted of 99 percent of all content streaming on the platform, which is a whopping 18000 titles. The company plans to release a bi-annual report besides its Most Popular and Top 10 lists to help creators and the press gauge the audience’s tastes.

While 60 percent of the titles listed in the report overlapped with the weekly Top 10 throughout the period, there were some surprising titles as well. As such, some titles, like Queen Charlotte and You, were expected to feature on the list. However, The Night Agent was the surprising top-ranking title on the list, with a viewing time of 812.1 million hours. Ginny & Georgia, The Glory, and Wednesday ranked second, third, and fourth in that order.

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The Night Agent grabs the highest viewing hours on Netflix

Netflix has released its bi-yearly report of all its content (Image via Netflix)

While Ginny & Georgia, You, Alice in Borderland, and XO Kitty were returning favorites that were predicted to be included in the list, The Night Agent was an unexpected winner with a viewership of more than eight hundred million hours. This is almost 150 million more than the second-place winner, Ginny & Georgia, with 665.1 million hours. It is closely followed by the Korean drama, The Glory, with 622.8 million hours. With 507.7 million hours, Wednesday bags fourth place.

While Netflix uses a formula of total viewing hours divided by running time to rank its titles on the Most Popular or Top 10 lists, for this report, it only counted the viewing hours. Despite that, The Night Agent, a new series in its first season, grabbed the highest count.

The company wanted to be more transparent with its data to build an atmosphere of trust with the creators and the press. In a conference call, Netflix’s co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, pointed out that licensed titles have a share of 45 percent of viewership, while Netflix Originals have the remaining 55 percent.

Having the advantage of being one of the oldest streaming platforms, Netflix has been open to airing licensed content from other companies. As Sarandos said, the channel aims to entertain its subscribers around the world.

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What is The Night Agent about?

Shawn Ryan's series grabbed maximum viewing hours (Image via Netflix)

The Night Agent, an American thriller by Shawn Ryan, premiered on Netflix in March 2023. Within a week of its debut, it was renewed for a second season. From the sixth most-viewed series a month after its release, it became the most-viewed top-ranking series by December 2023.

The show is an adaptation of Matthew Quirk’s novel of the same name and follows FBI agent Peter Sutherland as he tries to dig out a mole at the highest level of the US government. On one side, he protects Rose Larkin, a former tech CEO, from assailants who murdered her aunt and uncle. On the other hand, he embarks on a desperate hunt for the traitor in an attempt to save his nation.

While the second season is slated to have ten episodes like the first one, production of season 2 was on hold due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. With the strikes resolved, the show will resume filming and other production work soon.

However, there is no second novel by Quirk, and it is left up to Ryan to create a new storyline for the upcoming season of The Night Agent. Peter’s new adventure in season 2 of the show is likely to arrive by mid-2024 on Netflix.