Candy, the limited series rolled out by Hulu in a Monday-to-Friday, one-episode-a-day pattern, pulled in 577 million minutes of streaming to finish sixth on Nielsen’s weekly chart for May 9 to 15.
It was the best debut by any Hulu title since the most recent season of The Handmaid’s Tale hit the platform in May 2021.
Netflix dominated the other nine spots, with Ozark cruising to a repeat win and original series The Lincoln Lawyer and Rebel Wilson comedy movie Senior Year taking the silver and bronze.
Nielsen measures the quantity of programming streamed in the U.S. via a TV screen, meaning that mobile viewing doesn’t count, on Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Hulu. Numbers are generally released after a month’s delay.
Candy, a crime drama based on a lurid 1980 case in Texas, had an unorthodox release over a five-day period. The most viewed of the five episodes was the first, on Monday, May 9, which recorded 42 million minutes, but subsequent viewing was fairly evenly spread at about 25 million minutes apiece. Nielsen said 36% of the audience was between the ages of 35 and 49 and was 73% female.
The Lincoln Lawyer, which is based on a Michael Connelly novel, was adapted as a Matthew McConaughey movie in 2011. The new 10-episode series pulled in 884 million viewing minutes, with two-thirds of its viewers over the age of 50.
Director Lucie Jordan’s documentary, Our Father, which centers on an Indianapolis fertility doctor, collected 450 million minutes of viewing to finish No. 10 for the week.
Below is the full top 10. Apart from Candy, all titles are on Netflix.
Ozark – 44 episodes, 1.73 billion minutes of viewing
The Lincoln Lawyer (Netflix) – 10 eps., 884M min.
Senior Year – film, 797M min.
Cocomelon – 18 eps., 715M min.
Grace And Frankie (Netflix) – 95 eps., 584M min.
Candy (Hulu) – 5 eps., 577M min.
Criminal Minds – 321 eps., 546M min.
NCIS – 356 eps., 539M min.
Workin’ Moms – 70 eps., 512M min.
Our Father – film, 450M min.