Week-to-Week: Heartstopper, Russian Doll, and Netflix's New Rules of Renewal
In the midst of upheaval at the streamer, how do you gauge their chances of canceling your favorite show?
If you’re a person who follows television industry trades, then you’ve likely seen the headlines: “Netflix, Facing Reality Check, Vows to Curb Its Profligate Ways.” “Netflix Layoffs, Spending Cuts, and Creative Retreat Worry Hollywood.” “Netflix Staffers Voice Frustrations and Fears of Cutbacks Ahead.” The TL;DR version is that after losing subscribers for the first time in the first quarter of 2022, Netflix’s stock has plummeted, they’re planning on introducing an ad-supported tier to keep from further hemorrhaging subscribers, and budget cuts will escalate an already brutal environment for new and returning Netflix shows facing an uncertain fate in an evolving streaming marketplace (as I wrote about in March).
But if you’re not someone who’s connected to the trades, you likely didn’t need this context to be concerned about what fate could befall your favorite Netflix series. Over the past few days, #RenewHeartstopper has trended on Twitter, and I’ve been getting TikToks on my For You Page where fans of the queer YA series that I covered here at Episodic Medium are anxiously awaiting a decision that’s unlikely to come for weeks if not months. They don’t need trade reporting on internal changes in Netflix’s decision-making: they only need the cancellation of shows like Julie and the Phantoms to feel like they need to mobilize swiftly.
But as someone who does follow the trades, I want to connect some dots in terms of what this reporting is telling us about how Netflix’s philosophy is changing, and put it in conversation with the facts and data that have emerged since Heartstopper debuted last month. I also want to loop in the show that debuted two days before, the second season of timey-wimey comedy Russian Doll.
The short version of my findings is that one of these shows is an absolute model of the type of series that Netflix is interested in prioritizing in its new era.
The other is Russian Doll.
Did it reach the Netflix Top 10s?
After hiding most of its internal data behind a veil of secrecy and then selectively citing numbers to inflate their place in the media landscape, Netflix’s shift to “Top 10s” at least provided an internally relevant ranking of their own programming. Its nonsensical “Million Hours Watched” metric is not useful for understanding how things on Netflix compare to broadcast or cable programming, but it does offer insight into how its originals are resonating worldwide.
In the case of Heartstopper, these stats offered good news: according to Netflix, it was the 7th most watched English-language season of television on the service in its first three days, with 14.55m viewing hours through April 24.
Russian Doll, however, failed to make this same chart, despite debuting two days earlier.
Where did it reach the Netflix Top 10s?
As Netflix becomes an increasingly global company, with growth outside of the United States offsetting subscriber churn in their single largest territory, a show’s ability to gain traction outside of the U.S. is apparently a considerable driver. The second season of The Baby-Sitters Club, for example, was the ninth most-watched show in its debut last October, and charted in 14 countries before being canceled for not being global enough.1
Although it landed at #7 on the English-language chart, Heartstopper actually didn’t chart in the overall TV top 10 in that many countries, due to the presence of Non-English language content. This included in the United States, where it did briefly appear in the Top 10, but failed to make the overall charts. It did, however, chart in 12 countries in Europe.
Of these countries, the United Kingdom is the most significant, as Heartstopper has effectively been positioned as a “U.K. Original” through Netflix’s production arrangement with See-Saw Films. This means that the majority of press around the show has been through U.K. outlets, and thus its success is a clear sign of the show serving its purpose of asserting Netflix’s place within a key global market. This gives the show an extra edge if, for example, Netflix is looking at balance sheets and seeing which shows are serving their goals of appealing to locals in markets like the U.K.
Russian Doll did not, as far as I could tell, chart in the Top 10 in all TV in any country (yes, you are sensing a pattern).
Did it stay in the Netflix Top 10s?
The sign of a true “success” for Netflix is when a series remains in the Top 10 in the weeks following its debut, indicating strong word-of-mouth and “discovery” among its subscribers. The first 28 days has often been cited as the key metric for Netflix’s decision making, but the second week is the clearest indicator of whether a show will be able to sustain any type of momentum.
And there’s more good news for Heartstopper here: it grew by nearly 70% in total hours watched in its first full week on the service, rising to 5th place on the English-Language TV list. It also dramatically expanded the number of countries in which it appeared in the overall weekly Top 10 over this period.
Notably, this includes the addition of territories outside of Europe, including major territories like Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. The United States is not among these territories, but that may not necessarily be a problem.
Russian Doll, meanwhile, did not make the chart in its first full week, leaving its viewership numbers a mystery.
How much was spent in order to reach the Netflix Top 10?
This is where things become more complicated in the current climate. While budgets have no doubt been a distinguishing factor in Netflix’s decision-making in the past, it seems like the “value” of a given series will be increasingly important moving forward.
In the reporting on the upheaval at Netflix, a key dimension seems to be the “efficiency” with which a Netflix series achieves success, meaning how much it cost in order to achieve a certain degree of reach among subscribers. The Wall Street Journal specifically draws out a comparison between Virgin River and Bridgerton, with both drawing similar female audiences but the former less than 1/3 of the budget of the latter. This isn’t to say that Netflix won’t make shows like Bridgerton—it also wants Emmy nominations, and it absolutely wants to be in the game of making big-budget, prestige television. However, it’s a matter of it being a balance: for every Bridgerton, there should be a Virgin River.
This is something that should work in Heartstopper’s favor: outside of Olivia Colman’s two days on set as Nick’s mother, the show has a cast of unknowns, and tells a small-scale story. And it likely works against Russian Doll, which was likely far more expensive between talent and the show’s time travel journeys even if I imagine budget cuts were part of why the truncated seven-episode season struggled a bit creatively. Netflix spent more on Russian Doll to fail to make the Top 10 than it did for Heartstopper to reach it, and that’s certainly going to a key part of the math moving forward.
How did it perform with critics?
What’s slightly less clear is how the shifts in Netflix’s thinking will shape the balance between a show’s performance with subscribers and its ability to earn critical acclaim or (especially) awards attention. This has long been reported as a source of internal tension at Netflix, and will likely continue to do so moving forward.
Russian Doll, a critical darling in its first season, continued to draw strong notices with Season 2, earning 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 79 on Metacritic. Notable here is that there was a lot of critical coverage of Russian Doll upon its premiere, with individual critics and websites quick to cover the show upon the removal of Netflix’s embargo. We’ll see this summer whether this translates into more Emmy nominations, or if the Comedy categories have become too crowded for the show to break through.
Heartstopper, though, moved differently. When the embargo lifted, as I wrote at the time, there were only a handful of reviews, the majority coming out of the U.K. where the show’s press apparatus was primarily based. Once the show debuted, however, the number of reviews started to grow with each passing day: USA Today, for example, only published their review this past Sunday, over a week after it premiered. This is indicative of strong word-of-mouth, with the show going from not even qualifying for a Rotten Tomatoes score when it debuted to earning the site’s “Certified Fresh” status and a 100% score, with an 84 on Metacritic (where only 8 of the 33 reviews aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes are eligible).
In the end, I expect it highly unlikely that Heartstopper manages anything from an awards perspective in the U.S. beyond a small chance at an Olivia Colman nomination for Guest Actress2, but it seems likely to have more potential at the BAFTAs much as Sex Education has, which seems like it could help Netflix again position itself well in the U.K. media landscape.
How is it performing with audiences in spaces beyond the Netflix platform?
Heartstopper already gets points for sticking around the Global Top 10 for a second week, something that The Baby-Sitters Club’s second season failed to do before its cancellation. However, there’s no question that when we move beyond viewership to other forms of engagement, the show’s chances of renewal increase dramatically as it takes its place within the streaming service’s history of viral teen projects.
Heartstopper reviews continue to pop up online because the people who’ve watched the show are engaging with it in other venues, driving outlets to write about the show despite having not planned to do so in an enormously crowded April. As I tweeted, Heartstopper immediately swept through my TikTok For You Page, as it did for anyone else who regularly sees queer content, and the various YouTube videos and other social content being posted by both Netflix and independent outlets has been exploding on a level comparable to past teen content like To All The Boys… or The Kissing Booth.
Similarly, stars Kit Connor and Joe Locke have seen their Instagram followers explode in the past ten days, entering them into the long list of young “Netflix Stars” whose social followings the service takes credit for (as I wrote about in 2020 after the launch of Julie and the Phantoms).
And this doesn’t even account for the ubiquity of the show in fan-produced content on sites like Twitter or TikTok, particularly the latter—in addition to posts about the show, my FYP has been filled with dialogue samples, songs featured in the soundtrack, and filters all extending the show’s reach through organic engagement. And Netflix themselves have been feeding into this, generating TikTok content including panel-by-panel comparisons with the comic, alongside videos closer to fan edits.
As for Russian Doll…there is no such viral content, either from viewers or from Netflix themselves.
The Verdict
I understand the anxiety that Heartstopper fans are experiencing, especially in the wake of a number of COVID-related cancellations (Julie & the Phantoms, The Society) featuring queer storylines. But anyway you slice it, Heartstopper is the kind of efficient programming that is performing well in both tangible and intangible ways for Netflix, and while it’s always possible there’s something happening behind-the-scenes we’re not seeing, nothing that we’ve learned about the changes happening behind the scenes at Netflix suggests it is in any danger.
However, the same cannot be said for Russian Doll, and the same might not be true if/when Heartstopper debuts a second season with higher expectations in 2023. While this data should make Heartstopper fans sleep better, the nature of Netflix’s business model means there will never be certainty, especially with the logics in flux as they are now.
Episodic Observations
I watched the first four episodes of The Flight Attendant’s second season, and they were fun and propulsive—there’s really no effort whatsoever to settle into the new premise, dropping us right into the collision of Cassie’s sober anniversary and some full-bore spy fare. They were also very judicious about how to flesh out the show without overloading it, with podcaster Jenny (Jessie Ennis, who gets to channel a similar energy to Mythic Quest) pulling in Cassie’s brother and Annie and Max (in various states of undress, which, thank you) offering a more substantive B-story that’s still quickly folded into the spy stuff. Will keep up with it, and see if there’s enough to say to write about the finale.
One of the benefits of engaging with subscribers in the comments on now lively weekly discussions is that it creates a sense of accountability, so after saying The Dropout was going to be the next show I started, I…actually started it? Shocking, I know. Opening two episodes were strong, and I’m looking forward to digging in deeper over the next few weeks.
I also caught up on Moon Knight, but I’ll save those thoughts for a finale review later this week.
The Baby-Sitters Club drew more “millions of hours” than Heartstopper, but it had four extra days (debuting on a Monday).
Okay, as Paul F notes in the comments, she would be forced to compete in Supporting, so there’s really no chance at Emmy nominations.
I just miss The Babysitters Club so much. That show was a gem.
That's good news for Heartstopper. I hope those favorables don't just motivate Netflix to make a second season but to make more content like it. It sucks that The Babysitters Club ended up on the bad side of the algorithm.