Virgin River unseated longtime streaming champ Stranger Things on Nielsen‘s weekly U.S. chart, racking up more than 2.6 billion minutes of viewing from July 18 to 24.
Stranger Things, which is already in the books as the biggest English-language series on Netflix globally, finished with just shy of 2.3 billion minutes of watch time. That was a 23% drop from the previous week, but still left it firmly in second place, well ahead of the opening weekend of Netflix’s Russo Bros. spy feature The Gray Man, which pulled in more than 1.4 billion streaming minutes.
Already established as a popular mainstay, Virgin River added a 12-episode fourth season on July 20, drawing a dedicated but older-skewing crowd. Two-thirds of viewers were over the age of 50, Nielsen said, and almost one-third were older than 65. The show, which stars Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson, is based on Robyn Carr’s novels about a nurse practitioner who moves from Los Angeles to a remote Northern California town called Virgin River. It has been renewed for a fifth season.
The Gray Man, which stars Ryan Gosling and already has a sequel in the works, had 26% of its viewers between 35 and 49 years old, and another 30% between 50 and 64, according to Nielsen.
Prime Video captured the lone non-Netflix spot in the top 10, with The Boys thriving on younger viewers. Nielsen said 38% of viewing came from 18-to-34-year-olds.
Nielsen measures streaming via a TV screen for Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu and Apple TV+, delivering the results after about a month’s delay.
