In this article we look at the top breakout shows of the past week. Breakout shows are the most in-demand series that have premiered in the past 100 days.
Prime Video seems to be having a moment - three of the top most in-demand breakout shows came from Amazon, all of which saw an increase in demand this week. The most notable movement was observed for Swarm, the streamer's latest psychological horror thriller television series created by Janine Nabers and Donald Glover. The show, which follows the story of a young woman whose obsession with a pop star takes a dark turn, premiered on March 17 to generally positive reviews and also has guest performances by Chloe Bailey and Billie Eilish. Clearly the story seems to have struck a chord among American audiences, seeing that it had a whopping 143% increase in demand the week since its release, and climbed up the ranking to take third place with 25.7 times the average series demand.
HBO's The Last of Us remained the top breakout show in the United States despite a 12.73% drop in demand. It seems as though demand for the show reached its highest point approximately two weeks ago (ahead of its finale), after which it looked to have plateaued before finally beginning its descent this week. While most shows do usually have a big uptick on demand in the days after the finale as viewers catch up to the episodes, its likely that The Last of Us did not follow this trend because demand for the show remained consistently high in the weeks between the episodes. Meanwhile in second place we see Daisy Jones & The Six (another Prime Video series) retain its position and also have an impressive 14% increase in demand this week. The show had 39.8 times more demand than the average series in the U.S. this week after its finale aired on March 24.
While it retained its position in fourth place this week, demand for 1923 dropped by 5%. The rest of the top ten shows included Shrinking on Apple TV+, Poker Face on Peacock, History of the World, Part II on Hulu, and Wolf Pack on Paramount+, all of which had a decline in demand, with demand for History of the World dropping the most (-24%). The drop in demand is unsurprising though, especially considering that the series wrapped up on March 09 and audience attention has shifted to other content since then.
Two other shows that had an increase in demand this week were Prime Video's The Consultant (+3%) and The CW's Gotham Knights (+8%). The increase in demand for The Consultant (which took eighth place) is likely due to positive reviews and word-of-mouth, especially since it ended over a month ago and only recently started gaining traction among audiences. Rounding out the ranking this week, we see Gotham Knights remain in tenth place despite that 8% increase, with 18.3 times the average series demand. Given that it has still aired only two episodes so far, the series is off to a promising start and it is likely we will see it climb higher up the ranks as it releases more content.
