Between January and June 2023, the most-watched Nigerian film on Netflix was ‘Shanty Town,’ a six-part series made by Chinenye Nworah.
The streaming platform just released its ‘What We Watched’ report, which measures three metrics: hours watched, if the item is available globally, and its release date.
The first season of ‘Shanty Town’ topped the list with 27 million hours viewed in the first report.
The story of the 2023 series follows a gang of prostitutes who wish to break free from the authority of a famed kingpin, but quickly understand that doing so will be incredibly difficult due to political corruption and family ties.
‘Shanty Town’ has been nominated for 15 Best of Nollywood (BON) Awards in 2023.
Nworah’s series was followed by ‘Sunday Affair’, Mo Abudu’s movie, which has been viewed for 9.5 million hours.
‘Blood Sisters’ came third with 3.9 million viewing hours while ‘Anikulapo’ and ‘Ijakumo’ rounded the top five with 3.3 million and 2.1 million hours viewed respectively.
See the top 10 Nigerian titles on Netflix below:
| Nigerian films/series | Release dates | Hours viewed |
| ‘Shanty Town’ | 20-01-2023 | 27,000,000 |
| ‘A Sunday Affair’ | 14-02-2023 | 9,500,000 |
| ‘Blood Sisters’ | 05-05-2022 | 3,900,000 |
| ‘Anikulapo’ | 30-09-2022 | 3,300,300 |
| ‘Ijakumo: The Born Again Stripper’ | — | 2,100,000 |
| ‘Glamour Girls’ | 24-06-2022 | 1,800,000 |
| ‘Ile Owo’ | — | 1,500,000 |
| ‘King of Boys: The Return of the King’ | 27-08-2021 | 1,300,000 |
| ‘Man of God’ | 16-04-2023 | 1,300,300 |
| ‘Obara’M’ | — | 1,300,000 |
Globally, ‘The Night Agent’ tops the list with more than 812 million hours viewed. In second place is the second season of ‘Ginny & Georgia’ (665.1 million hours viewed).
The first season of ‘The Glory’ (622.8 million hours viewed) took the third spot while ‘Wednesday’ first season (507.7 million hours viewed) and ‘Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story’ (503 million hours viewed) completed the top five.
See the top 10 Netflix titles below:
| Title | Available Globally? | Release Date | |
| 1. | The Night Agent: Season 1 | Yes | 2023-03-23 |
| 2. | Ginny & Georgia: Season 2 | Yes | 2023-01-05 |
| 3. | The Glory: Season 1 // 더 글로리: 시즌 1 | Yes | 2022-12-30 |
| 4. | Wednesday: Season 1 | Yes | 2022-11-23 |
| 5. | Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story | Yes | 2023-05-04 |
| 6. | You: Season 4 | Yes | 2023-02-09 |
| 7. | La Reina del Sur: Season 3 | No | 2022-12-30 |
| 8. | Outer Banks: Season 3 | Yes | 2023-02-23 |
| 9. | Ginny & Georgia: Season 1 | Yes | 2021-02-24 |
| 10. | FUBAR: Season 1 | Yes | 2023-05-25 |
“This is a big step forward for Netflix and our industry,” the company said in the blog post.
“We believe the viewing information in this report… will give creators and our industry deeper insights into our audiences, and what resonates with them.”
Netflix disclosed that it plans to release the report twice a year.
According to the article, it would feature “hours viewed for every title (original and licensed) watched for over 50,000 hours” , “premiere date for any Netflix TV series or film,” as well as “whether a title was available globally” .
According to the streaming platform, more than 60% of the titles published over the time period covered by the research were on the company’s weekly top ten lists.
Netflix additionally stated that the report was the “product of the popularity of movies, the size of the audience, older titles and the enthusiasm for non-English stories, which generated 30% of all viewing” .
Here is a link to the report containing data from Netflix’s extensive library, covering 18,000 titles and nearly 100 billion hours of combined viewing time.
