Netflix’s ‘Night Agent’ Dominates the Streaming Rankings | Charts

Netflix reclaimed its spot atop the streaming rankings with its adaptation of Matthew Quirk’s novel “The Night Agent,” a series that’s generated strong buzz since its March 23 premiere.

Action-packed spy thrillers have proven incredibly popular tentpoles for streamers with Amazon, in particular, leaning heavily into the genre in the past year. With Prime Video successes like “Reacher” and “The Terminal List” appearing poised to capture the same franchise level interest as “Jack Ryan,” Netflix is clearly hoping to tap into the same audience appetite for action-packed political dramas.

The story of FBI agent Peter Sutherland thrust into a deep-rooted deception at the highest political levels ran the top 10 table almost entirely in the week of March 22-28 with nearly 2 million U.S. households tuning into the premiere in its first four days available to stream, according to viewership trends collected from Samba TV’s panel of more than 3 million households drawn from over 25 million connected TVs, balanced to the U.S. Census. Fans clearly binged the show, which propelled the series to capture nearly every spot on the top 10 chart this week.

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The series starring Gabriel Basso as Sutherland and Luciane Buchanan features a diverse cast of characters with Asian representation from several leading actors, including Hong Chau, who plays the president’s chief of staff, Diane Farr. That helped drive Asian household viewership to overindex by double digits compared to the national average. Millennials tended to tune in most, based on viewership of the premiere episode, overindexing by the largest margin. Gen Z audiences remained flat and older audiences such as Gen X underindexed.

Audiences will soon get more of Sutherland: Netflix has already renewed the program for a sophomore season.

In the way of a sweep by “The Night Agent” was Disney+’s “The Mandalorian,” which earned the No. 5 spot on the leaderboard. The series has ranked atop the charts week after week since its third season premiered on March 1, proving that the appetite for “Star Wars” content is still very strong.

Crime documentary “Waco: American Apocalypse” landed in the No. 8 spot for the week, with audiences drawn into the docudrama featuring never-before-seen footage of the 1993 standoff between federal agents and cult leader David Koresh.

On linear broadcast networks, CBS’s “The Equalizer” rose to the top of the pack, overtaking NBC’s musical talent search “The Voice” as the most-watched program of the week. This marks the first time in eight weeks that a scripted drama beat out a reality or competition program for the No. 1 spot.

ABC’s talent competition “American Idol” wasn’t far behind at No. 3, while the series finale of “The Bachelor” held the No. 4 spot for the second consecutive week as bachelor Zach Shallcross proposed to Kaity Biggar after a live confrontation from runner-up Gabi Elnicki.

In another win for NBC, a trio of crime dramas, “Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire,” and “Chicago P.D.” all ranked atop the linear television chart this week, while “East New York” delivered for CBS and  “America’s Funniest Home Videos” rounded out the top 10.

Dallas Lawrence is the SVP and head of communications and brand at Samba TV, a WrapPRO partner. Follow him on Twitter at @DallasLawrence. For more from Samba TV, click here.

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