#‘Queen Charlotte’ Earns Big Opening for Netflix

The Bridgerton franchise continues to be a huge draw for Netflix.

The streamer’s debut of Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story was a runaway No. 1 among all titles on Netflix for the week of May 1-7. The prequel, created by Shonda Rhimes, drew 148.28 million hours of viewing worldwide in the four days after its May 4 premiere, according to Netflix’s internal measurement. It reached the top 10 in 91 countries and ranked No. 1 in 76 of those.

That ranks as the fourth best opening week for any series on the streamer so far this year, behind season two of Ginny & Georgia (180.47 million hours), The Night Agent (168.17 million) and season three of Outer Banks (154.97 million). Queen Charlotte has a smaller episode count (six, vs. 10 for the other three shows) and shorter running time (six hours, 49 minutes) than the others, which are all at least eight hours.

Queen Charlotte also holds up pretty well against the first week of Bridgerton’s second season in March 2022. The 8-episode, 8 1/2-hour season racked up 193 million hours of viewing in its first week. (Season one predates Netflix’s weekly lists of its top 10 shows.) Both seasons of the main series rank among Netflix’s top 10 English-language shows all time for viewing over their first 28 days of release.

After four days, Queen Charlotte has a chance to break into that all-time top 10. The current 10th-place show is another series from Rhimes’ Shondaland, Inventing Anna. It drew 511.92 million hours of viewing worldwide over its first 28 days; Queen Charlotte got 29 percent of the way to that total over its first four days.