‘Ratched’ Hooks 48 Million Viewers In 28 Days, Becoming Netflix’s Most-Watched Debut Of 2020

Ratched, Ryan Murphy’s take on the notorious Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is Netflix’s most-watched original series debut of 2020.

Forty-eight million subscriber households have watched Ratched since its Sept. 18 premiere, the streaming service said in a tweet. Netflix rarely offers viewership stats, and didn’t give numbers for other 2020 debuts. However, for comparison, The Witcher was Netflix’s most-watched original series debut of 2019, and it was streamed by 76 million households in its first four weeks.

Worth noting: Netflix once only counted a “view” if a user watched at least 70% of a TV episode or movie. But in January, it dramatically–and controversially–changed its metric; now, users must watch only two minutes of an episode or movie (long enough to indicate choosing to watch “was intentional,” per Netflix) for their attention to count as a view.

Netflix said this shift immediately boosted its number of views by 35%.

Ratched, which stars Sarah Paulson as a younger, closeted version of the villain, was produced as part of Glee and American Horror Story creator Murphy’s $300 million deal with Netflix. It is the third project to emerge from the pair’s agreement, following 2019’s The Politician, starring Ben Platt as a ladder-climbing lawmaker, and recently bowed miniseries Hollywood, about the film industry’s post-World War II Golden Age.

Several other Murphy-Netflix projects are in development, including Halston, about famed fashion designer Roy Halston Frowick; a 10-episode adaptation of Broadway’s A Chorus Line; and Monster, a limited bioseries chronicling the life and crimes of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.