Streaming Ratings: The Diplomat Secures Top Spot

Netflix’s political drama, The Diplomat, has soared to the number one spot on Nielsen’s streaming charts, experiencing a significant increase in viewership from its premiere week. The show garnered about 1.24 billion minutes of viewing time in the week of Oct. 20-26, marking a 36 percent growth from the previous week. This surge in viewership propelled The Diplomat to knock Monster: The Ed Gein Story out of the top position. Notably, this marked The Diplomat’s best weekly performance since the second week of its first season back in 2023. Nielsen reports that a solid 72 percent of the show’s viewing time, or approximately 889 minutes, came from the newly released third season, with the remaining being dedicated to prior episodes.

The streamer’s true-crime documentary, The Perfect Neighbor, also saw a substantial increase in viewership, growing by 26 percent week-over-week and amassing 1.01 billion viewing minutes. In third place overall was the rom-com, Nobody Wants This, with 904 million minutes of watch time following the premiere of its second season on Oct. 23. However, this figure was down by about 13 percent from its series premiere the previous year.

After three weeks as the top streaming title, The Ed Gein Story slipped out of the overall top 10, ranking fourth among original series with 571 million viewing minutes. On the other hand, Stranger Things had its best week of 2025 yet, with 524 million viewing minutes, one month ahead of the premiere of its final season.