It is arcane.
There is a service called Netflix.
We haven't heard them singing the praises of one show as much as they should because they only care about eyeballs. For a time, Arcane was a top show in a number of countries, but it wasn't planted there for weeks like some other series, and it didn't take over the entire planet's conversation like Squid Game.
The results are still stunning, even as we end 2021, as I have been looking back at Arcane's performance in what we can measure. I thought that its high scores might go down over time, but that has not happened.
All of the following are available on various online review sites.
It seems insane that only 22 critics scored reviews for Arcane, which is a 100% critic average. Some of the shows on the streaming service have gotten 100%s.
The show has a record audience score on the Tomatoes. Pick the most prestigious, beloved series you can think of, and you will find that even The Crown and The Witcher are still just at a 91% audience score.
I can find no other new show with a higher user rating than Arcane, and the highest user score of any series, in any year.
There are 99,000 ratings for Arcane on Imbibe. This is the highest of any of the original series on the service. The top 5 scripted shows on that site are: Band of Brothers, Chernobyl, The Wire, and Breaking Bad.
It is arcane.
There is a service called Netflix.
120 million global hours are the only numbers we have from the company. It is far away from a monster like Squid Game, which is currently watched at 2.1 billion hours.
It is a weird case. It was largely ignored by most traditional TV critics, despite only 22 scored reviews and no score from Metacritic. In the face of other megahits, it was relatively little of a topic for the company. But people? Audiences can't stop talking about the user score records that are put up on every site that tracks them, both for Netflix and for Arcane, propelling them into a tier full of all-time greats as well.
We don't have to worry. Riot may do other shows based in the world as well, and even pursue live-action projects as well, after the second season of Arcane was confirmed on the day season 1 ended. The only question is whether they will be able to produce a miracle like this for another season or five.
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