Chalk this one up to odd timing and the lag in reporting for Nielsen’s streaming ratings: A day after news broke that Netflix had canceled its series The Boroughs, the Nielsen numbers show it had a strong premiere week.
The Boroughs, executive produced by Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer, had 1.2 billion minutes of viewing in the United States for the week of May 18-24 (the show premiered May 21). It finished second overall, behind another Netflix drama, Nemesis (1.31 billion minutes).
At a run time of six hours, 15 minutes, The Boroughs had about 3.2 million views (total viewing minutes divided by run time) in the U.S. for the week. That’s about 57 percent of the 5.6 million worldwide views Netflix reported for the show’s first week (though the streamer and Nielsen have different ways of collecting data).
Nemesis grew by 57 percent from its premiere week. In another odd coincidence, both Nemesis and The Boroughs come from creatives who have since moved to other media companies. Nemesis creator Courtney A. Kemp signed a deal with Apple TV in May, and the Duffer brothers moved to Paramount earlier in the year.
The Boys scored 1.07 billion minutes of watch time for the week of its series finale on Prime Video. It was the show’s third straight week over a billion minutes; Nielsen says the series has amassed more than 50 billion minutes of viewing since January 2020, when the ratings service started tracking weekly streaming viewing.
Dutton Ranch (736 million minutes) improved a little with the release of its third episode on Paramount+. Another Yellowstone spinoff, CBS’ Marshals, also made its first appearance on the acquired series chart with 528 million viewing minutes on Paramount+ and Pluto TV. Off Campus (690 million minutes) grew by 34 percent from its debut on Prime Video.
Netflix’s documentary The Crash led the movie top 10 with 1.18 billion minutes of watch time. Jack Ryan: Ghost War, a feature film based on the Prime Video series, had a solid 809 million minutes for its first five days.
Nielsen’s streaming ratings cover viewing on TV sets only and don’t include minutes watched on computers or mobile devices. The ratings only measure U.S. audiences. The top streaming titles for May 18-24, 2026, are below.
