Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has quickly become one of Netflix’s biggest ever television series.
The Ryan Murphy limited series, which stars Evan Peters as the notorious serial killer, has racked up 299.84M hours viewed during its second week on the service.
This puts it behind only Stranger Things 4 as Netflix’s second most watched English-language series in a week.
This is on top of the 196.2M hours watched in its first week after its launch on September 21.
For context, the fourth season of Stranger Things started with 301M hours viewed and its second tranche of episodes were viewed 335M.
The limited series has also surpassed the second season of Bridgerton, which topped off with 252M hours viewed.
It has become the ninth most popular series on Netflix after only nine days with 496.05M hours viewed. This puts it above season four of Ozark, which was watched for 491M hours in its first 28 days and only marginally behind the second season of 13 Reasons Why with 496.1M hours.
One would have to imagine that with a full 28 days viewing, Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story will move into the top five – the fifth season of Lucifer was watched for 569M hours and it could top Bridgerton’s second season with 656M hours. The fourth season of Stranger Things was watched for 1.35B hours during its first month.
It also puts it into the conversation alongside Squid Game, and the Duffer Brothers aforementioned supernatural series, as one of the streamer’s most successful originals ever.
Netflix changed the way that it reports viewing figures since June 2021 but using the old metric Dahmer – Monster was seen by 56M households using its old metric in less than two weeks (496M hours viewed divided by 8.8 hours). However, even this isn’t comparing apples to apples because those numbers are people who have watched the whole season rather than just perhaps dipping in to an episode.
Peters stars as the notorious serial killer in the ten-part series, which is largely told from the point of view of Dahmer’s victims, and dives deeply into the police incompetence and apathy that allowed the Wisconsin native to go on a multiyear killing spree. The series dramatizes at least 10 instances where Dahmer was almost apprehended but ultimately let go.
Niecy Nash also stars in the series, along with Richard Jenkins, Molly Ringwald and Michael Learned.
The series comes from Murphy and Ian Brennan, who created it and exec produce alongside Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, Evan Peters, Janet Mock, and Carl Franklin.
