Series Snapshot ~ 12/4/25

By: [email protected] on Thu, 12/04/2025 - 15:31

Welcome to the Series Snapshot, a weekly deep dive into the shows topping the streaming

Charts.

This week, Netflix’s pop-culture behemoth Stranger Things is the most watched series, ahead of The Beast in Me. The 80’s inspired adventure series first aired July 15, 2016, and has proven to have almost a decade-worth of staying power in the zeitgeist and viewership. In fact, in the first five days of the new season premiere, Stranger Things garnered nearly sixty-million views, the most ever for an English language series on the platform. Stranger Things is currently in its fifth and final season, spreading the release of several episodes across the month of December with the final, two-hour episode, “The Right Side Up” to release New Year’s Eve on Netflix and select theatres. Praise for the series remains quite high, despite some critics pointing out some obvious discrepancy in the ages of the actors vs. the characters they are playing. Viewers appreciate the season’s return to form and focus on character development, and Netflix seemingly spared no expense on visual effects and stunning setpieces. Stranger Things stars Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, and Millie Bobby Brown, and was created by Matt and Ross Duffer.

Once again, the star-studded All’s Fair takes the most-watched title for Hulu, an impressive feat for a series with an astoundingly low 3% rating on RottenTomatoes. All’s Fair captures what we all love about bad-television, cringey line-reads, a contrived plot and absurd lack of self-awareness, or so we thought. Creator Ryan Murphy’s bewildering casting of Kim Kardashian may have been strategic, the star is so globally recognized, that whether the show was good or bad, people would flock out of curiosity. The show seems to be SO bad in fact, that it’s hard to think it isn’t tongue-in-cheek, and audiences seem to have come around to enjoying it on an ironic level. Maybe Murphy took inspiration from Leo Bloom from The Producers, “under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than he could with a hit!"

It: Welcome to Derry enjoys its sixth week running as HBO’s current number one series. The horror-drama is nearing the end of its first season, with just two episodes remaining including the finale on December 14. The show's first few episodes generated quite a bit of buzz and momentum. Pain points for the series that audiences and critics point out include an overuse of cheap CGI, lackluster child acting and inconsistent pacing, but most agree the show succeeds in its world-building, character development and suspense. Fan-favorite Bill Skarsgaard always receives glowing reviews for his reprisal of the killer-clown Pennywise,

There’s clearly huge demand for teen romance-dramas; Amazon’s top two shows this week are once again Maxton Hall: The World Between Us and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Maxton Hall is a German series based on the Save Me novels by Mona Kasten, and is praised for its strong acting from leads Harriet Herbig-Matten and Damien Hardung, whose electric chemistry is the show’s main selling point. Maxton Hall scores very well in general with audiences, but slightly less so with critics, who commend the performances but note an over-reliance on hackneyed tropes often present in the genre, without any subversion of expectations. Despite its predictability, Maxton Hall is often called “comfort food for teens”.

AppleTV’s original series have had a fantastic year, with hits like Severance, Murderbot, Slow Horses and The Morning Show to name a few. But they may have saved the best for last, as it seems everyone is watching the new Vince Gilligan led Pluribus, which takes most watched of the week again. Initially landing phenomenal reviews, including a few perfect scores, Pluribus enthusiasm has softened, but only marginally. A slowly paced third episode caused some to pull away, but as the show’s momentum builds, viewership remains immensely high. Called “inventive” and “refreshing” by critics, the sci-fi dark comedy is perhaps most successful thanks to the powerhouse performance of Rhea Seehorn, who plays one of the final remaining humans who can’t assimilate with the hivemind, of which there are twelve. Pluribus has already been renewed for a second season, to begin filming in 2026.

For Disney+, the most watched series is Zootopia+, following the highly anticipated theatrical release of Zootopia 2. Zootopia+ is a new series of shorts that expand the premise of the original Zootopia film. Each short is a distinct genre, musical, reality TV, and even a spoof of The Godfather. Each six to nine minute episode examines auxiliary characters in the Zootopia universe, fleshing out their backstories with cleverness and charm. Despite the massive success of the films, the miniseries spin-off has critics and audiences split; critics rate the short series extremely high, going so far as to call the Godfather parody a masterpiece, whereas audiences aren’t as captivated and don’t find the series necessary to watch, rather just filler. It doesn’t seem any corner cutting was done in the development; the shorts remain as visually stunning as the films with captivating and creative animatio. The beloved Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman return to reprise their roles of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, to the delight of fans.