The Big Streaming Hits Of August Were ‘Stranger Things’ (Duh) And ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ (…Huh)

As summer comes to a bitter, swelteringly hot end, it might not come as a surprise that people were watching a lot of TV. Between new COVID variants, monkeypox, and the historic heat waves, it makes sense that most people would want to spend their time inside right now, preferably in the air conditioning with some Netflix blaring in the background, pretending that the outside world simply does not exist. What is surprising is that after all this time, Stranger Things is still sitting comfortably atop the most-streamed list.

According to Nielsen data for the week of August 1-7, fans of the sci-fi series watched 1.424 billion (!) minutes of Netflix’s hit, which is still going strong when it comes to TikTok trends. The last two episodes of the fourth season dropped in early July, meaning that people have either been 1) rewatching the show at lightning speed, or 2) finally catching up after and watching for the first time after seeing allllll those very normal memes. Following Stranger Things is the romantic drama Virgin River, which accumulated 1.389 billion minutes viewed after the fourth season dropped on July 20th.

Of the top 10, the only non-Netflix title is Lightyear, which premiered on Disney+ on August 3rd. Buzz and his perfect cat sidekick Sox racked up 1.306 billion minutes viewed. Still, they were unable to beat out those pesky stranger kids! The Sandman managed to score 1.021 billion minutes, though that number has likely gone up since the series was only out for one day when the data was gathered.

Finally, Grey’s Anatomy rounded out the top 10, probably because there are 396 episodes and if you get enough people to just stream one single episode, you are bound to break some sort of record.