Bridgerton season two sets Netflix opening weekend viewing record

Bridgerton has broken Netflix’s streaming record for views after its opening weekend.

The second season, which launched on the platform on Friday (25 March), focuses on the relationship between Viscount Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) and heiress Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley).

Despite fans’ fears that the departure of Regé-Jean Page would harm the show, its popularity has remained and it quickly took the UK number one spot on the Netflix chart.

Since its premiere, season two of Bridgerton has amassed 193 million hours of viewing time worldwide – the highest for any English-language Netflix series in its first three days.

As well as this, the new batch of episodes made the top 10 in 92 of the 93 countries where Netflix keeps track of rankings. The only country in which it didn’t make the top 10 was Japan.

Its opening weekend total is only bested by part five of the Spanish-language thriller series Money Heist. The final drop of those episodes in September 2021 racked up 201.9 million hours in its first three days, according to Netflix’s internal measurements.

Bridgerton’s first season, which debuted in December 2020, became the streaming service’s most-watched original series after 82 million member accounts tuned in during its first 28 days.

However, this was surpassed in October 2021 with the launch of acclaimed dystopian drama Squid Game, which had 111 million people watching in its first month.

You can read The Independent’s review of Bridgerton season two here.