"The Empress" with the most successful Netflix start of a German-language series

A good ten days after its release, the German production "Die Kaiserin" is still number one in the current global Netflix top 10 non-English language series. According to Netflix's TV (Non-English) weekly top list, the series was streamed 59.4 million hours between October 3 and October 9. The series, which was released on September 29, was already in first place in the weekly charts last week – with 47.2 million hours watched in four days (September 29 to October 2). In total, this is almost 107 million hours.

Seven decades after the "Sissi" films with Romy Schneider and Karlheinz Böhm, Empress Elisabeth seems to be well received again all over the world as film material from Central Europe. While "The Empress" was in the top ten in 79 countries in its first week, it did so in 88 countries in its second week.

Netflix recently calculated that a large number of hours on Netflix means a huge audience: “Total number of streamed hours divided by the duration of the series”. As a result, within 11 days, the series was already running in approximately 18.7 million homes (106.6 million streamed hours divided by approximately 5.7 hours of series duration).

The six-part film, shot in cities such as Bamberg, Bayreuth and Dinkelsbühl as well as in the Babelsberg studio in Potsdam, is about the Austrian Empress Elisabeth. In 1854, Sisi (Devrim Lingnau), who came from Bavaria, experienced her first months at the scheming court of her husband Franz (Philip Froissant) in Vienna. Melika Foroutan plays the mother of the emperor, Johannes Nussbaum his younger brother.

In the Netflix top 10 for Germany, “The Empress” has made itself comfortable in second place overall – right behind the brutally successful US serial killer production “Dahmer: Monster”. It is the same in the USA, Canada, Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil, Norway, Greece, Hungary, Israel and Ukraine, for example.

In numerous other countries, the series by showrunner and screenwriter Katharina Eyssen has secured a place in the top five. For example, it is third in Poland, Sweden, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and fourth in South Africa and Mexico. It ranks sixth in India, Nigeria and Indonesia.

According to Netflix, "with 221 million paying members in over 190 countries, it is the largest streaming entertainment service in the world".