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Friends Shoots to Top of TV Streaming Charts Following Matthew Perrys Death

“Friends” was the No. 1 most popular show on U.S. streaming services in the past week, according to new data — coming after news of series star Matthew Perry‘s death.

For the week of Oct. 30-Nov. 5, “Friends” (which is available on Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max) was the top-ranked TV show among American viewers, according to data compiled by streaming guide JustWatch. That was followed by limited series “All the Light We Cannot See” on Netflix and “Gen V” on Amazon’s Prime Video (see complete top 10 below).

In the U.S., “Friends” became exclusively available on Max (then called HBO Max) when the streaming service debuted in May 2020, after five years on Netflix. Shortly after Perry died at the age of 54, on Saturday, Oct. 28, Max added a tribute card that now appears at the start of each season in his honor.

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Note that the rankings from JustWatch are based on self-reported data from its users, so it’s different from passive measurement service such as Nielsen’s Streaming Content Ratings. JustWatch says its weekly charts are calculated by user activity within the last seven days, which includes clicking on a streaming offer, adding a title to a watchlist and marking a title as “seen.” The U.S. rankings includes data from about 9.3 million users per week. Worldwide, JustWatch claims it has around 40 million users across 139 countries.

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Meanwhile, “Friends” does not appear on Max’s top 10 TV shows list, but according to WBD content must be recently added to Max to be included as part of that ranking. 

“Friends” originally aired for 10 seasons on NBC, from 1994-2004. The show follows the lives of six 20-something New Yorkers who live in the same apartment building: siblings Ross (David Schwimmer) and Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), along with Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) and Chandler Bing (Perry).

The show was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, who executive produced “Friends” with Kevin Bright through Bright/Kauffman/Crane Prods. in association with Warner Bros. Television.

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