Two Rankings, One Matthew Perry Documentary
Netflix's three-part Matthew Perry series was billed as steering clear of gossip and landed at No. 1 on one chart and No. 4 on another. The difference is in the counting.
Mia Perry Bowick is one of the voices at the center of The One About Matthew Perry. What's on Netflix says the three-part series is built around interviews with Perry's sister and "the lifelong friends and collaborators who knew him." Tom's Guide adds previously unreleased family photographs and videos. It says the series was developed with input from people who knew the Friends star before and after his peak sitcom fame.
The pitch is restraint. Tom's Guide describes a documentary on Perry's life, career and death, "choosing to steer clear of sensationalized Hollywood gossip." What's on Netflix says it covers his years on Friends and "the decades-long battle with addiction he wrote about so candidly in his own memoir." The site says the series arrived three years almost to the day after his death and that it "has landed hard."
How hard depends on whose chart you read. The same series is sitting at No. 1 and No. 4 at once, and both numbers come from published charts.
Start with the top spot. Tom's Guide's ranking puts the Perry documentary first, and its list is based on the Netflix U.S. top 10 shows as of Tuesday, Nov. 3. A headline on the What's on Netflix page agrees: "Matthew Perry Doc Series Debuts at #1." The page does not show that article's text or say what it measured.
The site's own weekly count gives a different number. It uses FlixPatrol data and awards points for each title's daily top 10 position from Oct. 25 through Nov. 1. By that count, the Perry series finished fourth among TV shows with 48 points. Nobody Wants This jumped from ninth to first with 70.
So one chart is a snapshot and the other is a running tally. A list taken on a single day shows what sits on top that day. A points table rewards how many days a title stayed near the top across a whole week. Without the exact day the series went up, this is a reading, not a finding. A show that arrives partway through a scoring week has fewer days to collect points. It could trail in the tally while leading the snapshot. Neither ranking, as published, gives a view count.
The week was also crowded with documentaries. What's on Netflix lists a true-crime series on the downfall of Sinaloa Cartel boss El Mayo Zambada. TVLine's schedule has Peacock's O.J.'s Accomplice, premiering Nov. 1, which TVLine says presents "previously unreported evidence that challenges the assumption that O.J. Simpson acted alone." It also lists Netflix's three-episode Taken: Natalee Holloway for Nov. 4. Next to that slate, a portrait sold on what it leaves out appears to be making a different offer than its neighbors.
Reception is the part that is still blank. "Landed hard" is one outlet's phrase, not a measure. The coverage quotes no critics, no viewers and no one from Perry's family on how the series turned out. For now, whether it kept its no-gossip promise rests on Tom's Guide's description.
So what number would show the series kept that promise? A chart can show that people pressed play. It cannot show what they saw.
“The same series is sitting at No. 1 and No. 4 at once, and both numbers come from published charts.”
