Last year, my top five most-viewed new posts were dominated by TV reviews, with no film getting a look in until 10th place. This year, one film did crack the top five, in 5th place, with another making it into the top ten, in 7th.
Nonetheless, as this is supposedly a film blog, I’m still presenting the two separate top fives: first, which five sets of TV reviews attracted the most hits; then, which five film reviews were most visited. (You’d probably gathered that, but it’s always nice to be clear.)
5) The Past Month on TV #32
including A Series of Unfortunate Events season 2, Westworld season 1, Archer season 5 episodes 1-5, Line of Duty series 4, Lucifer season 2 episodes 1-10, and Episodes season 5 episode 1.
4) The Past Month on TV #29
including Blue Planet II, Little Women, Death in Paradise series 7 episodes 1-2, The Great Christmas Bake Off, and the Not Going Out Christmas special.
3) The Past Month on TV #31
including Jessica Jones season 2, Strike series 2, Shetland series 4, Nailed It! season 1, Lucifer season 1, the 90th Academy Awards, Absentia season 1 episodes 7-10, The Great Stand Up to Cancer Bake Off series 1 episodes 1-3, and Not Going Out series 9 episodes 1-2.
2) The Past Month on TV #30
including Strike series 1, The Good Place season 2, Absentia season 1 episodes 1-6, The X Files season 11 episode 1, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. season 1 episodes 1-4, Murder on the Blackpool Express, The Brokenwood Mysteries series 3 episode 1, Castle season 8 episodes 16-22, Death in Paradise series 7 episodes 3-7, and Vera series 8 episodes 2-4.
1) The Past Month on TV #38
including Bodyguard series 1, Jack Ryan season 1, Iron Fist season 2, Upstart Crow series 3 episodes 1-3, Reported Missing series 2 episode 1, Daniel Sloss: Live Shows, Hang Ups series 1 episodes 4-6, The Imitation Game series 1 episodes 1-3, and Magic for Humans season 1 episodes 4-6.
#38’s victorious position is thanks to the Bodyguard review, which I published after the series ended in the UK but before it debuted on Netflix in the US. Clearly it attracted attention over there: that post received almost twice as many hits as the one in 2nd place, and more than four times as many as 5th place.
5) Black Panther
A cultural phenomenon, the highest grossing film of the year in the US, and a contender this awards season — no wonder this was a popular post.
4) The Night Comes for Us
This is the first of two Netflix Originals in the top five. A small enough number that it could just be a coincidence, sure, but if I widened this list out to be a top 15, it’d include nine Netflix exclusives. I’m sure you could read many different things into that, but here’s one: I tend to watch and review new Netflix releases quicker than new cinema releases, so the demand for those reviews is higher at time of posting. Plus, the more niche something is, the fewer reviews there are, and so the more likely people are to find your review. Not that anyone would describe half this list as “niche”…
3) Black Mirror: Bandersnatch
In just 70 hours, this review managed enough page views to land itself as my 12th most-visited new post of the year, which is some going, really. Well, I did get it out lickety-split (within 24 hours of the film’s release), and it was a much-talked-about event. It’ll be interesting to see what its legs are like.
2) The Man from Earth: Holocene
My top two swing almost from one extreme to the other. First, this belated sequel to the cult favourite sci-fi drama, which was certainly an under-the-radar release. That made my review a relatively early one, and as it was published in mid January it’s had almost the whole year to top up its count.
1) Avengers: Infinity War
The highest-grossing film of 2018, and one of the highest of all time (only the fourth ever to take over $2 billion at the box office), it shouldn’t be a surprise that this was my most-read film review of the year — in fact, it’s already my fourth most-read film review ever. And yet it is a bit of a surprise, because people have plenty of choice when it comes to write-ups of mega-blockbusters, which is why much of this list is filled out with smaller or Netflix movies. I guess that’s the power of Marvel. Or something.
One final observation: Infinity War’s views were heavily front-loaded — it gained enough hits in April alone to land it in this top five — with just a trickle ever since. Holocene was also front-loaded (the vast majority of posts are), but at this point it’s actually getting more hits per month than Infinity War. It’s currently my fifth most-read film review ever, but maybe at some point in 2019 it’ll leapfrog the Avengers film. Funny how these things go.
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