Netflix Loves Ryan Murphy: ‘The Watcher’ and ‘Dahmer’ Named Streamer’s Top 2 Most Watched Shows

Netflix King Ryan Murphy is seeing another week of success on the streamer. The creator of both The Watcher and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story saw both of his shows top the Netflix charts this week, according to the platform itself.

Netflix shared today that Murphy’s two series hold the top two spots in its Top 10 chart. Currently, The Watcher sits at No. 1, while Dahmer isn’t far behind in the No. 2 slot. The Watcher debuted just last Thursday (Oct. 13), but it has already pulled in 125.01 million hours viewed.

Dahmer has been around a bit longer, having debuted on Netflix in September, but the show is still going strong with viewers. As of this week, Murphy’s serial killer drama has brought in an additional 122.78 million hours viewed, according to Netflix, and has pulled in 824.15 million hours total.

Together, the shows have some pretty impressive stats for not just Netflix, but for Murphy, whose previous creations include Glee, Scream Queens, American Horror Story and Pose, among others.

According to Netflix, Murphy’s Dahmer is the streamer’s “biggest series debut on record,” having pulled in 196.2 million hours viewed in just its first five days on the platform. The Watcher marks yet another No. 1 series debut for Murphy, and it’s just four weeks after Dahmer dropped.

And not only are the two shows dominating the platform: Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, also produced by Murphy, is sitting pretty in the Film Top 10 for the second week in a row.

With the success of both The Watcher, Dahmer, and the Stephen King adaptation Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, it certainly seems like Netflix subscribers are in full-on dark and spooky mode this Halloween. Neither series (or movie) is as light as Glee, but both are about as brooding as AHS.

The Watcher follows a family who “moves into what was supposed to be their suburban dream home,” only to realize their abode is more of “a living hell,” according to the series’ logline. After they begin receiving letters from an anonymous sender only know as “The Watcher,” the family begins to discover “sinister secrets” in their New Jersey home.

Murphy’s Dahmer series tells the story of the infamous serial killer with a focus on Dahmer’s victims. The series depicts Dahmer’s “unconscionable crimes” and is “centered around the underserved victims and their communities impacted by the systemic racism and institutional failures of the police that allowed one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade,” per Netflix.

Murphy signed a $300 million deal with Netflix back in 2018, and has rolled out plenty of originals for the streamer since, including Ratched, Hollywood and The Politician. Up next, he has a second season of Ratched, plus an adaptation of A Chorus Line, an untitled Marlene Dietrich project, and more.

Both The Watcher and Dahmer are now streaming in full on Netflix.