‘Accused’ Premiere Secures Hefty Delayed Viewing To Become Fox’s Highest-Rated & Most-Watched Drama Debut In 3 Years
EXCLUSIVE: Howard Gordon‘s crime anthology Accused has continued to rake in viewers since its Sunday premiere on Fox.
The debut episode, which aired after NFL on Fox on January 22, delivered more than 11.3M multi-platform viewers and a 2.3 rating among the advertiser-friendly 18-49 demographic in the three days after its premiere, according to data from Fox. That’s a fairly hefty increase from the 8.4M live+same-day audience.
The episode now ranks as television’s highest-rated and most-watched debut in nearly two years, since the premiere of NBC’s Law & Order: Organized Crime in April 2021.
That viewership includes an audience of 1.2M on Hulu and Fox Now, which makes the premiere Fox’s highest-rated, most-watched and most-streamed drama debut in three years, since 9-1-1: Lone Star debuted in January 2020. It is also Fox’s second most-streamed drama launch ever, behind only 9-1-1: Lone Star.
Last Sunday, Accused became the highest-rated and most-watched debut across broadcast or cable in the last three years with its live+same-day audience (excluding the 2021 Super Bowl lead-in, which helped earn CBS’ The Equalizer more than 20M viewers).
The episode had a lead-in from the Dallas Cowboys vs. San Francisco 49ers matchup. That’s always bound to boost ratings, but these debut numbers are pretty impressive even with an NFL lead-in.
Based on the BBC’s crime anthology, where each episode opens in a courtroom on the accused without knowing their crime or how they ended up on trial, Accused is told from the defendant’s point of view. In the Fox version, which is keeping the original’s anthology format, viewers discover how an ordinary person got caught up in an extraordinary situation, ultimately revealing how one wrong turn leads to another, until it’s too late to turn back.
The stellar cast includes Rachel Bilson, Whitney Cummings, Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin, Emmy winners Michael Chiklis, Margo Martindale, Molly Parker, Rhea Perlman, Malcolm-Jamal Warner along with Wendell Pierce, Jack Davenport and more.