As I have often mentioned before, when a streaming company releases viewing data, there is almost certainly something the streamer isn't telling you. Either the numbers are lacking context or sometimes they are just cherrypicked in a way that makes them close to useless.
Which brings me this Hollywood Reporter piece "‘Chimp Crazy’ on Pace for Multi-Year Viewer Highs for HBO Doc Series." Sounds impressive, huh?:
The second episode of Chimp Crazy on Aug. 25 drew 350,000 first-night viewers on HBO and Max. The show’s premiere episode, meanwhile, has grown to 2.3 million viewers across platforms over a week, putting on pace to outdraw any HBO doc series in the past four-plus years. Chimp Crazy’s premiere is running a little ahead of another recent high-profile docuseries on the channel: The first episode of The Jinx Part 2 delivered 2 million viewers over the same amount of time.
Now, if you have a good memory, you might think "Hmm..what about Quiet On Set documentary? Are they saying Chimp Crazy is doing even better than that popular docuseries? Um...maybe not. First, Quiet On Set also aired on Investigation Discovery, not HBO. Which allows the fine folks at Max to dodge that comparison. And even if you were to dig up the numbers for Quiet On Set, there's no easy way to compare it with Chimp Crazy. Even though Quiet On Set was described as a Max series by a lot of reporters:
The show, which streamed on Max concurrent with its on-air premiere on ID, had 1.25 billion minutes of viewing for the week of March 18-24. That’s the largest weekly total for any series on Max in the nearly four years of Nielsen’s streaming rankings, edging out the 1.19 billion for The Last of Us in early 2023. (It’s worth noting that Quiet on Set debuted four episodes on March 17 and 18, whereas The Last of Us had a weekly release schedule.)
So which docuseries has been watched by the most people? Well, given that Chimp Crazy is newer, it's likely in second place. But given that Max released first week viewing numbers for Chimp Crazy, but depended on Nielsen to report viewing numbers for Quiet On Set, we just don't know.
