The fourth season of Reacher muscled its way back to the top of the streaming charts.
The Prime Video series starring Alan Ritchson drew 1.5 billion minutes of viewing time in the week of Aug. 10-16. That number is for all seasons of Reacher, but Nielsen notes that 79 percent of that time — about 1.19 billion minutes — was devoted just to the three episodes of the new season that premiered Aug. 12. That still would have led the week.
The opening week for Reacher season four wasn’t quite as huge as prior seasons (which drew between 1.69 billion and 1.84 billion minutes), but it still goes down as the show’s fifth best showing ever in the Nielsen rankings.
Apple TV’s Ted Lasso (966 million viewing minutes) and Paramount+’s Lioness (955 million) both improved week to week and came in just under the billion-minute mark. Lioness also recorded its highest weekly total so far. YA shows My Life With the Walter Boys on Netflix (935 million) and Sterling Point on Prime Video (401 million) also grew in the week after their season premieres.
The Big Bang Theory scored its fifth consecutive week with more than a billion viewing minutes, leading the acquired series chart by a sizable margin with 1.09 billion. The Simpsons (484 million minutes on Hulu and Disney+) made its first top 10 appearance since 2024.
One notable absence: FX’s The Shards, whose third and fourth episodes debuted Aug. 12. Since the show airs on FX in addition to streaming on Hulu, it may be classified as an acquired series, which makes the bar for entry into the top 10 higher. Love Story also didn’t make any Nielsen top 10 list earlier in the year despite FX touting its viewing numbers, likely for the same reason. The only recent FX-produced shows to make the streaming charts are The Bear, Alien: Earth and Shōgun, all of which Nielsen classified as originals.
On the movie chart, Netflix’s The Last House repeated as No. 1 with 869 million viewing minutes. The streaming premiere of the Michael Jackson biopic Michael on Starz was fourth with 275 million minutes, marking the first time a Starz-exclusive title has made the rankings.
Nielsen’s streaming ratings cover viewing on TV sets only and don’t include minutes watched on computers or mobile devices. The ratings only measure U.S. audiences. The top streaming titles for Aug. 10-16, 2026, are below.
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