There is now a more up to date version of this report – here.

Mid-July 2025 Netflix released their “what we watched the first half of 2025” report (here). I downloaded it, extracted the comedian rows and then fed it all into the 2023/4 data (and I’ve been tinkering with the data, on and off, since then). Trying to make sense of it and find a way to document my analysis as succinctly as possible.

Netflix first started releasing viewing data in 2023, starting from January 1^st. Which means we now have 2.5 years’ worth of information.

I last looked at the reports back in March so I won’t repeat what was said in this post about how the data is rounded, Hours Viewed versus Views etc. etc.

All of the figures below relate to Hours Viewed. There’s too much information to include analysis for “Views” as well.

I’ve spent so long faffing around with this – my brain is frazzled. If you spot a flaw in my logic…please leave a comment!

Rows Removed

I removed some rows of data to try and just get at the headlines. For example:

• Kennedy Centre Awards because they are not stand-up specials
• Ditto Mark Twain Prize Events
• Some people with only 1-3 specials (that were quite old) slipped down my spreadsheets because they were under 5m. Examples would be Carlos Ballarta, Demetri Martin, George Lopez, Hasan Minhaj, Jerry Seinfeld, Louis CK, Mark Normand, Michelle Wolf, Pete Holmes, Russell Peters, Sarah Silverman, Sheng Wang.

With that last group it appears some people now post specials on their own websites and some may have deals that keep their specials on Netflix only for a year or two.

Comics With Most “Hours Viewed”

The Americans are WAY out in front here with Ricky / Jimmy being the only Brits in the Top 25. Their “chart positions” look lower than on the last report because I have included more names on this report. And the new names happened to be Americans with big viewing numbers!

Part of the problem with looking at these figures is the wide disparity in (1) release dates and (2) age of the special. And not all specials have a date in the Release Date field.

Jim Gaffigan, for example, has 6 specials but they are all releases from 2006-2021. Presumably (1) he is publishing his work somewhere else now and (2) his relatively low numbers (for his level of success) is down to how old these shows are.

And Michael McIntyre (4 specials) and Sean Lock (3) had data rows with no release dates appear (fairly old shows).

Having looked at the above I then wondered what the data would look like if I removed all specials older than January 2016. Within this timeframe Jimmy (and many other people on this list) still have the same number of specials / views. Although he has moved up from 23^rd to 20^th.

And then I ran the numbers again – but with only specials released post Jan 2021. Jimmy is then down to only 2 specials – but has moved up a spot to 19^th.

Using the 3 timeframes above the other Brits listed achieved these positions:

• Jack Whitehall – 30^th / 29^th / 32^nd
• Michael McIntyre – 36^th / 35^th / dropped off the list
• Micky Flanagan – 35^th / dropped off the list

Jimmy Carr Specials

• Mar 2016 – Funny Business – here
• Mar 2019 – Ultimate Gold – here
• Dec 2021 – His Dark Material
• Apr 2024 – Natural Born Killer

As mentioned in the previous stats analysis – the problem we have here is that the Netflix data only starts Jan 2023 and so the first 3 specials had the bulk of their viewing figures before counting started.

Looking at Jan 2023 to Jun 2025 the 4 of them were viewed for a total of 11.4m hours:

• Funny Business – 1.5m (3391 days since release)
• Ultimate Gold – 1.5m (2302 days)
• His Dark Material – 3.2m (1283 days)
• Natural Born Killer – 5.2m (440 days)

Top Brits?

The only British comedian with more hours viewed was Ricky Gervais, with 3 specials (released between 2018 and 2025) totalling 32.1m.

• Ricky Gervais – 32.1m – 3 specials
• Jimmy Carr – 11.4m – 4 specials
• Jack Whitehall – 6.6m – 3 specials
• Micky Flanagan – 4.3m – 2 specials
• James Acaster – 3.1m – 1 special (over 3 hours long so, technically, 3 specials?)
• Michael McIntyre – 2.5m – 5 specials
• Greg Davies – 2.3m – 3 specials
• Kevin Bridges – 1.9m – 2 specials
• Russell Howard – 1.9m – 2 specials
• Romesh Ranganathan – 1.9m – 2 specials

The Top 3 are reflecting the same pattern as the 3 Brits with the Most Followers (here) as of August 1^st 2025:

• Ricky Gervais – 25,155,000
• Jimmy Carr – 16,412,511
• Jack Whitehall – 16,050,077

Micky only uses YouTube, so doesn’t feature in that report.

Average Hours Viewed Per Day

My next attempt to make sense of the data was to work out how many days, since release, for each of the British specials and then derive a daily average by dividing the Total Hours Viewed by Total Days Released.

Again – this is not a flawless method as older specials (pre-2023) will already have had their biggest figures before counting began (so this favours newer specials).

It just gives us another view on what was being watched, across the 2.5 years.

If we just view the figures for the first half of 2025, I can see that Jimmy / Ricky’s latest specials are in pretty similar positions to my view of “Total Hours Viewed” for Brits. Too many spreadsheets and slices of the data to replicate here.

James Acaster’s Repertoire is a bit of an anomaly here in that it’s 3 hours 26 long (and most specials are only an hour). I’m also not sure what %age of a show you have to watch for it to count within the stats as a “view”.

Summary

Whichever way I sliced and diced it the UK’s 2 most successful comedians are:

• Ricky Gervais
• Jimmy Carr

After those 2 would be Jack Whitehall (albeit around 5m view behind Jimmy, depending on the timeframe) and then Micky Flanagan / Michael McIntyre have 4.3m views each.