Netflix's biggest "new" show is actually over a decade old

Netflix’s biggest “new” show is actually over a decade old

Rory Cashin

The series has become a huge, out-of-nowhere, absolutely massive hit.

One show has absolutely dominated the conversation in terms of streaming in the last few weeks, and that show is Suits. Originally airing in this part of the world on terrestrial TV channel Dave, Netflix added the legal drama to its streaming service in June, and in the weeks since then, it has become an unbelievable hit.

In a report by Deadline, they revealed that Suits racked up almost 3.7 billion minutes viewed in the States alone… in just one week. That is a new record for the most-watched, non-original show on a streaming service ever, and while it doesn’t quite measure up to the still-record-holding number set by a Netflix Original Series (that would be Squid Game, which tallied 24.75 billion minutes in a week worldwide), it is still hugely impressive.

But the report also indicates that all of these numbers are still within the early seasons of Suits, so we’re not even near the peak of the show’s newfound popularity on Netflix, as we get more concurrent viewers watching across all nine seasons of the show.

For comparison of its popularity, in the week that Suits had 3.67 billion minutes viewed, the second most popular show across all of streaming was the new season of The Lincoln Lawyer, which 1.4 billion minutes viewed, and in third place was the new season of The Witcher, with just under 1.2 billion minutes viewed.

The reasons why Suits has suddenly become popular again

Having debuted in June 2011, Suits is set at a fictional New York City law firm, following the story of college dropout Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), who talks his way into a job as an associate working for successful “closer” attorney Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht).

Joined by Meghan Markle, Gina Torres and, in later seasons, Katherine Heigl, the show focused on Mike and Harvey winning lawsuits and closing cases, all while keeping Mike’s secret about his lack of proper legal education a secret.

The show was a hit with critics during its initial run, scoring an average of 90% with reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes, with seasons 4, 5, 6 and 8 all reaching 100% on the review aggregate website.

As for why the show has suddenly found a new peak in popularity, The Washington Post puts it down to “a variety of factors, including its stars, its episodes and the organic growth it has seen through social media. […] The hashtag #SuitsOnNetflix is trending on X, the site formerly known as Twitter. Fans are pointing out their favourite moments, and TikTokers have posted videos of people reenacting and parodying scenes.”

All 134 episodes from the nine seasons of Suits are available to watch on Netflix right now.