Picture Credit: Netflix
Welcome to your weekly rundown of the biggest stories from Netflix’s top 10s for the week ending October 18th, 2026. This week, returning favorites and sophomore-week holds dominate the headlines as Below and Animals both post solid double-digit uplifts to retain their global crowns, while Keri Russell’s The Diplomat proves the enduring power of an annual release cadence with a confident Season 4 debut.
Elsewhere, it’s a mixed bag of fortunes across the catalog. While Mike Tyson lands another punchy docuseries debut and Love Is Blind returns for its eleventh outing, high-profile projects like Romain Gavras’s star-studded Sacrifice and the YA hopeful Hollywood Arts found themselves on the outside looking in. We’ll break down why those rollouts missed the mark, dive into new international hits from Germany and Argentina, and crunch the numbers on everything moving the needle this week.
Also, a quick note on Haunted Hotel: Season 2 featured in the top 10s this week (it failed to register in Week 1), and views were about on par with Season 1 for the second week, so depending on whether Netflix thinks this is good or bad, we should get a Season 3 renewal, which—full props to the creator—he’s ready to roll with.
The Diplomat Season 4 Returns Strong
The Diplomat. (L to R) Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, Rufus Sewell as Hal Wyler in episode 401 of The Diplomat. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026
If you’re in the camp that Netflix needs to release its series on an annual cadence, you’ll very much like the debut of The Diplomat Season 4, which debuted at #5 on the weekly charts with 4.8M views and hitting 58 countries’ top 10s. That should put at ease anyone who thinks Netflix might not bring the show back. With its awards prowess and now this strong return, it suggests people are sticking with it and that the pool of viewers is expanding. A positive note for a returning English-language series in 2026!
Sacrifice and Hollywood Arts Miss Top 10s
It’s always tough when a movie like Sacrifice comes out, given its very limited release on Netflix. Not in the sense that it got a limited theatrical release, but rather that it landed on Netflix in only two regions: the United States and France. While those are easily the two most captive audiences for this movie, it wasn’t enough to get it into the weekly top 10s, as it was beaten out by the likes of UNABOMBER in its fourth week and all of the Ice Age films in Week 2. It’s hard to compare it against too many titles given that even the likes of Hit Man had a larger rollout.
The movie hit #3 on Day 1 of the US daily top 10 charts and has risen to #2 ever since. In France, it hit #5 on October 17th and has been in the #3 spot ever since.
In the case of Hollywood Arts, you could argue that having a longer episode count of 12 worked against it, but having less than 2.5M views in Week 1 isn’t ideal. It puts it in Bet territory, which did get a renewal, to be fair, after a much better second week, and the lower cost of a show like this no doubt works in its favor; we’ll wait and see, but it’s not a near-instant renewal like we’ve seen with some of the other YA fare this year like Finding Her Edge or Crew Girl.
Below and Animals in Week 2
Picture Credit: Netflix
With a lighter schedule last week, Below and Animals once again topped the charts, but how are they doing in Week 2? We noted that Below was doing pretty well, and it’s kept its global #1 daily top 10 streak, as has Animals, but both debuted fairly in the middle of the pack compared to their peers in similar genres or against 2026 releases.
Starting with Animals, we saw a 29% uplift in viewing hours this week, which pretty much continues our conclusion on the film from Week 1: it’s not bad, it’s not excellent, but pretty much slap-bam in the middle when compared to 2026 releases and other titles in its genre.
Cr. Courtesy of Netflix© 2026
Next is Below, which got a 24% uplift in viewing hours in Week 2. That puts it in touching distance of some truly high-performing limited series like Griselda and The Perfect Couple, and considering horror (not true crime) usually works against series, this is a very impressive performance. I know the cast and crew all reiterated that this is a limited series, but don’t be surprised if we get more of some description.
TYSON
Mike Tyson is back on our Netflix subscriptions after the strange blockbuster live boxing event from two years ago (yes, really!) and will soon return in another project, but this week, we got the multi-part docuseries on the boxer with 5M views; that’s pretty decent. Not quite Neymar levels of popularity, but he’s still got some pull compared to other sports docuseries released on a Tuesday.
The Trap From Netflix Germany
Last Tuesday, a strange day and not the usual one when Netflix Germany drops its scripted titles, Netflix Germany launched The Trap, a new thriller series. There’s not much to compare it against on the German slate, with How to Sell Your Drugs being one of the few examples, with all other comps being reality TV, but there are a few other European titles from recent years to stack it up against:
Therapy Done Right from Netflix Argentina
3M views for the big Argentinian film Therapy Done Right, which launched on Friday. That puts it pretty close to all the other Friday movies from the country, with The Heart Knows still having the biggest debut by quite some margin.
Love Is Blind Season 11
Love Is Blind has had a meteoric rise on Netflix in the charts and still remains the most bankable Netflix reality IP globally, with more international variations than you can shake a stick at, but how is the US version doing? Season 11 dropped (with another variation of its name in the database, ruining my chart maker, so I have to use an image!) and it’s on par with Season 9, near enough, but notably down from recent heights. It’s still above some of the international variations, however.
Full Netflix Top 10s for October 12 to October 18, 2026
English TV
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Below: Limited Series | 86,400,000 (24.68%) | 21,200,000 | 2 |
| 2 | East of Eden: Limited Series | 43,300,000 (-50.63%) | 6,200,000 | 3 |
| 3 | Instadocs: AI Gone Wild | 2,300,000 | 5,100,000 | 1 |
| 4 | TYSON: Limited Series | 22,500,000 | 5,100,000 | 1 |
| 5 | The Diplomat: Season 4 | 33,500,000 | 4,800,000 | 1 |
| 6 | Love Is Blind: S11: Boston | 17,100,000 | 3,600,000 | 1 |
| 7 | Spike: Season 1 | 8,500,000 | 2,800,000 | 1 |
| 8 | Is It Cake? Halloween: Season 2 | 5,300,000 | 2,700,000 | 1 |
| 9 | Haunted Hotel: Season 2 | 9,100,000 | 2,700,000 | 1 |
| 10 | Raw: October 12, 2026 | 4,500,000 (4.65%) | 2,500,000 | 1 |
English Film
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Animals | 55,400,000 (29.44%) | 30,800,000 | 2 |
| 2 | Doing Life | 13,100,000 (-60.06%) | 7,300,000 | 3 |
| 3 | Ice Age: Collision Course | 10,200,000 (-32.45%) | 6,300,000 | 5 |
| 4 | Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs | 7,800,000 (-38.58%) | 4,900,000 | 5 |
| 5 | Ice Age | 6,600,000 (-57.42%) | 4,800,000 | 2 |
| 6 | Corpse Bride | 5,900,000 | 4,600,000 | 1 |
| 7 | Anyone But You | 7,700,000 | 4,400,000 | 4 |
| 8 | Ice Age: Continental Drift | 6,500,000 (-35.00%) | 4,300,000 | 2 |
| 9 | UNABOMBER | 7,000,000 (-42.15%) | 4,200,000 | 4 |
| 10 | Ice Age: The Meltdown | 5,600,000 (-52.94%) | 3,600,000 | 2 |
Non-English TV
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Doctor X: Mafia in White: Limited Series | 30,000,000 (203.03%) | 7,100,000 | 2 |
| 2 | Take Charge of My Heart: Limited Series | 67,800,000 (111.87%) | 6,400,000 | 2 |
| 3 | The Trap: Limited Series | 26,400,000 | 5,400,000 | 1 |
| 4 | 100 Days of Deception: Limited Series | 13,000,000 | 2,800,000 | 1 |
| 5 | Not a Stranger: Season 1 | 14,100,000 (-34.42%) | 2,100,000 | 5 |
| 6 | Inside The Circle: Season 1 | 12,300,000 (-6.11%) | 2,000,000 | 2 |
| 7 | Where the Mask Ends: Season 1 | 12,200,000 | 1,600,000 | 1 |
| 8 | STEEL BALL RUN JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: 2nd-3rd STAGE | 1,900,000 (5.56%) | 1,200,000 | 3 |
| 9 | The Apothecary Diaries: Season 3 | 1,400,000 (16.67%) | 1,200,000 | 2 |
| 10 | The Ramparts of Ice: Season 2 | 1,400,000 (16.67%) | 1,200,000 | 2 |
Non-English Film
| Rank | Title | Hours | Views | Week # |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Therapy Done Right | 4,900,000 | 3,000,000 | 1 |
| 2 | The Storm | 4,400,000 | 2,600,000 | 1 |
| 3 | Mandaadi | 5,600,000 (0.00%) | 2,200,000 | 2 |
| 4 | Reporting Live | 3,700,000 (15.63%) | 1,900,000 | 2 |
| 5 | Acid | 3,000,000 (-49.15%) | 1,800,000 | 2 |
| 6 | Facing El Chapo | 2,000,000 (0.00%) | 1,300,000 | 9 |
| 7 | Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle I | 3,100,000 (-39.22%) | 1,200,000 | 5 |
| 8 | Enna Vilai: The Price of Dignity | 2,400,000 | 1,200,000 | 1 |
| 9 | Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar | 3,000,000 | 1,100,000 | 2 |
| 10 | Crazy Rich, Incredibly Broke | 1,600,000 (-69.81%) | 1,000,000 | 3 |
What’s your biggest takeaway from the Netflix top 10s this week? Let us know in the comments.