How Suits became TV’s most popular show? Suits is having a significant rebirth in popularity twelve years after its first episode aired on US cable TV.
According to Nielsen’s streaming statistics, the series has received more than 12.8 billion minutes of viewing in the United States in the four weeks since it was added to Netflix, where it is also available on NBC-owned streaming service Peacock.
It has twice beaten the record for the most-streamed programme in a single measuring week in the United States.
These are impressive figures for any show, let alone a drama that aired its final episode in 2019 and could have easily gone from memory. So, why is 2023 being dubbed the “Summer of Suits”?
Suits is a fast-paced, erotic drama created and produced by Aaron Korsh that follows Mike Ross (Patrick J Adams), a college dropout who uses his photographic memory to blag his way into a top legal career.
He works for attorney Harvey Spectre (Gabriel Macht), and together they do all possible to win cases while keeping his secret hidden.
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The series also stars Rick Hoffman as Louis Litt, a cutthroat and dishonest financial-law partner, and Meghan Markle as bright paralegal Rachel Zane, now the Duchess of Sussex.
Could the increasing popularity of Suits on Netflix be due to Markle? It’s probable that initial interest in the project stems from her breakout TV role – her lone starring part to date.
After all, she was relatively unknown prior to Suits and is now one of the world’s most famous women.
Her and her husband’s other Netflix effort, the docu-series Harry & Meghan, was the platform’s most-watched show in 2022, indicating that users are interested in her.
“For people who haven’t watched Suits before, they may have heard of it because of Meghan Markle and are curious to see her act,” Suits fan Alicia Johnson adds.
“It usually takes me a few episodes to get into a show, but Suits had one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen. It had me gripped from the start,” says Johnson, 38, from London, who originally watched the show on TV but is now rewatching it on Netflix.
She was drawn to Suits because of its sharp dialogue and the mixture of comedy, romance and dramatic plot twists.
She also liked its array of female characters, including Jessica Pearson – the firm’s no-nonsense managing partner, played by Gina Torres. “For the time, it was quite a diverse cast,” she says. “And there was a black woman in charge.”
How Suits became TV’s most popular show
Suits being added to Netflix, the world’s most popular streaming service, is surely the key driver of its current success. TV critic and broadcaster Scott Bryan, host of the Must Watch podcast on BBC Sounds, thinks it sits in a sweet spot where it’s attracting re-watchers and first-time viewers.
“We’re seeing a boom of new programmes in the streaming age, but also there is massive viewership of older shows, many of which might be available to stream for the first time,” he tells BBC Culture.
“This can feed into a nostalgic viewing tradition, where fans rewatch a show they’ve seen before, or it can be a chance to watch a show that you might have missed the first time.”
A TV show with 15+ episodes in a season, where narrative arcs and plots take longer to resolve, is especially useful.
With more people working from home, there is an increased interest in programmes that can be watched in the background over a longer length of time, such as reality TV franchises Below Deck and Real Housewives, which became popular after being added to Netflix in 2020.
Suits, a scripted drama, may similarly delight without requiring viewers’ undivided attention.
Could the streaming success of a show like Suits form part of a rebellion against “prestige” TV? Streaming platforms have largely abandoned making new TV shows with twenty-episode seasons, but a viral post on X, formerly known as Twitter, suggests there is a specific comfort to be found in this old-school format. “I don’t want prestige TV,” wrote author Boze Herrington.
“I want comfort shows with 36-episode seasons where at least three episodes are holiday-themed and 10 of them are the worst thing you’ve ever seen in your life.” Prestige TV series, such as Succession or The White Lotus, tend to have fewer episodes. with a longer running time, that are usually much more detailed and complex.
Every episode of Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – the most expensive TV series ever made – is practically like a short blockbuster movie. In these series, the stakes tend to be higher and they are designed to be closely analysed. But after the epic conclusion of Succession, perhaps there is a desire for something different.
Wider culture has been fixated with the early 2000s in recent years, from flip-phones and Ugg boots coming back into fashion, to the resurgence of romantic comedy films, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s whirlwind romance, Paris Hilton singing her 2006 hit Stars are Blind on New Year’s Eve to ring in 2023, and the public re-evaluation of how women like Britney Spears were once treated.
This month, fans have been rewatching The OC as the show marks its twentieth anniversary, while shows like And Just Like That…, HBO’s Gossip Girl reboot and Netflix’s 2016 Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life have capitalised on a fondness for the same era. Could the Renaissance of Suits, which premiered in 2011, represent a nostalgic shift towards the 2010s? “Where there’s an infinite amount of new programmes, there’s comfort in a show that feels familiar, where you remember what you were doing when it first came out,” Bryan says. “I’m doing that right now with Desperate Housewives.”
But Johnson insists the show itself is the main reason why Suits is breaking streaming records. “It’s such a good first episode that people probably stay to see what happens next,” she says. “It’s an easy, entertaining show, which is why I am rewatching it again.”
Suits is available to stream on Netflix and Peacock now.
