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The animated series has been on the receiving end of a barrage of hate for the character and the storyline, yet despite this (or perhaps because of it) “Velma” has managed to draw a lot of audience attention in the U.S. this week, with 37.3 times more demand than the average series.

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It’s been an interesting week for HBO. Two big IPs, two new shows, with each having a vastly different reception. The network’s new series “The Last of Us,” which premiered on Jan. 15 and received critical acclaim (and the title of “best video game adaptation ever made“), saw a 57% increase in demand and rose up to take third place in the ranking with 36.1 times the average series demand in the U.S. this week.

Meanwhile the streaming original series “Velma,” based on the Scooby Doo franchise, managed to keep enough eyeballs to dominate audience attention this week. That’s not to say that “The Last of Us” doesn’t have that much of an audience reach: As is the case with most shows that follow a weekly episodic release schedule, we’re likely to see demand for the series increase over the next few weeks as more episodes drop and audiences begin to binge watch the show.

In fourth and fifth place this week we saw Paramount+’s Sheridan shows “Tulsa King” and “1923,” respectively. The former had a 7% decline in demand and had 27 times the average series demand, while “1923” had a further 2% increase after its fourth episode aired on Jan. 8, the same day as “Tulsa King’s” finale. Releasing episodes in tandem seems to be working well for the streamer, seeing as it still drew in enough eyeballs to keep both shows in the top five despite the new releases that came in this week.

Two more new shows made it into the ranking this week. Disney+’s “National Treasure: Edge of History” entered the rankings in eighth place with 16.5 times the average series demand, a 29% increase from last week after its seventh episode aired on Jan. 18. It has been a bit of a slow climb for the series, which actually premiered on Dec. 14, but didn’t see much of an increase in demand until now. This can be explained by the slew of Christmas and family-friendly programming that viewers already had lined up, and seeing that the series is now close to its Feb. 8 finale date, it’s quite likely that demand for the show will continue upwards over the next couple of weeks.

Netflix’s latest, “That ’90s Show,” entered the ranking in ninth place this week with 15.7 times the average series demand, an impressive 93% increase considering that it only premiered on Jan. 19. The series has been long-awaited by fans of the evergreen “That ’70s Show,” since the new series features characters and locales from the original, serving up some nostalgia and the feeling of “revisiting a childhood classic” for viewers. Given all the new content available to viewers right now, it’ll be interesting to see how the reboot fares in the coming weeks: Will audiences end up revisiting the series (as is usually the case with this type of long tail content) or moving on to the content from new releases?

Andrea Wads is a marketing coordinator at Parrot Analytics, a WrapPRO partner. For more from Parrot Analytics, visit the Data and Analysis Hub.

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