Big Netflix change set to shake up most watched movies and shows

Netflix has just had its quarterly earnings call and while these things are usually pretty dry and geared towards making its shareholders happy, it did reveal some eye-opening changes that will come to the site and shake up its most popular movies and shows.

Netflix officially revealed that, obviously, its most popular show of late has been the massively successful Squid Game - something we reported on recently.

The South Korean series notched up an impressive 142 million views in its first four weeks of being on the site. The show was a massive subscription boost, too, with some 4.4 million new subscribers logging on to see what all the fuss is about.

While a show like Squid Game will undoubtedly stay in Netflix's top 10 for some time to come, Netflix also revealed that it is dramatically changing how it is measuring the popularity of its programmes going forward.

Currently it uses the metric of 'two-minutes viewing' as a movie or show watched, which really isn't much to go by given that many of us may accidentally watch two minutes of something we never intended to.

Now, it is going to start measuring things in hours consumed. This could lead to some interesting changes to its top 10s in the future.

The example Netflix gave, to show how this way of logging views will change things, was of its top 10 Netflix-produced movies - where its best movie list of all time did look like this:

• Extraction
• Bird Box
• Spenser Confidential
• 6 Underground
• Murder Mystery
• The Old Guard
• Enola Holmes
• Project Power
• Army of the Dead
• Fatherhood

It now looks like this:

• Bird Box
• Extraction
• The Irishman
• The Kissing Booth 2
• 6 Underground
• Spenser Confidential
• Enola Holmes
• Army of the Dead
• The Old Guard
• Murder Mystery

While much of the list has had a bit of reshuffle, it does mean that The Irishman and Kissing Booth 2 both now feature high up the list.

This could well be because The Irishman is one of the longest Netflix movies but it's a huge win for Martin Scorsese and, well, for those who like sequels to rom-coms.

Netflix has said that it will keep us all updated a lot more about which movies and shows are proving popular on the site, so expect more Numberwang-esque rankings going forward.

This is our list of the best Netflix shows - there's 60 to choose from!