For the umpteenth week in a row, the #1 Netflix series in the world is a drama from Britain. That show, the six-episode superhero drama Supacell, created by British filmmaker Rapman, debuted with (and still maintains) a 100% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, having enthralled fans around the world with its story about five ordinary people who develop superpowers like telekinesis and super speed.
Honestly, superhero movies stopped being interesting to me a long time ago, and TV shows that are sort of in the same realm (like Disney+’s The Acolyte) keep turning off big portions of their fan bases for reasons that we don’t have to go into here. Leave it to the Brits to produce some sorely needed quality TV — and about superheroes, to boot (eat your heart out, Marvel!) We’ll take a closer look at Supacell below, as well as the rest of the shows on this week’s global Netflix ranking.
Netflix Top 10 shows (July 8-14)
This week’s complete list of the Top 10 English-language shows on Netflix includes:
- Supacell: Season 1 — 11.8 million views
- The Man with 1000 Kids — 5.4 million views
- Vikings: Valhalla: Season 3 — 5.4 million views
- Bridgerton: Season 3 — 2.7 million views
- Worst Roommate Ever: Season 2 — 2.3 million views
- Receiver: Season 1 — 2.2 million views
- Hannah Berner: We Ride at Dawn — 1.9 million views
- America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Season 1 — 1.9 million views
- Sprint: Season 1 — 1.6 million views
- Exploding Kittens: Season 1 — 1.6 million views
To learn more about some of this week’s most-watched series, you can also go deeper by checking out our previous coverage of several of the Netflix originals on this list — including new documentary series like the creepy The Man with 1000 Kids as well as America’s Sweethearts, which profiles the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders in all their sequined glory.
For now, let’s zero in on the biggest Netflix TV release in the world this week.
Supacell — #1 on Netflix
“I want to tell a story about powers, but with normal people [who have] relationship problems, problems with their children, problems with their siblings, problems at work, problems on the streets.”
That’s how Rapman described, in a promotional interview with Netflix, the story he set out to present in Supacell, a Top 10 Netflix series this week in 87 countries. “I never understood, after watching so much superhero stuff, why do you get powers and then you get a costume like spandex and a cape and a mask?” Rapman continued. “I’m like, ‘Yo, ain’t you got bills to pay? And you still got to go to work?’”
The show’s five Black Londoners include Michael, a working stiff who’s getting married to Dionne. Andre is trying to provide for his son and wants to find work in spite of his criminal record. There’s also Rodney, who wants a better relationship with his family, Sabrina (who has a cheating boyfriend and a sister to take care of), and Tazer — the leader of a gang who also looks after his grandmother.
In the Netflix series, the five get their superpowers as a result of a sickle cell mutation, the hereditary condition particularly common in Black people.
“Across the series’ six episodes,” Netflix explains, “these five newly minted superheroes adjust to the powers, applying them to their everyday lives — while also doing battle with a mysterious agency that seeks to capture, control, and maybe kill them. As the series races toward its explosive finale, the characters also grapple with the fact that, despite their superpowers, they can’t always change the world. The real power lies elsewhere.”
This Hollywood Reporter interview with Rapman is also a very worthwhile read, because among other things it notes that he was especially inspired to make the Netflix series following the death of George Floyd. He says he wanted to “make something to help uplift the Black community at a time we feel so low and we just feel so unvaluable.”
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