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Comment by cududa | Hacker News Reader

The Americans absolutely gets enough love as one of the top shows of the past decade. People say that all the time

critics say that, but its viewership is low compared to other dramas. Usually when I tell people that it's one of my favorite shows, their response is that they've never seen it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Americans_episodes...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prison_Break_episodes#...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lost_episodes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_of_Thrones_episod...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_of_Us_(TV_series)#Rat...

^ compare the viewership. The Americans was getting fewer than a million viewers in its final seasons, Lost regularly got over ten million. You can't easily chalk it up to just the fact that Lost was on network; The Last of Us was getting more than 10x the viewership of The Americans and it was on HBO. While The Americans is very critically acclaimed, it is not as widely watched as it really should be.

There must be a disconnect between viewers and critics, because viewership declined over its entire run. Compare that with a true masterpiece like Breaking Bad which saw viewership consistently increase over the course of its run.

Pretty rare for any show to increase in viewership year over year. Breaking Bad had monumental word of mouth towards the end. Better call Saul dropped year over year but was still fantastic.

Yeah what a bonkers comment. "The Beatles are never recognized for their cultural influence!"

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