January 14, 2023
‘The Best Man: The Final Chapters’ Becomes First Peacock Original Series to Make Nielsen Top 10 Streaming List
Streaming provider Peacock had a big win at Nielsen thanks to the success of The Best Man: The Final Chapters series.
After its December 22 premiere on Peacock, The Best Man: The Final Chapters became Peacock’s first original project to make Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming rankings, Variety reported. Data shows in within four days of its premiere, the series ranked at No. 5 on Nielsen’s Top 10 Streaming Originals chart for the Dec. 19-25 viewing period.
The ranking made The Final Chapters Peacock’s biggest series debut to date, topping the previous titleholder, Bel-Air, Peacock’s dramatic reimagining of the ’90s sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. According to Nielsen, The Best Man: The Final Chapters also closed out 2022 and opened 2023 as the No. 1 streaming series among Black audiences.
Along with the previous record set by Bel-Air, Peacock’s biggest success in original series are within Black content that taps into the nostalgia of the 90s.
The Best Man: The Final Chapters is the third installment of the beloved 1999 romantic comedy, The Best Man, and the 2013 sequel, The Best Man Holiday. The Peacock series catches up with the characters from the original film as they navigate the unpredictable stages of midlife crisis meets midlife renaissance.
It stars Taye Diggs, Morris Chestnut, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Harold Perrineau, and Melissa De Sousa. Writer and creator Malcolm D. Lee of Blackmaled Productions served as executive producer alongside Dayna Lynne North of Loud Sis Productions, Blackmaled’s Dominique Telson, and Hivemind’s Sean Daniel.
“I felt like it was a story that was universal, that everyone would be able to relate to, had cultural specificity, and it was going to feed an audience that was really hungry for it,” Lee told one outlet. “But just so happens that it was the right story to tell with The Best Man Holiday and I really wanted to give the characters something more adult to deal with.”