U.S. Audiences Are Sleeping on Netflix’s New 6-Part Crime Drama With Near Perfect RT Score

The frequency of Netflix’s new content means that the Top 10 on the platform is always changing. Over the past week, the Top 10 show in the United States has fluctuated wildly. Even though The Roast of Kevin Hart was the top show for days on end, the weekend saw it get pushed to the side in favor of new releases. Not only did Netflix have the broadcast rights to the seventeen-second fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano, but it also rolled out the first season of the crime drama Nemesis, with the new season of Worst Ex Ever continuing to bring in viewers as well.

There was another great choice for viewers to seek out on the platform, though, the new crime-drama Legends. Created and written by Neil Forsyth, the new UK series has racked up millions of views since its premiere and earned glowing reviews, but there’s one bizarre detail surrounding who is watching it. Audiences everywhere appear to have found and binged the series, except for the United States.

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Set against the backdrop of the 1990s, Legends tells a unique and true story, when members of Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise were put at the center of a top-secret operation and sent undercover to infiltrate drug gangs in Britain to bring them down from the inside. The kicker, of course, is that none of them had any real law enforcement training and were simply regular people put in a very dangerous situation for the sake of their communities and country. In order to blend in seamlessly, they had to create all-new identities within the UK’s criminal underworld, birthing the titular legends.

Legends features an all-star cast of UK performers, including Steve Coogan, plus Tom Burke (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Hayley Squires (Beau Is Afraid, I, Daniel Blake), Aml Ameen (A Man in Full, Rustin), Douglas Hodge (G20, Joker), Tom Hughes (The English, Victoria), and Charlotte Ritchie (YOU, Ghosts), giving it a distinct crew of familiar faces.

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Per Netflix’s own Top 10 Metrics, Legends racked up only 3.4 million views globally, making it the #4 TV globally on the platform, and putting it behind the likes of Worst Ex Ever, Should I Marry A Murderer?, and Man on Fire, which had over 12.6 million views alone. When digging into the specific charts across the globe, though, it’s clear that audiences in the US appear to either be unaware of Legends at all or simply don’t care. The series failed to show up at all on the weekly Top 10 TV shows in the United States, but clocked in at #3 in the UK. The series was, however, a Top 10 show in over 40 countries around the globe, including Canada, Australia, Ireland, and others.

It’s incredibly surprising that an all-new Netflix crime-drama series didn’t immediately spark interest from US audiences, in part because UK crime dramas have proven to be a global hit on streaming for years, but also because of the critical appraisal. As of this writing, Legends has a near-perfect 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes with 25 total reviews on the platform. The series even has a “Certified Fresh” distinction, which many TV shows with high approval ratings don’t always achieve.

To paint an even clearer picture of how the show has clearly won over fans already, many of the outlets that have praised the series already hail from the UK. Empire Magazine awarded the series a 4 out of 5, writing that it’s “tightly wound from the get-go, a true-crime drama that sets itself apart through its top-tier cast and thrills rooted in the grimy greys of drug-ravaged Britain.” Furthermore, The Sunday Times compared the series favorably to HBO’s crime classic, The Wire, by noting the key similarity between them, writing “it seems to tell the story not just of a few cops and robbers, but of a whole city.”

Suffice to say, it’s unclear if these reviews will see the series find an audience in the US or if they will suddenly discover it later, but the show hasn’t found any viewership there just yet; clearly, when they do find it, they’ll be in for a treat.