‘Chimp Crazy’ on Pace for Multiyear Viewer Highs for HBO Doc Series
HBO’s Chimp Crazy is looking like it will be the outlet’s most watched documentary series in several years.
The show, from Tiger King director Eric Goode, isn’t drawing The Last of Us-level (or even Curb Your Enthusiasm-level) audience numbers. But Chimp Crazy is on pace to be the biggest docuseries at HBO since McMillions in early 2020. Chimp Crazy’s Sunday night lead-in, Industry, has also posted its best numbers to date early in its third season.
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The second episode of Chimp Crazy on Aug. 25 drew 350,000 first-night viewers on HBO and Max. The show’s premiere episode, meanwhile, has grown to 2.3 million viewers across platforms over a week, putting it on pace to outdraw any HBO doc series in the past four-plus years. Chimp Crazy’s premiere is running a little ahead of another recent high-profile docuseries on the channel: The first episode of The Jinx Part 2 delivered 2 million viewers over the same amount of time.
As for Industry, Sunday’s episode (the third of season three) brought in 370,000 cross-platform viewers that night — again, not that big by HBO’s all-in standards but a night one series high for the drama. Industry is also showing definitive growth over its previous runs, which isn’t the case for most shows three seasons in. The Aug. 11 season premiere has tallied 1.4 million viewers since its debut, half a million more than 2022’s season two opener drew over the same amount of time.
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