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The Netflix shows creating the most tears during lockdown


By Kirsty Brown

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Following the recent social media buzz over Netflix’s newest emotional sci-fi drama Away, it seems that Netflix has 'hit us in the feels' one too many times.

Those tear-jerking moments inspired OnBuy to dig deep into the depths of Netflix to find out which series made viewers shed the most tears and how many tears were shed.

To see which series was ultimately the saddest, OnBuy created a Netflix and Feels Index.

In first place for the show that made viewers cry the most tears is the American comedy-drama Orange Is The New Black, which generated enough tears to fill an outstanding 96 standard swimming pools or the equivalent to just over 2 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Placing second is the incredibly painful eight part crime series Unbelievable which followed the dramatisation of true events.

The series, that sees a teenager charged with lying about having been raped, would have produced enough tears to fill 20 swimming pools.

In third place is the American superhero TV series Umbrella Academy and it was calculated that the tears from this series would fill 16 swimming pools.

The shows hitting us right in the feels.
The shows hitting us right in the feels.

In joint fourth place, with 11 swimming pools, is the British comedy-drama Sex Education and the fan favourite fantasy Stranger Things while Breaking Bad would fill 10 swimming pools with tears and four part drama series When They See Us would fill five.

Coming in joint seventh place is the popular dark American comedy series Dead To Me and the controversial drama 13 Reasons Why - both series generated enough tears to fill four swimming pools.

In last place is the genius comedy series Schitt’s Creek with its 80 episodes filling just two swimming pools.

To determine the top 10 tearjerkers from the Netflix archives, OnBuy surveyed almost 3000 Netflix users worldwide on what shows made them cry the most and combined this with adding together the amount of sad scenes per series, they then pulled the data for the average crying time for both men and women and used the standard tear volume to determine how many were shed.

The final figure was then multiplied by the show's reported viewership.


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