Dave Chappelle tops Netflix comedy specials chart

Dave Chappelle remains Netflix's top attraction in stand-up comedy as his special The Dreamer led the field in its latest ratings report.

Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer made it into the top 50 shows watched between January and June 2024 with 17.4 million views. And that's despite the fact that the special was actually only released on December 31st.

Chappelle had the biggest stand-up special, but was beaten by The Roast of Tom Bradywhich has been viewed 22.4 million times, making it number 26 on the list.

This comes as Netflix released 25 new original specials during this period, significantly more than the 12 it released in the last six months of 2023.

Katt Williams: Woke Fox was second with 10.3 million views, ranking 136th on the list, followed by Kevin Hart: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor with 7.1 million views. Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs achieved 6.1 million views, just ahead of Mike Epps: Ready to sell outwhich received 5.9 million.

Ricky Gervais: Armageddon secured another 5.4 million views after it was also released on Christmas Day last year.

Jo Koy reached 5 million views for his Live from Brooklyn Special, even though it was only released in June, just ahead of Taylor Tomlinson: Have It All with 4.9 million.

However, some well-known comedians did not make it into the top 500 of Netflix’s engagement report, including Pete Davidson with his Turbo Fonzarelli, Neal Brennan: Insanely good And Jimmy Carr: Of course Born killer.

In Netflix's latest data dump, Matt Rife was the most-watched. However, Rife's latest special, Lucid – A Crowd Work Special, was released in August, so we'll have numbers on that in six months, as well as data on specials from Adam Sandler, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Dillon, Ali Wong, and Hasan Minhaj.

All this comes as Netflix increasingly faces real competition in the comedy specials market. Hulu, for example, recently secured the rights to Bill Burr's next special, and Amazon, Max and Peacock are also making inroads.