Wikipedia binge-watchers’ bible
You know the drill: in the middle of binge-watching a TV series, you grab your phone or laptop and go straight to the show’s Wikipedia page. There, you’ll dive into the filming locations, characters and plotlines, then 30 minutes later, finally look up when you realise you somehow made your way to the entry for “inventors killed by their own inventions”.
Anyway, the Wikipedia rabbit hole is real, especially while watching television. The site confirmed this on Wednesday when editors revealed the most-read English Wikipedia articles of 2017, and seemed fascinated by how many had to do with pop culture, particularly TV.
“It’s abundantly clear that @wikipedia has become a secondscreen experience for many TV viewers,” the site’s Twitter account said. “In 2017, over 200 million people stopped by @wikipedia to learn more about what they were watching, like @TheCrownNetflix’s Queen Elizabeth or @VictoriaSeries’ Queen Victoria.”
Netflix’s The Crown, an acclaimed drama about the reign of Queen Elizabeth II (played by Claire Foy), leads this trend. The Queen’s Wikipedia page was the third-most- visited entry with 19.2m views, behind only Donald Trump (29.6m) and “deaths in 2017” (37.3m). A Wikipedia editor credited the Queen’s popularity to Prince Harry’s recent engagement to actress Meghan Markle (No 5 with nearly 17m views), along with the release of The Crown, which started streaming Season 1 in November 2016.
In a discussion of the site’s top 50 articles for 2017, the editor wrote that he was most struck by the Queen’s prominence, “phenomenal when you consider the fame and ubiquity of many of the entries below her”.
“As well as being testament to the terrific power of Netflix, I think that the continued strong performance should act to dispel the myth that no one cares about the monarchy,” the editor said. “It is also a sign that many readers don’t journey to Wikipedia for negative news, but rather come for knowledge.”
Traffic to the Queen’s Wikipedia page peaked on December 10, when the second season of The Crown started streaming. The entry about Princess Margaret (played by Vanessa Kirby) spiked on the same day and hit No 37 on the list, just behind Melania Trump. Prince Philip’s page hit its peak in May when his real-life retirement was announce. Played by Matt Smith in The Crown, he’s No 44, between Spider-Man: Homecoming and Star Wars.
Beyond Netflix, HBO’s unstoppable Game of Thrones had a presence in the top 50. The Season 7 page was No 4 overall, with the show’s overall entry close behind at No 6.