Dave Chappelle Takes Top Spot Among Comedy Specials In Netflix Numbers As Katt Williams, Ricky Gervais & Jo Koy Score Big

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

Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer cracked the top 50 programs watched between January and June 2024 with 17.4M views. This is despite the fact that the special was actually released on December 31.

Chappelle had the biggest stand-up special but was beaten by The Roast of Tom Bradywhich received 22.4M views, putting it at 26 in the list.

It comes as Netflix released 25 new original specials in the period, well up from the 12 that it put out in the last six months of 2023.

Katt Williams: Woke Foke was second with 10.3M views, putting it at 136 in the list, followed by Kevin Hart: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor with 7.1M views. Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs scored 6.1M views, just ahead of Mike Epps: Ready to Sell Outwhich got 5.9M.

Ricky Gervais: Armageddon secured another 5.4M views, similarly having been released last year on Christmas Day.

Jo Koy managed to get 5M views for his Live from Brooklyn special, despite it having only launched in June, marginally ahead of Taylor Tomlinson: Have It All with 4.9M.

A few big-name comedians, however, failed to crack the top 500 of Netflix’s engagement report including Pete Davidson with his Turbo Fonzarelli, Neal Brennan: Crazy Good and Jimmy Carr: Natural Born Killer.

In Netflix’s last 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 get numbers for that in six months, as well as data for specials from Adam Sandler, Ellen DeGeneres, Tim Dillon, Ali Wong and Hasan Minhaj.

All of this comes as Netflix is beginning to see real competition in the market for comedy special. Hulu, for instance, recently snapped up the rights to Bill Burr’s next special, as well as moves from the likes of Amazon, Max and Peacock.