TV Ratings: ‘Lovecraft Country’ Premieres to Decent Numbers on HBO

The series premiere of “Lovecraft Country” scared up decent numbers for HBO.

“Lovecraft Country” premiered to 760,000 total viewers in its 9 p.m. linear slot on the premium cabler, which isn’t too far behind the premiere of “Watchmen,” which drew 800,000 viewers. For further comparison to another big HBO series, “Perry Mason” debuted to 884,000 total viewers a couple months back.

Per HBO, the “Lovecraft Country” debut tallied 1.4 million total viewers across all platforms including HBO Max, where it was the number 1 most watched show on Sunday night. Interestingly, this represents the first time that HBO has added the HBO Max viewership to the overall tally for a new show. “Perry Mason” is still top of the recent HBO pile with 1.7 million all platform viewers, followed by “Watchmen” with 1.5 million viewers, then “Lovecraft,” then “The Outsider” with 1.2 million.

Looking at digital only, the “Lovecraft” debut delivered the second largest total for an HBO premiere since “Watchmen” and the “Chernobyl” premiere back in spring 2019.

Based on the novel of the same name by Matt Ruff, the ten-episode series from showrunner and executive producer Misha Green follows Atticus Freeman (Jonathan Majors) as he journeys with his childhood friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) and his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) on a road trip from Chicago across 1950s Jim Crow America in search of his missing father Montrose (Michael Kenneth Williams). Their search-and-rescue turns into a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and monstrous creatures that could be ripped from an H.P. Lovecraft paperback.

In addition to Green, Jordan Peele is executive producing through his Monkeypaw Productions banner. J.J. Abrams and Ben Stephenson executive produce through Bad Robot Productions, with David Knoller and Yann Demange also attached as EPs.