Shameless season 8 premiere ratings off to a great start on Showtime
Sunday night’s premiere episode drew an impressive 1.86 million viewers (per Deadline) in live+same-day viewing, which is the most-watched episode of the show since January 2015. It also represents the show’s most-watched premiere episode since the start of season 3. That was when the show was at its peak in terms of live viewership, but that was also a very different time before streaming was a big option for many people and they had other ways to catch up on programs.
Shameless season 8 is actually benefiting from streaming more so than almost anything else. It is the show’s huge popularity on most internet and On-Demand viewing measures that is causing its numbers to spike up. This is a perfect show for the binge-watching crowd in that it has a continuous story, familiar characters, and it has a great combination of dramatic and comedic moments. While we would not call this a soap by any means, it does have some of the same sort of addictive elements where you watch because of the characters and you care about the journey that they go on.
Everything that you see within the Shameless season 8 premiere ratings only further fuels the fire that there will be however many seasons of the show that the cast wants to make. While there were some tough negotiations that went on before the eighth season began, especially when it comes to star Emmy Rossum, those seem to be resolved. This is a great gig for the cast in that it is only twelve episodes, it doesn’t require a ton of special effects and therefore doesn’t have a super-challenging production, and it leaves time open for them to work on other things. There will be a time in which someone does decide to move on, but there’s no reason to think that this time will be after this season — as a matter of fact, at this rate a season 10 feels fairly likely. This is a nice round number that the show could end on, provided that this is what they want.
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