Netflix’s newest formulaic flight of fancy ticks all the cliched boxes on its way to the Top 10 in 77 countries

Having seemingly become exhausted with action blockbusters, crime thrillers, and serial killer stories – if we ignore Extraction 2 retaining its stranglehold on the number one spot, at least – Netflix subscribers have seemingly decided en masse that romance is the new genre of choice, with Make Me Believe the streaming service’s latest worldwide sensation to emerge this week.

Per FlixPatrol, the Turkish romantic comedy that finds a pair of meddling grandmothers manipulate their adult grandchildren into a “coincidental” meet cute that stokes the long-dormant flames of childhood affection has become a Top 10 hit in 77 countries globally, placing it fourth on the worldwide rankings.

While that’s hardly anything to write home about when Netflix’s schmaltzy and sappier offerings almost always tend to perform well as soon as they’re made available to stream, it’s still interesting to note that three of the top five titles on the viewership charts are entirely predictable romances that can’t be found anywhere else.

Sequel Through My Window: Across the Sea is in second position behind Chris Hemsworth’s bruising follow-up, with Make Me Believe one spot in front of Gabrielle Union’s The Perfect Find, with German conspiracy tale Sleeping Dog making up the rest of the heaviest hitters. Romance is in, then, not that it ever really went away among the hundreds of millions of people who pay their monthly fees to the on-demand juggernaut, so we can no doubt expect many more to come rolling off the production line.

Sometimes, all people want is a light and breezy slab of flippant entertainment, and that’s been reflected in the data.