The Best Man: The Final Chapter has become the first Peacock original project to make it onto Nielsen’s Top 10 streaming rankings. It was also the streamers biggest series debut, that title was previously held by Bel-Air.
According Variety, the series is ranked in the No. 5 position in an early version of Nielsen’s Top 10 Streaming Originals chart for the Dec. 19-25 viewing period. At that time it was only streaming for four days.
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Nielsen also puts “The Best Man: The Final Chapters” as the No. 1 streaming series for Black audiences over the last two weeks. Combined with the previous record set by “Bel-Air,” viewership data seems to suggest that Peacock’s biggest successes have come not only from Black content, but from Black content that plays on nostalgia — similarly to “Bel-Air,” “The Final Chapters” follows up on the 1999 romance film “The Best Man” as well as the 2013 sequel “The Best Man Holiday.”
The Best Man: The Final Chapters re-connected fans with original casts Morris Chestnut, Melissa De Sousa, Taye Diggs, Regina Hall, Terrence Howard, Sanaa Lathan, Nia Long, Harold Perrineau.
Written and directed by Malcolm D. Lee, the limited drama series will catch up with the fan-favorite characters as relationships evolve and past grievances resurface in the unpredictable stages of midlife crisis meets midlife renaissance. And based on the new cast descriptions, we know it is set (at least part of the time) on an island.
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Nicole Ari Parker, Ron Canada, Brandon Victor Dixon, Michael Genet, Yvonna Pearson, Terrence Terrell, Tobias Truvillion, Aaron Serotsky, and Eric Scott Ways will recur on the limited series.
The Best Man: The Final Chapters is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group. The series is created, written and executive produced by Malcolm D. Lee of Blackmaled Productions & Dayna Lynne North of Loud Sis Productions. Sean Daniel, of Hivemind, will serve as executive producer. Dominique Telson will also serve as executive producer and oversee production for Blackmaled Productions.
Malcolm D. Lee is directing four episodes. Charles Stone III, Robert Townsend and Stacey Muhammad are directing the remaninig four.