Following the recent social media buzz over Netflix’s newest emotional sci-fi drama ‘Away’ – it seems that Netflix has had us in the feels one too many times.

Those tear-jerking moments is what inspired OnBuy.com to dig deep into the depths of Netflix to find out which series made us shed the most tears and how many tears were shed.

To see which series was ultimately the saddest, OnBuy created a Netflix and Feels Index which you can view in full here.

The Results

In first place for the show that made us cry the most tears is the American comedy-drama Orange is the New Black.

This series generated enough tears to fill an outstanding 96 standard swimming pools or the equivalent to just over 2 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Placing second is the incredibly painful 8-part crime series, Unbelievable, which followed the dramatisation of true events.

The series that sees a teenager charged with lying about having been raped - would have produced enough tears to fill 20 swimming pools. 

In third place is the American superhero TV series, Umbrella Academy. OnBuy calculated that the tears from this series would fill 16 swimming pools.

In joint fourth place, with 11 swimming pools, is the British comedy-drama Sex Education and the fan favourite fantasy Stranger Things. In fifth place is western crime drama, Breaking Bad, filling 10 swimming pools of tears, and in sixth place, with 5 swimming pools, is the 4-part drama series When They See Us.

Coming in joint seventh place is the popular dark American comedy series Dead to Me and the controversial drama 13 Reasons Why. Both series generated enough tears to fill 4 swimming pools.

In last place is the genius comedy series  Schitt’s Creek with its 80 episodes filling just 2 swimming pools.



Methodology

To determine the top 10 tearjerkers from the Netflix archives, OnBuy surveyed 2,936 Netflix users worldwide on what shows made them cry the most.

Adding together the amount of sad scenes per series, they then pulled the data for the average crying time for both men and women and used the standard tear volume to determine how many were shed. The final figure was then multiplied by the show's reported viewership.

To put into context just how upsetting each of these shows are, OnBuy calculated how many swimming pools could be filled with the tears shed.

*This data was gathered from 02/9/2020 to 07/9/2020.