In television, as in fashion, trends come and go, but certain styles sticks around. One of the more enduring modes is the glossy legal drama: Ally McBeal, How To Get Away With Murder, The Good Wife (and its eccentric spin-off The Good Fight). They can be gritty like Damages or funny like Boston Legal. And they can also be somewhere between: comforting, well-made, lightly numbing. Enter Suits, all the way from 2011 (remember that? The world was ending the next year) about the life and times of New York lawyers, charting the ups-and-downs of legalities and love. It is the buzziest show on TV at the moment.
Nielsen data reveals that Suits racked up 3.7 billion viewing minutes in the first week of July, breaking the record it set the week before (3.1 billion minutes) following its debut on Netflix and Peacock. For the third week running, it is at the top of the streaming chart. That also means it ranks as number 13 on Nielsen’s highest-rated streaming shows of all time. Perhaps most surprising is that those minutes has been focused on the first season, which means that the Suits resurgence may have only just begun. We are moments away from culture sites running recaps and subreddits dedicated to series rewatches. If there were no strike, a few of its main cast would surely be running a rewatch podcast, as there are for The Office (Office Ladies), Scrubs (Fake Doctors, Real Friends), Gossip Girl (XOXO with Jessica Szohr). If there is one certainty in life, it is that enduring popularity will be tested to its limits.
The show relies on a well-worn formula (it is well-worn for a reason!): good-looking lawyers at a high-powered firm do legal stuff every week. There is supreme faker Mike Ross (played by Patrick J. Adams) who has never gone to law school but has a photographic memory (handy) and head shark Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) who reels off lines that can be repackaged as motivational quotations on men’s rights Instagram accounts. Then, of course, there is Meghan Markle, who plays paralegal Rachel Zane and a love interest for Mike. Markle left the show in 2018, at the end of the seventh season, the same year she married Prince Harry. With Suits and her real life, she has starred in two of the most high-profile dramas in recent history.
It is watchable, and there is a lot to watch. The show, which ran from 2011 to 2019 on USA Network (a subsidiary of NBCUniversal), comprises nine seasons and 136 episodes. In the UK, the first six seasons were broadcast on Dave until Netflix bought the rights. You can watch all nine seasons on the streaming platform, though you likely already knew that. Writing for Vulture streaming newsletter Buffering, Josef Adalian notes the irony of the show’s recent jump to Netflix stateside, calling it “exactly the kind of decade-spanning hit the streaming giant has helped make all but obsolete”. While streamers have long relied on a steady stream of original content, which burn out faster than you can click “still watching”, they also buy into old catalogues to keep viewers hooked. If you watch two episodes of Suits a night – I don’t know your viewing habits – it would last you 68 nights.
So it speaks to the moment: a lot of show, at a time when there’s not a lot around (and with an ongoing strike, we’re soon going to run out of original content). It also, uh, suits our time. It is summer: perhaps people would like to switch off in the evening (or their lunch break) and, in truth, you could do worse than Suits, which will not change your life, but may make it a little easier 40 minutes at a time. The series is well-crafted, more interested with the inner workings of the firm than it is with the weekly cases, and has some fine acting performances. Surely some of the resurgence lies in a curiosity with the Duchess of Sussex, who gives a playful, lived-in performance as Zane, and touches on some subtler details like her character’s biracial heritage. A lot must be said for availability: there is nothing easier than switching on Netflix and reclining.
And while no data is available on who is rewatching Suits, as opposed to watching it for the first time, I’d wager it’s a sizeable proportion: legal dramas, with their episodic reveals that are just clever enough to keep you guessing even on a second watch, are perfectly poised for a second viewing. And, besides, isn’t it all just so cosy? It is impossible to scroll through Instagram or TikTok without seeing evidence of rewatches of Gossip Girl, The Sopranos, Sex and the City. The one thing humans fall for more than new stuff? Nostalgia.
You can watch ‘Suits’ on Netflix
Henry Wong is a senior culture writer at Esquire, working across digital and print. He covers film, television, books, and art for the magazine, and also writes profiles.
