“Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” Netflix’s most-watched series in recent weeks, has been eclipsed by “The Watcher,” another horror series based on true events.

Released on October 13 Observer has already amassed 125,010,000 hours of viewing in less than a week since its premiere, and is now number one in the ranking of the most popular English-language series on Netflix.

Dahmer – Monster dropped to second place with 122,780,000 hours watched, which is a remarkable achievement considering it was released almost a month ago on September 21st.

For comparison, Midnight Clubwhich premiered on October 7th, is in third place with just under 50,000,000 hours, which isn’t bad but below expectations for a series from Mike Flanagan, who built his reputation on horror series such as The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass made for Netflix.

A story from the latest “hit” Netflix series

Returning to Observer (translated by Netflix for Romanian subscribers: “In Sight”) is a new limited series that tells a true story that is too scary to believe.

As People magazine notes, Observer tells about the couple Dean and Nora Brannock, who move to an idyllic area in the American state of New Jersey, where they hope that their children will be safe from the evils of the world around them.

But these influential suburbs hide something sinister, and soon after moving into their new home, the family starts receiving threatening letters from a man calling himself “The Watcher” (I don’t know why Netflix didn’t just translate the name, but in the past they also called questions about translations into Romanian).

And “Watchman” begins to terrorize the family in ways that will send shivers down the spine of even the most hardened veterans of mysteries and horrors.

Netflix consulted with terrorized family before filming The Watcher

The story of the Netflix series has generated so much interest in the real-life family on which The Watcher is based that even the famous website USA Today covered the topic, noting, however, that the producers of the series allowed themselves more creative freedom with the plot of the story.

Perhaps most importantly, this family didn’t actually move into the house after they started receiving threatening letters, and some elements of the show are fictional, inserted for dramatic effect. For example, the previous owner of the house, in turn, was not terrorized by “Watcher”.

I won’t go into details of that nature so as not to create spoilers if you haven’t seen the series yet.

What’s certain is that the Broaddus family, on whose experiences the series is based, had two demands on Netflix when it sold them the rights to adapt their story into a series.

As Mashable points out, they asked that Netflix not use their real names, so the family is called Brannock in the series.

The second was that the family in the series was not like the real one, so Netflix decided to introduce two slightly older children into the story instead of the 3 children in grades 1-4 that the real couple had when he started receiving threatening letters.

That being said, it seems that the Broaddus family’s experience was so horrific that its members still haven’t gotten over what happened, even though they sold the house at 657 Boulevard 3 years ago.

As always, you can find more news from the world of movies and series, as well as other exciting news in this weekend’s Nerd Alert column:

• The episode of “Mythbusters” led to the release of a man after 35 years of imprisonment / Tom Cruise wants to fly into space / AI will be questioned in the House of Lords

Or, if you’re interested in learning more about what’s new on Netflix this October,they can be found HERE.