The Orville has debuted to very good numbers in the US despite the mainly negative reviews it has received.
The Seth MacFarlane, Star Trek inspired comedy managed to bring in 8.6 million viewers and a 2.8 rating among adults 18-49. Fox has pointed out that this is actually rather impressive, with the aforementioned adult demo rating tying last year’s premiere of NBC’s current mega-hit This Is Us.
The news is better still when considering the supremely negative reviews that The Orville has so far received. The show is currently sitting at a rather dismal 35/100 on the review aggregator site Metacritic (although we were a fan in our review). This proves that viewers were, at the very least, willing to give the series a try.
The real test will be to see how many viewers from the premier follow the show over to its new timeslot of Thursday nights – often considered a tough night in TV land.
Originally published September 14, 2017. Updated April 16, 2018.
