Viewing Figures: ‘Recipe for Love’ Ranks as South Korea’s new Top-Rated Drama; U.S. Soaps see growth across the board for sweeps month
South Korea: The KBS2 drama Recipe for Love premiered on Jan. 31 and has quickly become a ratings hit. Airing every Saturday and Sunday, the series averaged 15.95% nationwide viewership, beating its competition by a landslide. The KBS2 series took over the timeslot previously occupied by Our Golden Days, which had been South Korea’s previous number one drama and scored similar monthly figures.
The debut episode of Recipe for Love scored 14.3% of South Korean viewership, while its highest-rated episode in February reached 16.4%. Compared with the debut episode of Our Golden Days, the episode averaged 13.9% viewership in South Korea. Meanwhile, its finale hit a series high of 20.5%.
Other K-dramas didn’t achieve the same level of success. Channel A’s Positively Yours averaged just 1.37% viewership in South Korea. Its debut episode scored 1.0 percent, while the Feb. 22 finale reached a series high of 1.9%.
Netflix: On the streaming side, the limited series The Art of Sarah was the most-watched non-English language drama on Netflix, averaging 6.03 million views throughout February. The series remained in the top 10 for three weeks, peaking during the week of Feb. 16, when it ranked number one with 10 million views. On the other hand, the Japanese manga series was the least-watched non-English-language drama on the platform, drawing just 0.8 million views.
United States: Although the year is only three months underway, soaps in the United States have seen consistent ratings growth across the board. The number one daytime drama in America for more than three decades, CBS’s The Young and the Restless, saw its highest monthly ratings during the week of Feb. 16 with 3.47 million viewers, and averaged 3.32 million throughout sweeps month. This marks an improvement over its January totals of 3.01 million viewers. Meanwhile, CBS’s The Bold and the Beautiful trailed slightly behind with 2.94 million viewers throughout the month, up from its January average of 2.65 million viewers. The daytime drama scored its highest ratings the week of Feb. 16, when 3.06 million viewers tuned in.
Meanwhile, CBS’s Beyond the Gates, which celebrated its first anniversary during the week of Feb. 23, remains the lowest-rated soap opera in the United States. However, America’s newest daytime drama saw ratings growth in February, peaking during its anniversary week with 1.78 million viewers. Throughout February, Beyond the Gates averaged 1.73 million viewers, slightly above its January figures of 1.65 million. The longest-running American soap opera currently in production, ABC’s General Hospital, scored 2.16 million viewers for February, improving on its January average of 2.04 million. The daytime drama has averaged more than two million viewers per week since the beginning of 2026 and reached its highest monthly rating during the week of Feb. 16, with 2.2 million viewers.
