Fastest Talking TV Show Revealed In Study With Staggering Word-Per-Minute Count

A new study ranks the wordiest television shows, revealing the surprising choice of which popular series might be the hardest to follow.

The fastest-talking TV shows get revealed in a new study that boasts a staggering word count. Several shows are known for their wordiness. The West Wing popularized Aaron Sorkin’s style of walking and talking. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is credited with the zippy dialogue that runs through a lot of today’s pop culture. Finally, the banter between Lorelai and Rory of Gilmore Girls set its standard for witty repartee and was often relied upon to start an episode out on the right note. But, in the new analysis, only one of those series is represented.

The study by WordFinderX found that It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia is the wordiest television show, with 176.2 words per minute. The study used OpenSubtitles, Subdl, and TVSubtitles.net to analyze the subtitles of several television shows. It found that It’s Always Sunny was the hardest show to follow while watching with subtitles. Brooklyn Nine-Nine comes in second with 174.6 words per minute, followed by Gilmore Girls at 167.8. It’s noted in the study that “The National Disability Authority recommends that ‘English language subtitles for a general audience should not usually exceed 170 words per minute and, if possible, be kept to a maximum 140 words.'”

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Which Other Shows Made The List?

Unsurprisingly, given its particular reliance on dialogue, the study found the wordiest TV genre was comedy. Some of the comedies represented on the list include Modern Family (166.2 words per minute), Parks and Recreation (156.3 words per minute), New Girl (156 words per minute), Black-ish (153 words per minute), Schitt’s Creek (146 words per minute), The Big Bang Theory (130.9 words per minute), and Frasier (130.2 words per minute). The study found that, on average, comedies contain 133.6 words across the fifteen titles that were represented.

Animation, essentially a different form of comedy, was similarly well-represented in the study. The Apple TV+ musical Central Park tops the list with 163.9 words per minute, followed by Bob’s Burgers at 160.6 words per minute. South Park, Big Mouth, Bojack Horseman, and Rick & Morty are represented in that orders. The Simpsons and Futurama come in at the lower end, with 105.8 and 98 words per minute, respectively.

WordFinderX mentions that there are “no popular sci-fi/fantasy shows with a difficulty level of more than 100 words per minute.” In the drama sphere, a few TV show contenders join Gilmore Girls. The legal drama Suits takes the second spot with 161 words per minute, followed by Dynasty‘s CW reboot at 152.7 words per minute. There’s a steep drop after those rankings, although shows like HBO’s Succession, Grey’s Anatomy, and Cobra Kai hover above 100 words per minute.

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Source: WordFinderX