‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Has the Most Words Per Minute of Any TV Show, Study Finds

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https://www.thewrap.com/brooklyn-nin...tv-shows-2024/

Meanwhile, “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us” and “The Book of Boba Fett” are the least wordy shows

Sharon Knolle
April 15, 2025 @ 9:53 AM

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” which was ranked as the TV series with the most words-per-minute in 2023 by WordFinderX with 176.2 words per minute, is not the chattiest show on TV anymore.

A new study by Kapwing, an online content creation platform, revealed that cop comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” now holds the title as the wordiest TV show with 206 words per minute spoken on average. The sitcom, which starred Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher, ran on NBC from 2013 to 2021.

The National Disability Authority recommends that subtitles should be no more than 140 words per minute to allow viewers time to follow along. “Always Sunny” landed at no. 2 in the Kapwing study with 189 words per minute.

Legal drama ”Suits” averages 179 words per minute while, despite Sam Rockwell’s jaw-dropping monologue in Season 3 of “The White Lotus,” the acclaimed HBO series clocked in with a mere 86 words per minute, according to Kapwing.

Even less wordy is another HBO hit, “The Last of Us,” based on the post-apocalyptic zombie game of the same name: Its subtitles are a sparse 59 wpm.

And who needs dialogue when you’ve got action? Disney+ series “The Book of Boba Fett” has only 46 wpm. Six other Star Wars series on the streamer also ranked in the top 10 “easiest shows to understand,” per the study.

Kapwing counted the number of subtitled words in 50 of the latest episodes of the most popular TV shows and divided it by episode length to find the average words per minute. The average silent reading rate for English fiction is 260 words per minute and reading aloud averages 183 words per minute.