The Thick of It, Peaky Blinders and Succession are leading the way in TV swearing: Foul-mouthed insults on our favourite shows has skyrocketed as audiences become ‘numb to it’

• Annual number of swear words in TV and film is up to 60,000 from 5,000 in 1985
• Succession is top then Orange Is The New Black, Thick of It and Peaky Blinders

Succession, Orange Is The New Black, The Thick of It and Peaky Blinders were today revealed to be leading the way in swearing on screen as it hit a new high.

The annual number of swear words across 60,000 TV shows and films dating back to 1985 has surged from fewer than 5,000 that year to more than 60,000 last year.

So far this year the word ‘f***’ has been said on screen more than 22,000 times, based on data compiled by US recommendation service Enjoy Movies Your Way.

The record usage of the word was 30,000 last year – a stark figure considering until 2013 just one year had featured more than 10,000 usages. In 1975 it was only 511.

And the word ‘s***’ has risen from 484 in 1985 to nearly 11,000 so far this year, according to the figures compiled by engineers using artificial intelligence.

The final episode of the show Succession featured 235 expletives including 119 uses of ‘f***’

Orange Is The New Black was the second most foul-mouthed TV series looked at in the study

Separate analysis by language-learning website Preply of the final episodes of 50 of the top-rated series on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) found Succession was top with 235 expletives.

How the annual number of curse words on TV and film has soared 

1985

• F*** – 511
• S*** – 484
• Hell – 664
• Damn – 563
• B****** – 273

2022

• F*** – 30,780
• S*** – 15,471
• Hell – 6,592
• Damn – 5,417
• B****** – 3,324

2023 (up to early November)

• F*** – 22,177
• S*** – 10,864
• Hell – 4,611
• Damn – 3,846
• B****** – 2,668

Data from Enjoy Movies Your Way

This included 119 uses of ‘f***’, ten of which were in just 11 lines of dialogue as Justine Lupe’s character Willa Ferreyra accepted a marriage ­proposal from Connor Roy, played by Alan Ruck, reported The Times.

The next highest tally was from Netflix women’s prison drama Orange is the New Black, followed by the hit British shows The Thick of It and Peaky Blinders.

Both Succession and The Thick of It were created by British screenwriter Jesse Armstrong, with the latter coming top for the most swear words per minute.

Speaking about the overall rise in swearing on screen, Chad Michael, chief executive of Enjoy Movies Your Way, said: ‘We’re seeing a big spike in the use of crude and profane language in movies and TV shows.

‘As it increases, we become numb to it. And that gives writers and media permission to add even more.’

He added that the large increase in bad language could be put down to the huge amount of content now available to viewers compared to the era before streaming.

But Mr Michael also said the pandemic and the Hollywood writers’ strike have resulted in overall decreases in foul language so far this year because they both reduced the amount of content being produced.

He told The Wall Street Journal: ‘Without those two aberrations, we would see the trend continue to go up.’

Enjoy Movies Your Way aims to be a family-friendly TV and movie filtering app for language, violence, sex and drug content which works by pre-screening content on major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+.

The Thick of It was in third overall but came top for the most swear words per minute

Peaky Blinders came in fourth place overall for the most foul-mouthed series on television

It comes after new Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa revealed he was called into the office of showrunner Russell T Davies and told off for using expletives while in his costume for the BBC show.

Gatwa told the Radio Times this week: ‘I got called into Russell’s office. Woo! And he let me know that that’s not acceptable.

‘He said, ‘Do what you want when you’re out of costume, but when you’re in costume, do not let us catch you swearing.’

Fresh from playing Eric in Netflix show Sex Education he saw this as a lesson. ‘For the last four years I’ve been co-leading an X-rated show, and so I’m on a constant journey of learning what it is to be a PG role model and the lead of a family show,’ he said.

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