‘The Righteous Gemstones’ Season 3 Audience Swells As Series Becomes Danny McBride’s Most-Watched At HBO

EXCLUSIVE: Danny McBride is setting a shining example with The Righteous Gemstones on HBO.

Following the debut of Season 3, the series is showing impressive (and somewhat rare) growth. The back-to-back June 18 premiere episodes of Righteous Gemstones are currently tracking at 2.85M viewers across HBO and Max, which is about 30% ahead of the audience for the first two episodes of Season 2 at the same point in time.

The audience for Episode 3 of Gemstones, which aired this past Sunday, grew 19% in its same-day audience versus the premiere episodes with 643,000 people tuning in.

According to HBO, Righteous Gemstones has become McBride’s most-watched HBO comedy series, surpassing both Eastbound and Down and Vice Principals for the honor.

Season 2 episodes are now averaging 5.1M viewers per episode, marking a 6% increase over Season 1’s average audience of 4.8M.

Previously, Vice Principals had been McBride’s highest performing comedy on HBO with an average audience of 4.8M viewers during its run from 2016-2017. From 2009-2013, Eastbound and Down drew an average episodic audience of 4.2M.

The Righteous Gemstones tells the story of a world-famous televangelist family with a long tradition of deviance, greed, and charitable work. When the spoiled Gemstone children finally get their wish to take control of the Church, they discover leadership is harder than they imagined, and that their extravagant lifestyle comes with a heavy price.

The series is directed and executive produced by Danny McBride, Jody Hill and David Gordon Green; executive produced by John Carcieri, Jeff Fradley and Brandon James; co-executive produced by Jonathan Watson; produced by David Brightbill; consulting produced by Kevin Barnett, Edi Patterson and Chris Pappas.

The Righteous Gemstones airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and streams on Max at 10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT. A double-header season finale airs on July 30.