Zuster is actually quite a phenomenon if you ask me. While everyone’s doing their own streaming thing and binge-watching series on Sunday evenings, suddenly millions of people were sitting in front of the TV again at eight o’clock. Old-fashioned linear viewing - who does that anymore? Apparently a lot of Dutch people.

What the series did particularly well: no Hollywood glamour in that hospital. Nurses and doctors were notably enthusiastic about how authentic it felt - the work pressure, the staff shortages, those moments when you just can’t go on. This immediately sparked conversations about what really goes on in healthcare. Pretty impressive for a TV series.

Sallie Harmsen won multiple awards for her role as Keet, including the Golden Calf for Best Actress. And NPO decided lightning-fast: there will be a second season in 2025. That normally never happens so quickly - usually there are months of meetings about such a decision.

For comparison (and then you can see how big this was): De Luizenmoeder attracted about 2.8 million viewers in 2019, De Verraders drew approximately 2.4 million people in 2024, and Klem didn’t get beyond 1.9 million. Zuster left them all far behind.

There’s something else interesting going on: why do people still want to watch this together, at the same time? The answer is apparently simple - talking about that cliffhanger the next day. Twitter and Instagram exploded every week after an episode. This kind of “event television” is becoming increasingly rare, which makes it all the more special when a series manages to pull this off. Pupkin (the production company) and writers Diederik van Rooijen and Pieter Bart Korthuis apparently struck exactly the right chord.