It has become a byword for the way we watch TV and has been linked to depression and even blamed for ruining people’s sex lives.

Now, more details of the way we “binge-watch” TV shows have been released by US on-demand service Netflix, home to Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards and its first UK production, the upcoming £100m royal epic The Crown, starring Claire Foy.

Netflix said customers who chose to watch an entire TV season finished it on average in just one week, watching a little over two hours a day.

It said viewers typically binged on thrillers such as Breaking Bad and The Killing, but were more likely to take their time over the more political narratives of House of Cards or Homeland.

House of Cards … more likely to be savoured than binge-watched. Photograph: Netflix

According to something Netflix calls the “binge scale”, ranging from “savour” at one end to “devour” at the other, its original drama Narcos, about the rise to power of Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar, was the platform’s slowest-burning hit in the UK, with viewers “savouring” it over six days.

Sci-fi show The 4400, cancelled nearly a decade ago, was consumed quickest by those who watched it in the UK, “devoured” in an average of just four days.

Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said the company would use the findings to make “subtle improvements in helping people choose what kind of programmes they want to watch, depending on what mood they’re in”.

He said binge-watching had “quickly become the norm” for TV watching, although the figures in the UK do not bear that out.

While on-demand services are increasingly popular, especially among younger viewers – Netflix has more than 5 million subscribers in the UK – traditional TV channels still accounts for around four-fifths of viewing.

Sarandos told the Guardian: “When The Crown comes out, my thinking is that people will want to savour it because it’s so rich and beautiful and with such a sense of history, people will want to take their time with it.”

Adapted by Peter Morgan from his acclaimed Helen Mirren stage play The Audience, The Crown is envisaged as a 50-part series telling the inside story of the relationship between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street.

Debuting on Netflix on 4 November, it will mark a new front in Netflix’s battle with traditional broadcasters such as the BBC, which was rebuffed in its attempts to be a co-producer on the show, according to its then director of TV, Danny Cohen.

“I don’t recall having any specific partnership discussions on the show,” said Sarandos. “I think we would both want the same thing – to launch on networks in the UK – which would make it very difficult.”

However, Netflix and the BBC will join forces to make a new adaptation of Watership Down.

Netflix also caused apoplexy within Channel 4 when it bought up Charlie Brooker’s acclaimed dystopian satire, Black Mirror, which famously featured a fictional prime minister having sex with a pig and began on C4 in 2011.

Sarandos said fans would be “thrilled when they see the scope and scale and quality of the show” and said Netflix “better suits the size and vision of Charlie [Brooker]” and his fellow executive producer, Annabel Jones.

Netflix is among the most secretive of broadcasters and, like its on-demand rival Amazon Prime, does not reveal viewing figures and so does not come under the sort of scrutiny that has faced BBC2’s Top Gear and its new presenter Chris Evans over the past week.

Netflix will show the new Top Gear internationally and Sarandos said he had seen the new format and liked it.

He said he “didn’t have such a [close] relationship” with the show in its former guise so “wasn’t upset” when it changed its presenting lineup. “I like it very much,” he said. “I found it extremely entertaining.”

Traditional broadcasters have begun to ape the tactics of on-demand rivals such as Netflix and Amazon – where Clarkson’s new show will appear – with Sky making many of its new dramas available to watch all in one go, and Channel 4 recently stripping Olivia Colman comedy Flowers over five nights in a week.

Is Orange is the New Black missing out on social buzz? Photograph: Netflix

Heat magazine TV critic Boyd Hilton said the “binge-watching” phenomenon had been overplayed, but said Netflix shows such as its acclaimed documentary Making a Murderer were “brilliantly compelling and made you want to watch it as soon as possible”.

He said when series were made available all at once, such as House of Cards and Netflix prison drama Orange is the New Black, they missed out on the social media buzz and interaction of a weekly show such as HBO’s Game of Thrones, shown in the UK on Sky Atlantic.

“Binge-watching almost rules out the idea of discussing it over social media because who knows if anyone is watching it as the same time as you,” he said.

“But people love the frenzy of excitement of a new episode of Game of Thrones each week and the opportunity of discussing the plot twists on social media. It’s the biggest show in the world and most people watch it week by week.”

The Netflix analysis looked at consumption of the first season of more than 100 TV serials across more than 190 countries between October 2015 and May 2016.