Netflix has something for everyone, but there are also plenty of duds. Our guide to the best TV shows on the platform is updated weekly to help you find the best things to watch.
We include some less-than-obvious gems, too, so we’re confident you’ll find a must-watch series you don’t already know about.
You can also try our guides to the best documentaries on Netflix and the best films on Netflix for more options. And if you’ve already completed Netflix and are in need of a new challenge, check out our picks for the best films on Disney+ and the best Disney+ shows.
Locke & Key
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When Rendell Locke is killed, his wife Nina and children Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode relocate from Seattle to the family homestead of Keyhouse in Massachusetts. While the rest of the Lockes try to settle into their new lives, youngest son Bode instead finds a strange key, one that can open up doors to anywhere. As the family are drawn into generations-old secrets surrounding the key and others like it—keys that unlock the soul from the body, that unlock buried memories, that unlock ghosts—they also discover there may be more to their patriarch’s death than they thought. Adapted from the comics by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, Locke & Key blends family drama and ancient conspiracies into a magical realism-tinged dark fantasy. With the debut of the third and final season, the Lockes’ dreams of a normal life seem further away than ever, with the discovery of a time-travel key, the return of old foes, and a Revolutionary War era zealot aiming to destroy the world. A slower burn than Stranger Things but one of the best supernatural shows on Netflix.
The Sandman
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The Sandman is one of the most beloved comic series of the last 40 years. A dark fantasy about dreams, reality, stories, and the mercurial relationship between them, Neil Gaiman’s books have endured as essential reading for goth teens and literati alike. While attempts to bring the saga of Dream of the Endless—sometimes known as Morpheus, immortal embodiment and master of the nightlands, fierce and terrible in his wrath—to the screen have been underway practically since the comic debuted in 1988, this long-in-development Netflix adaptation is worth the wait. It’s a perfect translation of the first two graphic novels in the series that follows Dream (a sombre and imposing Tom Sturridge) as he restores his power and kingdom following a century of being held in captivity by occultists who snared him instead of his sister Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). Fittingly, the show has a dreamlike pacing to it, blurring the lines between episodic narratives and longer arcs, and is as likely to leave viewers crying over a gargoyle’s fate as it is to shock them with the sadistic actions of an escaped nightmare-turned-serial killer named The Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook). The Sandman’s journey to the screen might have been the stuff of restless nights, but the result is a dream you won’t want to wake up from.
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
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Adaptation: a word which here means “perfectly translating a deliciously dark series of young adult novels to a visual medium without sacrificing any of the otherworldly strangeness of the source material”—right down to the carefully considered dialogue and fourth wall-breaking bookends delivered by Lemony Snicket himself (or, if you’re picky, Patrick Warburton). Netflix’s take on Snicket’s 13-book series is a spectacular accomplishment, telling the full saga of the desperate Baudelaire orphans—Violet, Klaus, and baby Sunny—as they repeatedly escape the machinations of the foul Count Olaf (a scene-stealing Neil Patrick Harris) in the wake of their parents’ suspicious deaths. Forget the truncated 2004 movie version—this three-season masterpiece is the definitive vision of Snicket’s macabre world.
Love, Death + Robots
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Developed by Deadpool director Tim Miller, Love, Death + Robots is perhaps Netflix’s most daring animated offering to date. An anthology series where the only common thread is each episode’s unique interpretation of that eponymous trio of themes, viewers are treated to wild concepts including deadly gladiatorial twists on Pokémon-style beast battles, sentient yogurt, super-powered exoplanetary colonists, and adorable robots who have outlived humanity, only to be confused by the world we’ve left behind. Wildly experimental, Love, Death + Robots isn’t afraid to play around with animation styles and genre, allowing a phenomenal roster of creators—including David Fincher, making his animation directing debut—freedom to tell whatever stories they want. Brimming with ideas and practically vibrating with visual energy, you never know what you’re going to get with this show—and that’s half the fun.
Resident Evil
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Connections to Capcom’s classic horror video games are thin in Netflix’s latest—and first live-action—adaptation of Resident Evil. There’s the nefarious Umbrella Corporation, a mad scientist called Albert Wesker, and hordes of zombies and mutated creatures caused by the T-Virus, but that’s about it. The focus is instead on Jade, one of Wesker’s twin daughters, artificially conceived under mysterious circumstances, and split over two time periods—post-apocalyptic 2036 and present day 2022, detailing how everything went wrong. However, departing from canon means the show is free to go in wild new directions, and it seizes the opportunity with gusto: This is eight episodes of fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled biopunk action that rarely relents, where practically every scene ends on a cliffhanger. If Stranger Things is Netflix’s gourmet horror, Resident Evil is glorious junk food—campy, gory, and impossible to stop consuming.
Inside Job
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Moon landings? Fake. Reptoids orchestrating world politics? Real. Inside Job gives viewers a glimpse behind the curtain, showing the inner workings of Cognito, Inc.—a shadow organization covering up every outlandish conspiracy that you’ve ever heard of. An animated workplace comedy, the show follows the hyper-competent but socially awkward Reagan Ridley as she gets reluctantly partnered with the All-American people-pleasing goofball Brett Hand. Forced to do tech support in an organization she should be running, Reagan has to balance her irresponsible co-workers—including a half-dolphin supersoldier and a sentient psychic mushroom from Hollow Earth—with her alcoholic father’s attempts to reveal the truth to the public, all while catering to the whims of the shadowy elites running everything. Equal parts Rick and Morty, Futurama, and American Dad!, Inside Job will make you nostalgic for the time when conspiracy theories were fun, rather than threatening the fabric of society. Wake up, sheeple!
The Umbrella Academy
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After preventing the apocalypse and getting trapped in the 1960s, the third season of The Umbrella Academy finds the dysfunctional adoptive siblings of the Hargreeves family back in the present and face-to-face with … the Hargreeves family. Turns out, messing with the space-time continuum can have unforeseen effects, like your abusive father figure-slash-mentor adopting seven different super-powered infants instead of you. Being trapped in an alternate timeline isn’t the worst of it though—there’s the small matter of a Kugelblitz about to destroy reality to contend with, too. This third season is where The Umbrella Academy overtakes the original comics (created by My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way and artist Gabriel Bá), meaning both viewers coming in fresh and those who’ve read every panel of the source material have no idea where this season will take them – or how weird things are about to get.
Dead End: Paranormal Park
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Haunted houses are just hokey gimmicks for rubes, right? That’s what Barney thinks when he applies to work at one, desperate for any job that would help him move out of his mother’s house. Turns out, the tourist trap Dead End actually is a portal to hell, and his first night on the job involves dodging becoming a human sacrifice, battling an arch-demon, and ends up with his beloved dog Pugsley gaining the ability to speak. Still, a job’s a job, so along with his neighbor Norma – a superfan of the park’s original owner, the mysteriously absent Pauline Phoenix – Barney and Pugsley become something between tour guides and paranormal investigators, facing down the park’s infestation of things that go bump in the night (and the occasionally-animated theme park mascot). Based on the Deadendia graphic novels by Hamish Steele – who also serves as executive producer and writer on the show – Dead End: Paranormal Park offers a perfect blend of horror and heart, with a welcome slice of authentic LGBTQ+ representation onscreen and behind the scenes. With just the right amount of scares for viewers of all ages, if you enjoy the likes of Gravity Falls or The Owl House, you’ll love this.
Lucifer
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The Devil has abandoned the throne of hell—and now fills his time running a piano bar in Los Angeles, offering “favors” while finding himself curiously drawn to a police detective. Despite deviating wildly from the comic book source material, the devilishly charming Tom Ellis as Lucifer and costar Lauren Graham as Detective Chloe Decker make the series hellishly entertaining. Initially a case-of-the-week procedural with a supernatural twist, Lucifer evolves into a show that taps into the more esoteric elements of Judeo-Christian lore and redefines the nature of existence itself. All six seasons are available on Netflix now.
Hellbound
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Imagine a supernatural figure appeared and told you precisely when you were going to die—what would you do? Now imagine if this wasn’t a one-off personal experience, but society as a whole were aware of such warnings from beyond. How do you think the world would react? Forget the trio of giant smoke demons bursting into reality to drag foretold victims to hell, the societal shifts are the real hook of this striking South Korean horror series from Train to Busan director Yeon Sang-ho. With the series split into two arcs—one set in 2022, the other in 2027—it delves into complex theological issues such as the nature of sin and humanity’s propensity to put faith in all the wrong places. One of the most innovative horror shows in years.
Stranger Things
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Netflix’s nostalgic sci-fi/horror series is back for its fourth season, set six months after the “Battle of Starcourt” and with its core cast separated for the first time. The Byers family and Eleven are off in California, Hopper is still (somehow) in a Russian prison, and the remaining crew are still in Hawkins, Indiana, about to face down a terrifying new threat—high school. Oh, and another incursion from the horrific Upside Down. Creators The Duffer Brothers continue to offer up plenty of 1980s nostalgia for viewers who grew up on a diet of Spielberg, Lucas, and Craven, while upping the stakes with a significant new threat. Expect drama, scares, and—of course—plenty of Dungeons & Dragons as the cult hit show roars towards its fifth and final season.
Russian Doll
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In Russian Doll, Nadia has one very big problem: time keeps breaking around her. Season one finds Nadia—played by Natasha Lyonne, who is also a co-creator on the show—dying at her own birthday party, only to wake up there over and over again, trapped in a Groundhog Day-style loop until she can unravel her personalized knot in the space-time continuum. Things only get stranger in season two, where Nadia finds herself travelling back in time to 1982 and inhabiting the body of her own mother—currently heavily pregnant with Nadia herself. Both seasons are funny and thought-provoking, reflecting on personal and generational trauma, all without over-egging the potential for philosophical musing.
Heartstopper
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The tagline on the first volume of creator Alice Oseman’s original graphic novels offers the most elegant synopsis of Heartstopper: “Boy meets boy.” A heartfelt teen comedy-drama set in and around a British grammar school, the show follows shy, awkward Charlie—the only openly gay student at Truman High—and his burgeoning romance with Nick, the popular “Rugby King” of the school. Yet while the show tackles more difficult topics such as coming out, peer pressure, and even assault, Heartstopper’s main currencies are joy, charm, and hope. With phenomenal performances from a cast of young LGBTQ+ actors—and guest appearances by Olivia Colman as Nick’s mum—Heartstopper is a romance for the ages.
Orange Is the New Black
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One of Netflix’s first big successes remains one of its best shows. This seven-season prison drama initially follows Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) as she is sent to Litchfield Penitentiary for a drug smuggling offense, but it soon blossoms into a show about the lives and circumstances of the people she’s incarcerated with—a cast that includes Kate Mulgrew, Laverne Cox, Uzo Aduba, and Russian Doll’s Natasha Lyonne. Ostensibly a dramedy, OITNB gets progressively more serious, exploring issues of race, justice, corruption, and the flaws of the entire prison system while never feeling preachy. Challenging TV at times, but never less than utterly absorbing.
Sweet Home
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Based on the Korean webcomic by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan, Sweet Home offers a very different vision of apocalyptic end times—rather than pandemics or disasters or even zombies, this posits an end of the world brought about by people’s transformation into grotesque monsters, each unique and seemingly based on their deepest desires from when they were human. Blending sensational prosthetics, CGI, and even stop-motion animation for some disturbingly juddering monsters, this stands apart from the horror crowd. It’s not just the phenomenal effects work that makes it worth your time, the terror is rooted in an engaging, flawed, and desperate group of survivors in an isolated apartment building—chiefly suicidal teen Cha Hyun-soo (Song Kang); former firefighter Seo Yi-kyung (Lee Si-young); and Pyeon Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook), who may be a brutal gangster. Like Parasite and Squid Game, Sweet Home packs in a deeper commentary on Korea’s economic politics, making it more layered than the monster apocalypse theme alone would suggest.
Grace and Frankie
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The brainchild of Friends cocreator Marta Kauffman, this sharp sitcom features Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as the titular characters, longtime acquaintances forced to live together after their husbands leave them late in life—for each other. Grace and Frankie follows this contemporary Odd Couple as they deal with their ex-husbands’ coming out, their adult children’s drama, and each other’s maddening personalities, all while building a genuine friendship and proving to themselves and the world that age is just a number. Taking cues from Arrested Development, Grace and Frankie’s chief comedic currency is awkwardness, as the extended families—the rich, business-minded Hansons and the borderline hippie Bergsteins—unpack their neuroses while navigating adult familial relationships. Think of it as a modern day Golden Girls—just with more swearing and drug use. All seven seasons are now available to binge.
Midnight Mass
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A charismatic young priest joins the church of a small island township. Soon after, miracles follow: The paralyzed walk, the blind see, those with dementia regain their faculties. Yet a dismal secret lies at the heart of this religious revival, as the priest has brought something dark and hungry to the isolated community. Created by Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Doctor Sleep), this supernatural miniseries offers a slow-burn, creeping terror that ratchets the tension up over its seven episodes. It bleakly probes the rites and traditions of Christianity—the cannibalistic and vampiric aspects of transubstantiation, in particular—and the horror that can be found in scripture. But Midnight Mass also explores how religion can be used to corrupt and manipulate, all while serving up a host of phenomenal performances from a cast that includes Hamish Linklater, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, and Zach Gilford.
Dear White People
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Based on a film of the same name, Dear White People is a Netflix Original American comedy that follows a group of students of color who attend a mostly white Ivy League college. It covers largely the same ground as the film, but in series format each episode tells the story of a different character, diving deeper into their lives and individual personalities. There are also some laughs along the way. The show was originally released in 2017, and the fourth season debuted in September 2021.
Squid Game
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Produced in Korea, Squid Game blends Hunger Games and Parasite with a battle royale-style contest. Hundreds of desperate, broke people are recruited to a contest where they can win enough money to never need to worry about their debts again. All they have to do to win the ₩45.6 billion ($35.8 million) jackpot is complete six children’s games. But it’s not that simple: All the games have a twist, and very few people make it out alive. Squid Game is intense, brutal, and often very graphic, but it is also completely gripping. Netflix’s dubbing isn’t the best in this instance, but the nine episodes are compelling enough to make up for it.
Chef’s Table
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Don’t watch this when you’re hungry. Each episode of this mouth-watering series goes into the kitchen of one of the world’s top chefs for an intimate look at the person behind the plates. Chef’s Table is the perfect way to get inspired about food—and creative passion—and there are six seasons to sink your teeth into. The most recent of these includes Sean Brock, who is dedicated to reviving lost flavors, and Tuscan butcher Dario Cecchini, who is trying to change how the world thinks about meat. If you really want to excite your taste buds, season four is entirely dedicated to pastry.
Alice in Borderland
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If you need another “murder game” hit after Squid Game, look no further than this gripping adaptation of the Japanese manga series by Haro Aso. Slacker Ryohei Arisu and his friends Chōta and Karube find themselves mysteriously transported to a deserted Tokyo, with seemingly no way to return to their lives. Worse, the only way to not die in this world is to compete in lethal games that test intellect as much as physical prowess. Losers perish, killed either by sadistic traps or laser beams that target them from space, while winners earn only an extension to their “visas,” forcing them to enter game after game to eke out more time. As Arisu seeks a way to break the chain and escape for good, his only hope may be to follow Usagi (Japanese for “rabbit”), a young woman already trapped in this strange borderland. The first eight-episode season arrived on Netflix in December 2020, with the second due to appear in December 2022.
The Chair
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Set at the prestigious Pembroke University (fictional, but think Harvard, Yale, etc.), this smart drama/comedy takes place just after the English Department at the school names its first female chair, played by Sandra Oh, whose character Ji-Yoon Kim is also one of the few women of color in the department. She has to navigate the politics of her new role, managing her colleagues—largely old, white, and tenured—her family life, and an electric relationship with eccentric star professor Bill Dobson. Sharp and very watchable, in half-hour chunks.
Bo Burnham: Inside
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In the decades to come, when you’re trying to explain to your kids or grandkids how weird the pandemic was, you should sit them down and get them to watch Bo Burnham: Inside. Filmed by, edited by, and starring American musician and comedian Bo Burnham, this is a creative masterpiece that does a brilliant job of capturing what it was like to live through months of lockdown. It oscillates wildly and deliberately between the hysterical and the profound, with Burnham delving deeply into isolation, anxiety, and the internet age.
The Haunting of Hill House
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Loosely based on the gothic horror novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House is horror at its finest—gripping, stunning, and most of all, terrifying. The Crain family move into Hill House in the summer of 1992 with plans to renovate and flip it, but when they’re forced to stay longer, paranormal activity drives one family member over the edge, leaving the rest to flee. Twenty-six years later disaster strikes again, forcing the remaining family members to meet and confront the memories ruining their lives. Hill House never holds back on the jump scares, making the mounting tension simply unbearable (in the best way). And despite the obviously supernatural elements in its plot, the horror grounds itself in the stories of the Crain family members.
Big Mouth
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Yes, it’s disgusting and puerile, but then so was puberty, remember? Nick Kroll’s masterpiece of teenage angst is a wickedly smart, wickedly rude cartoon that follows a group of kids and their troupe of very influential friends—Hormone Monster, Shame Wizard, and the rest. Big Mouth turns dick jokes into poignant World War stories, makes sense of the ghost of Duke Ellington in the attic, and fearlessly takes on everything from mental health and bad parents to sexual and racial identities with whimsy and grace. Oh, and lots and lots of bodily fluids. One of the funniest shows of the past 10 years, period.
Lupin
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Arsène Lupin, the belle époque burglar created by French novelist Maurice Leblanc in the early 1900s, is reinvented as Assane Diop, a first-generation Frenchman with a mania for Lupin books and a grudge against the powerful forces who decades ago framed his father for a theft he didn’t commit—and led him to die in prison. Pairing drones, social media bots, and hacking skills with traditional tools of the trade like fake beards, picklocks, and quick wits, Diop hunts down his adversaries as he searches for the truth about his father’s fate. In his spare time, Diop also tries to patch together a crumbling marriage and build a better rapport with his son. Worth watching in the French original, this five-episode series’ strength lies in the dialog, the character development, and the charismatic performance of Omar Sy as Assane. The actual escapades and daring heists are beautifully choreographed, but a lot of the mechanics—how a certain piece of legerdemain worked, when an impenetrable building was infiltrated—are left to the viewer’s imagination.
Bridgerton
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From executive producer Shonda Rhimes comes a period drama that also happens to be Netflix’s most-watched series ever. Bridgerton is set during the Regency period in England and follows the powerful Bridgerton family as they navigate love, marriage, and scandal. Incredibly entertaining, the show is based on a series of novels, each of which focuses on a different Bridgerton sibling. The first series follows eldest sister Daphne (Phoebe Dynevor) and her turbulent marriage to one of London’s most eligible bachelors, Duke Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page). The second season explores the relationship between Daphne’s brother Anthony (Jonathan Bailey), the woman he chooses to marry, and the family and societal dramas this sets in motion.
The Crown
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Now into its fourth season, The Crown shows British royalty at its best and worst. It’s very much a fictional retelling of the life of Queen Elizabeth II, with the first season focused on the eight years between 1947 and 1955, when Elizabeth marries the Duke of Edinburgh. Things move faster in the second series, which covers the Suez Crisis and the resignation of British prime minister Harold Macmillan. In the third season, Olivia Colman steps into the main role as HRH enters the tricky middle years and the Swinging Sixties, while the fourth season centers on Princess Diana’s tricky relationship with the royals.
The Queen’s Gambit
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Stylish and intensely watchable, this seven-part limited series is based on a novel of the same name and follows chess prodigy Beth Harmon from an orphanage in Kentucky to her duels with Russians in Moscow. Anya Taylor-Joy excels as the troubled Harmon, and the series is so surprisingly gripping that it will have you considering a monthly subscription to Chess.com.
Last Chance U
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Last Chance U is one the most successful documentary series on Netflix and Part 5 is the best one yet. The series, which follows the travails of junior college student-athletes aiming to break into big-time college football teams and ultimately the NFL, benefits from shifting its focus from rural towns with outsized ambitions and imported talent to Laney College in Oakland, California. Laney isn’t rich. It doesn’t import players to improve its team. It doesn’t house or feed its players. It’s a genuine part of the community, and the players come from that community. The result is a series that shines a light on the growing dislocation and inequality in America as the overflow from neighboring San Francisco gentrifies the formerly blue-collar Oakland. And, unlike in previous seasons, Laney’s head coach isn’t an unbearable ass. The series goes to some dark places, but it is all the better for it.
Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker
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This miniseries chronicles how Madam C.J. Walker went from widowed laundress to hair care mogul, becoming America’s first female self-made millionaire in the process. Based on the book On Her Own Ground, by A’Lelia Bundles, Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, the series provides a window into the life of African-American women in the early 1900s. Academy Award-winning Octavia Spencer, who stars as the titular heroine, fights to overcome post-slavery racial biases and find her place in a male-dominated capitalist system.
Money Heist
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When a team of nine criminals launches an audacious heist at Spain’s Royal Mint, they are convinced that their meticulous plan covers every eventuality. But things start to unravel when the enigmatic mastermind behind the heist starts getting close to the police detective in charge of securing the safe release of the 67 hostages. Although the twisting plot strains the limits of credulity at points, Money Heist is a deliciously frenetic and tension-filled series that makes its flawed main characters surprisingly sympathetic.
Unorthodox
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This miniseries follows Esty, a 19-year-old woman who flees her ultra-orthodox upbringing in Williamsburg’s Hasidic Jewish community and ends up in Berlin, where she soon discovers how different life can be. But as she tries to find new friends and make a fresh start in the city, her husband Yanky and his cousin Moishe come after her, determined to bring her back. The plot is dramatic and compelling, with flashbacks to Esty’s experience with arranged marriage offering insight into orthodox life and her struggles to play the role expected of her. The clash of cultures is sometimes played up to the point of silliness, but Shira Haas’ performance in the leading role will keep you glued to the screen.
Ozark
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Jason Bateman got fans used to seeing him as a sad-sack goof when he played Michael Bluth in Arrested Development. On Ozark, he reveals a whole new side, playing financial advisor Marty Byrde, who finds himself relocating his entire family from a Chicago suburb to the Ozark mountains in Missouri. The reason? He got involved with a money-laundering scheme for Mexican cartels that he’s having difficulty disentangling from. The atmosphere, heavy with suspense, guilt, and trouble-making drug lords, is reminiscent of Breaking Bad. It’s one of Netflix’s most popular shows, and with its fourth and final season now complete, this is the perfect time to dive into this murky but gripping world.
Sex Education
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Although it has a distinctly American vibe, with jocks, a capella groups, and mean girls, Sex Education is set in the UK and filmed in Wales. Asa Butterfield stars as an awkward teenager who starts giving sex counseling for money, and Gillian Anderson is captivating as his (actually qualified sex therapist) mother. While the titular topic is often a source of comedy, Sex Education also explores issues related to intimacy and identity in a smart and relatable way.
The Witcher
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Netflix Original The Witcher is, by objective critical standards, not particularly good. But as binge-worthy escapist enjoyment, it’s an absolute triumph. Based on a Polish fantasy literature franchise that gained global popularity following its successful video game adaptation, the series follows Geralt of Rivia (Henry Cavill), whose occupation as a mutant “witcher” sees him slaying monsters for money. Our beefy, gravel-voiced hero finds himself caught up in a bigger plot, however, as his destiny becomes entwined with an orphaned princess on the run and a powerful sorceress testing the limits of her abilities. With its restrained dialog, monster violence, and discombobulated timeline, the series sometimes feels more like a mashup of video game cutscenes than a cohesive dramatic narrative—but it works. The Witcher’s success seems to come from recognizing that viewers don’t always want their ridiculous fantasy shows to be too high-brow and are mainly there to see some cool magic effects and sexy Geralt in the bath (surprising exactly no one, there is plenty of gratuitous female nudity too).
Unbelievable
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When Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever) reports that she has been raped, she finds herself thrown into a deeply flawed system that will tear her already traumatic life apart at the seams. Based on a true story, Unbelievable follows the aftermath of Adler’s rape and the two female detectives who years later team up to uncover a series of disturbingly similar crimes. Adler’s devastating ordeal makes this an understandably difficult watch at times, but the excellent lead performances and focus on the voices of victims—so often missing in shows that portray violence against women—add up to a nuanced and unmissable exploration of the lasting impacts of sexual violence.
Dark
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If you like your TV moody and brooding, the sci-fi series Dark is for you. The first German-language Netflix Original series (there’s an option for English dubbing, though the undubbed version is superior), Dark opens with a secret liaison, a missing teenager, and a spooky-looking cave, which sets the vibe for the rest of the show. What initially appears to be a straightforward mystery investigation soon turns into an ambitious time travel plot with plenty of atmosphere. A tight 26 episodes are spread over three seasons, and the more you watch, the more you see how appropriate the title is.
The OA
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One of the more original Netflix shows in recent memory, The OA opens with Prairie Johnson, played by cocreator Brit Marling, reappearing after having been missing for seven years. She won’t explain where she was or the biggest mystery of all: how she came to regain her sight. What follows is an absorbing supernatural mystery that raises questions at times but keeps you hooked all the same. A tight 16-episode run over two seasons makes this an eminently bingeable dose of high-concept, borderline bizarre television.
The Last Kingdom
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Based on a series of novels by Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom is set in late 9th-century England, long before the country was unified. The competing kingdoms have been invaded and occupied by Vikings, leaving Wessex under the rule of King Alfred as the last one standing against the plundering hoards. It’s an entertaining historical drama centered on Uthred of Bebbanburg, an Anglo-Saxon who is kidnapped as a boy, raised as a Viking, and finds himself playing both sides to try to regain the land and title stolen from him. It never quite reaches the heights of Vikings, which is available on Amazon Prime, but it’s a more-than-adequate substitute while you wait for Vikings’ final season. There are three seasons of The Last Kingdom on Netflix, with a fourth on the way.
BoJack Horseman
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Back in the 1990s, BoJack Horseman was the star of a hit TV sitcom. A lot has changed since then. The animated series picks up with BoJack 20 years after his peak as he sinks deeper into middle age and an endless cycle of substance abuse. In an LA half-populated by human-animal hybrids, BoJack comes to terms with his existential dread in this bleak and darkly funny comedy. The first half of season one is a little heavy on the bleakness and light on laughs, but once it hits its stride, this surreal comedy comes into its own with stellar voice performances from Amy Sedaris, Will Arnett, and Aaron Paul.
The End of the F***ing World
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“I thought she could be interesting to kill. So I pretended to fall in love with her.” Thus begins the inner monologue of James (Alex Lawther), a dysfunctional 17-year-old who is convinced he’s a sociopath. His target is Alyssa, played by Jessica Barden, the new girl at school with terrible parents and a special talent for annoying people. They run away together, and the corresponding crime spree draws them closer as the law follows in their wake. This pitch-perfect black comedy from Channel 4 will leave you wanting much more. You’ll blast through The End of the F***ing World in a weekend, perhaps even an evening, and be the better for it.
