Overwhelmed by the number of TV shows on Netflix? Finding you spend more time scrolling than you do watching these days? Looking for new TV series that break out of the echo-chamber of algorithmic recommendations? We’ve collated some of the best TV shows to watch on Netflix right now may be just what you’ve been looking for.
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Thriller, one season, 2023-
When Marcin Kania (Arkadiusz Jakubik), an ex-musician and alcoholic, wakes on the floor of his son’s apartment covered in blood, he finds the boy missing and his own memory of the previous night’s events blacked-out by booze. Over the next five episodes Marcin attempts to find out what has happened and make sense of his own addiction. This is 21st-century film noir centred on a great performance from Jakubik, who retains our sympathy even when he behaves appallingly.
Ololade
Dark comedy, one season, 2023-
Two friends suddenly come into money. All does not go smoothly. From Brewster’s Millions to A Simple Plan it’s an age-old narrative device, so what makes this version different? It’s a Nigerian drama steeped in the culture of modern Lagos. Frank Donga and Femi Adebayo are excellent as unhappy school teacher Shina and playboy car-mechanic Lateef but the real success is how Taj, the writer-director, makes the city itself a central character in the show.
A Nearly Normal Family
Thriller, one season, 2023-
Mattias Edvardsson’s 2019 psychological thriller was a huge bestseller. In this six-part adaptation, directed by Per Hanefjord, the book’s murder-mystery narrative runs parallel to a disquieting portrait of a modern Sweden in which men act without compunction, the law acts in their favour and women’s words are forever doubted. There is a genuine polemical power to the drama, an anger that often overwhelms the series’ narrative drive.
Squid Game — The Challenge
Reality show, one season, 2023-
“People do a whole lot worse for a whole lot less,” says one of the 456 contestants in this vast reality TV show based on Squid Game. The 2021 Korean drama was the platform’s most watched show, so it’s no surprise that its sadistic premise — hard-up participants compete in deadly children’s games to win a fortune — should be reanimated for this game show with a $4.56 million prize. The show sticks to the drama’s uncanny aesthetic — masked guards, singing doll and all — although the “eliminations” don’t appear fatal. It’s a disorientating cross between Takeshi’s Castle, Big Brother and The Traitors, and it’s not long before the squid ink of human unkindness starts to confuse the game as contestants are given chances to betray their colleagues. You have watched a lot worse for a lot less, but no one comes out of it well.
The Railway Men
Drama, one season, 2023-
The 1984 gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, remains the world’s worst industrial disaster, with the number of deaths estimated at 16,000. Sidestepping comparisons with Craig Mazin’s 2019 miniseries, Chernobyl, the writer-director Shiv Rawail’s four-part dramatisation focuses on the railway employees who helped to organise aid and evacuation. Inevitably harrowing and suitably angry in all the right places, this is a tale of courage in the face of certain death.
The Crown
Historical drama, six seasons, 2016-2023
Since its first series in 2016, The Crown has validated its existence with claims that it “humanises” the royal family through excellent performances and the writing of Peter Morgan. Yet there is something disconcerting about fictionalising real people. As The Crown has moved closer to the unhappiest period of recent royal history, the controversy around the show has again intensified. With this suitably divided sixth series — the first four are available now, the last six from December 14 — viewers can make a final call on whether it’s “humanising” or tasteless, a judgment that will also need applying to the wedding of Charles and Camilla (Olivia Williams) and the romance between Prince William (Ed McVey) and Kate Middleton (Meg Bellamy). There’s so much more story to tell, but for now at least, The Crown is wisely stepping back from royal duties.
Robbie Williams
Documentary, one season, 2023-
“It feels as though the past has me in a headlock,” says Robbie Williams at the start of this remarkable close-up portrait of the pop star as baby boy band member, older, unwiser pop star and 49-year-old family man. He’s prone to insomnia, he says, to waking up in the night and becoming entangled in fear and shame. In this four-part documentary, where he views footage of his past as a kind of prompt for discussion, he sits in or on his bed, looking at his younger self with a mixture of horror and wonder. Directed by Joe Pearlman, whose films about Lewis Capaldi (Lewis Capaldi: How I’m Feeling Now) and Bros (Bros: After the Screaming Stops) give him the right frame of reference, it’s an intense rush of old video, from the earliest days of Take That to Williams’s solo pomp. The star’s commentary on fame, ambition and his mental health is laceratingly honest — “I felt like I was an infant in the grown-up world,” he says at one point — building up a powerful, intimate profile of a troubled man still slowly moving towards peace.
Escaping Twin Flames
Documentary, one season, 2023-
Jeff and Shaleia Ayan, who run the dating cult Twin Flames Universe, have surely come of age with two docs on Prime Video and Netflix: sad tales of lonely millennials and Gen Zs taking online classes delivered by a messianic Jeff and a suspiciously compliant Shaleia, whose Zoom backgrounds are becoming more luxurious with every broadcast. The more negative publicity they receive, the richer they seem to become.
All The Light We Cannot See
Drama, one season, 2023-
This series, adapted by Steven Knight from an award-winning novel, is set in the years of Nazi domination of Europe and interweaves two stories. Marie-Laure (Aria Mia Loberti) is a blind French girl whose father Daniel (Mark Ruffalo) takes her from Paris to St Malo — where they stay with her uncle Etienne (Hugh Laurie) — when the Germans invade France. Werner (Louis Hofmann) is a bright German teenager tricked into serving in the Wehrmacht, and their paths will inevitably converge in 1944 when his unit reaches Brittany. Described by Netflix as an “intimate, emotional” drama, this might seem an unlikely project for Knight, yet there are Peaky Blinders connections: the theme of violence’s impact on young lives, and the First World War’s legacy of veterans with PTSD such as Tommy Shelby and Etienne.
Sly
Documentary, one-off, 2023-
Thom Zimny’s feature-length portrait of the Rocky and Rambo star is a film caught midway between a hagiography and a genuinely moving confessional. You sense that Zimny was perhaps a little too cautious around the Hollywood icon, but even when batting softball questions, Stallone is a great storyteller and myth-maker, at ease with the braggadocio, but also disarmingly self-aware.
Ferry — The Series
Crime drama, one season, 2023-
First there was Undercover (Netflix), the Belgian-Dutch crime-drama series about a pair of cops infiltrating a vast underground drug network. Then came Ferry (Netflix), the 2021 movie focused on the origin story of ruthless crime lord Ferry Bouman (the brilliant Frank Lammers). Now we have this eight-part series which follows Lammers’ strangely charismatic Ferry as he returns to his hometown to infiltrate a group of drug-dealing bikers. Set in the idyllic surrounds of Limburg, this is a suspenseful, grim and often darkly funny crime drama about the most unlikely of anti-heroes.
Tore
Comedy, one season, 2023-
A pitch-black comedy about a young gay man, Tore (William Spetz), desperate to lose his virginity, is perhaps not the most original story idea in 2023. Yet there is something about this six-part Swedish series from the actor-writer Spetz and the director Erika Calmeyer that elevates it out of the ordinary. That’s partly because Spetz’s characters behave in the unpredictable manner of normal people but also because, under Calmeyer’s gritty direction, the story evolves in ways that are shocking, surreal, unpredictable and disarmingly true.
The Spiderman of Paris
Documentary, one season, 2023-
Vjeran Tomic, the skilled climber and art thief, explains how, in 2000, he used a crossbow and caribiner to break into an apartment and steal a wealth of rare art treasures. Much like the robbery itself this is simple, efficient and thrillingly executed.
Life on Our Planet
Natural history, one season, 2023
While Planet Earth III might represent the gold standard of natural history programming, this offers a more Hollywood-style take on the wonders of existence. The opening CGI animations of a sabre-toothed cat squaring up to a giant terror bird hint at the programme’s pedigree: Steven Spielberg is among the executive producers, giving the whole thing a Jurassic Park sheen. Adding to the high-spec finish is the narration by Morgan Freeman. From the “last universal common ancestor” to numerous mass extinctions, the dazzle of the visuals is matched by a rush of information — not least that the ten million species of plants and animals alive today represent just 1 per cent of all species that have existed.
Get Gotti
Documentary, one season, 2023
This three-part documentary about the rise and fall of New York City’s most flamboyant Mob boss in the 1980s is a sleazy delight for anyone who ever loved The Sopranos. Produced by the same team behind Netflix’s Fear City — about the FBI’s investigation into organised crime in the 1970s and 1980s — it’s a series that has no respect for the loathsome John Gotti but is utterly fascinated by his language, style and (utter lack of) ethics.
Bodies
Sci-fi drama, one season, 2023
Mashing up crime fiction, horror, sci-fi and costume drama, this reworking of Si Spencer’s graphic novel also interweaves timelines. Four sleuths — all outsider figures from different eras— somehow investigate the same murder in the East End of London. DI Hillinghead (Kyle Soller) is a closeted gay detective in 1890. DS Whiteman (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), a Polish-Jewish refugee, is a corrupt cop in the Blitz. DS Hasan (Amaka Okafor) is a Muslim officer in 2023. The amnesiac DC Maplewood (Shira Haas) inhabits a dystopian 2050. What it all adds up to has yet to emerge, but there are hints of a grand conspiracy linking all the timelines, with Stephen Graham’s shadowy Elias Mannix likely to be at its heart. And there’s clearly an underlying theme of British identity, history and destiny: nothing less than “saving Britain’s future”, we’re told, is the four tecs’ task.
Crashing Eid
Comedy-drama, one season, 2023
There is a crackle of controversy surrounding this Saudi Arabian comedy-drama about a single mother introducing her British-Pakistani boyfriend to her ultra-traditional family. The framework has a familiar Richard Curtis rom-com feel, but the series uses more radical themes to play with the same fundamental ideas of human feelings, love and loss.
Beckham
Sports documentary, one season, 2023
“All I ever wanted to do was play football,” David Beckham says in this four-part documentary. Yet, as the director Fisher Stevens’s portrait of the player makes clear, a world outside football would soon creep into his life, turning him into the kind of global figure that could never have been imagined by the east London schoolboy. The white-hot intensity of Beckham’s fame has tempered slightly, but this film brings it all rushing back: the way his heroic sporting status was amplified and distorted by his relationship with the Spice Girl Victoria Adams; the paparazzi cameras; the ferocity of the scrutiny and the judgment. Featuring interviews with Beckham and Victoria, Alex Ferguson, Gary Neville, Eric Cantona and Beckham’s mum and dad, this is as essential for students of modern fame as it is for fans of football.
Everything Now
Comedy, one season, 2023
Sophie Wilde, the star of the recent horror smash Talk to Me, brings her quiet charisma to this witty comedy about the London teenager Mia, who returns to school after a hospital stay for anorexia, determined to live life to the full. It is also worth watching for Jessie Mae Alonzo’s charming turn as Mia’s secret crush, Carli.