Not sure what to watch on Netflix? Here’s what to watch when you’ve seen everything else.
Welcome to TechRadar’s always-updated selection of the best shows on Netflix – 40 TV shows that showcase the best Netflix series available in the US.
We’ve scoured the video streaming service to create a guide to the best Netflix shows in the US right now. We’ll keep this list constantly updated with the latest television shows that you should be watching and also tell you why.
Taking a long trip somewhere and unsure if you’ll have an internet connection? No problem! You can now download shows for offline viewing or save them to an SD card if you have an extra one handy.
OK, without further ado let’s dive into the best shows on Netflix!
We can’t wait for Orange is the New Black’s fifth season. When the show returned for a fourth season things got very dark! Racial tensions and issues with the US prison system are the main plot points for season four and while the comedy is still there, it’s slathered with a fair bit of drama.
But season five should be all of that and more.
If you’ve never heard of the series before, here’s the premise: Set in a woman’s prison, Orange doesn’t shirk the big issues of violence and rape but manages to mix these with a heady dose of black humor. It’s even more popular than Cards which is a surprise as Netflix’s advertising has always been very Spacey heavy.
Slathered with a fantastic dose of black comedy, Santa Clarita Diet is sort of like if the show Dexter met Modern Family. It stars Drew Barrymore as the stereotypical TV mom, with one simple, but quite interesting difference: she likes eating people. This brand-new show on Netflix is a great send up of the family sitcom, taking all the tropes that make Modern Family and the like so successful, then turning them on their head, and then eating their head. And be warned: when things are eaten it’s all very grizzly – so much so that it could give The Walking Dead a run for its money. Timothy Olyphant also stars in the show as the dad who is happy for his wife to be a flesh eater, and kills it.
This awkward rom-com has been penned by Judd Apatow and it’s yet again another hit for Netflix Originals. It’s a similar bedfellow to Master of None, but it improves on the themes of dating, love and city life with characters that are more rounded and a touch more believable as they fail, give up and start over again in rapid succession. Community’s Gillian Jacobs is great as the prim Mickey, while Paul Rust is effortless as slacker Gus. The show stealer, though, is Apatow’s uber talented daughter Iris who plays a frankly horrible child star.
The ‘will they, won’t they?’ shenanigans continue in the second season – those expecting a plot-heavy season will be disappointed, though, as Love meanders through its storylines – which is no bad thing (and more realistic) if you ask us.
Master of None takes Ansari out of Amy Poehler’s shadow and brings him into his own, showing audiences a side of the comedian that anyone in their mid-20s or early 30s can relate to. Like Louie, Master of None covers the oddities of everyday life, incorporating all the heartfelt moments and awkward situations that come with the territory.
If you haven’t watched it, now’s a good time. The second season is coming soon and you’ll want to be all caught up on Aziz’s adventures before it begins.
The words ‘food porn’ get thrown around a lot these days, and typically are preceded by a hashtag and proceeded by us viciously rolling our eyes. But Chef’s Table is the real deal – 4K footage of some of the best chefs in the world making their signature dishes and doling out morsels of philosophy to keep your mind just as engaged as your stomach.
Parts of the show come off as a bit too heady for the source material and are prone to veering a bit off course (there’s multiple scenes where a particular chef talks about polygamy for some odd reason) but overall most of the chefs come off as genuinely eccentric masters of their craft.
Alison Brie already proved she had comedic chops in Community but GLOW cements her as a comedy genius who can turn on the seriousness when she needs to. In GLOW (gorgeous ladies of wrestling) she plays Ruth Wilder, a struggling actress in ’80s LA who turns to women’s wrestling to make a star of herself. The show is a look at the underground sensation of ladies wrestling, with all the wit and gender stereotype reversing you would expect from the maker of Orange Is The New Black. It’s a great, highly original watch, with a superb cast that includes British singer Kate Nash.
Fresh from giving horror anthologies a new spin with American Horror Story, creator Ryan Murphy has taken this idea and expanded it into the world of crime. The first series of American Crime Story focuses on the very public case of OJ Simpson and the death of his wife Nicole. It’s superb TV, dramatising what was one of the most engrossing true stories to come out of the ’90s. Cuba Gooding Jr is great as OJ but it’s the supporting cast that steals the show. Sarah Paulson, David Schwimmer, John Travolta and Courtney B Vance ham it up to the max and it makes for some of the most entertaining television in years.
When it comes to superhero movies, Marvel are bossing DC thanks to the rich tapestry it has weaved with its cinematic universe. Its TV shows, which now include Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, just keep getting better.
Daredevil is superb television, regardless if you are a superhero fan or not. Matt Murdoch’s (Boardwalk Empire’s Charlie Cox) rise from blind lawyer to vigilante is brutal and steeped in realism. The reason it works so well is that it doesn’t shy away from being violent – each crack and crunch is a world away from Ben Affleck’s terrible movie version. And special mention has to go to Vincent D’Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, his best role since the tortured Private Pyle.
If you ask the execs at Netflix what their most successful show of 2017 has been, they’ll point you to 13 Reasons Why, a serialized adaptation of the Jay Asher novel of the same name. And while the series can be a bit one-note at times (hey kids, don’t be a bully) , it’s easy to sympathize with each and every member of the high schoolers the show portrays. The mystery of who, exactly, Tony (played by Christian Navarro) is helps push the series past some dull interludes while the genuinely cute romance between Hannah, the girl who commits suicide, and Clay, the boy tasked with finding out why, is both adorable and a compelling enough reason to flip from episode to the next.
The Jim Carey movie of the stories by Lemony Snicket was passable. But given there are 13 books on the exploits of Count Olaf and the Baudelaire children -Violet, Klaus, and Sunny – it made sense that Netflix would want to make a show out of it. Focusing on the first four books, the series nails the dour atmosphere of the books, with Patrick Wharburton popping up as Snicket to berate the viewer, much like the books. But it’s because of Neil Patrick Harris’ evil Count Olaf that the show really shines. He’s not as hammy as Carey but manages to be menacing while still having a blast.
Freddie Highmore was one of the sweetest child actors around in his younger years, playing cherubic children in the likes of Finding Neverland and the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Now he’s a fully fledged adult he’s taken a much darker turn as future Psycho psycho Norman Bates in the show Bate Motel. A prequel of sorts to the Psycho movies, Bates Motel is a fantastic spin on the horror tale, ramping up the relationship Bates has with his mother – a cold and calculating Vera Farmiga – and sprinkling breadcrumbs along the way that point to how he became who he became.
Is The Crown Netflix’s crowning glory? Not quite, but it is a sumptuous look at one of the world’s most famous families: the Royal family.
Charting the early years of the relationship between the Queen (Claire Foy) and Prince Philip (former Doctor Who Matt Smith) , the show was written by Peter Morgan and, at £100 million, is one of the most expensive TV series ever made. Which means there’s enough pomp and ceremony to keep those pining for a Downton Abbey replacement happy.
We’ll admit that we were a little disappointed when we heard director Guillermo Del Toro was making a show called Troll Hunters that it wasn’t a spin-off of the excellent Scandinavian documentary, but this animated show is a delight. It stars the vocal talent of Ron Perlman, the late Anton Yelchin and Kelsey Grammar and focuses on a teenager who is chosen to be the guardian of Arcadia, a town overrun with trolls. Part one is out now and features some beautiful animation from DreamWorks.
The OA rounds off what has been an exceptional year for television on Netflix. Co-created by and starring the ever-brilliant Brit Marling, the show consists of eight episodes that rival Stranger Things for, well, strangeness. Marling is a blind woman who comes back after disappearing for many years. Her sight is restored and she has a tale to tell. Although there are eight episodes they vary wildly in length – from 70 minutes to 30 minutes. The whole thing has been made to make you feel uneasy and it does a great job of that.
Given that Archer is set at the International Secret Intelligence Service (unfortunately abbreviated as ISIS) , recent terror atrocities have meant the animation has been getting headlines for the wrong reasons. But don’t let this unlucky nomenclature put you off. Archer is a brilliant send-up of spy movies of yore, complete with some of the best voiceover talent – many of which have been pruned from the cast of Arrested Development. While the fifth season ‘reboot’ wasn’t the success it should have been, Archer is still one of the best cartoon comedies around.
If it wasn’t for Netflix, Arrested Development would have stayed as a three-season wonder. The streaming giant decided to take a gamble and fund a fourth season of Mitchell Hurwitz’s brilliant family comedy and we are glad it did. While splitting the family up for most of the season meant some of the spark had disappeared – this was done to fit in with the actors’ busy schedules – the fourth season proved that there was still a lot to like about the dysfunctional Bluth family. Filled with season-long in-jokes, perfect site gags and spot-on wordplay, Arrested Development is a comedy that needs to be watched on repeat – and even then you will find something new to laugh at.
Created, written and well-loved by animation legend Matt Groening, you might have wrote Futurama off as filler content for Fox’s Sunday night programming block. If that sounds like you, you inadvertently did a major disservice to creativity, humor and passion Groening poured into every panel year after year for over a decade.
Futurama is funny, witty and has the uncanny ability to poke fun at cultural icons without sinking to juvenile mud-slinging. Each time the series got the axe broke our heart a little more, which didn’t get the mending it needed until the final episode of the final season.
Mad Men is more addictive than the cigarettes Don Draper is trying to market us. If you’ve never watched it, essentially Mad Men is a show about everything we now consider taboo in glaringly harsh light. Set in 1960s America, inter-office intercourse is par for the course, along with ashtrays overflowing with cigarettes, sexism at the highest levels and a complete disregard for morals so long as it serves the characters on their climb to the top of the corporate ladder. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and his assistant Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) shock and entertain us by showing the lifestyles of the advertising executives who got the public to buy cigarettes long after they knew the health risks.
There’s no better person to portray not-so-distant future dystopias than Charlie Brooker. He’s been holding a warped mirror up to the ridiculous nature of the world’s media for years, mixing cutting comments with comedy, but Black Mirror sees him entering darker territory. Each series is just three episodes long but they are all standalone treats, twisting reality in their own unique way while commenting on things we seem to hold dear today – namely technology and television.
