Netflix has revolutionized original programming, regardless of your opinion. Starting with House of Cards in 2013, the platform made on-demand programs elite TV. That ingenuity cost them, since they now compete with Hulu, Disney+, and FreeVee.
Netflix drops Squid Game and returns to the entertainment discourse just when it looks to have lost its revolution.
Stranger Things, a joyful '80s pastiche influenced by John Carpenter, Steven Spielberg, Stephen King, and Red Dawn, took off thanks to its neo-Goonies cast of Dungeons & Dragons-obsessed kids, led by Millie Bobby Brown's telekinetic Eleven.
Since 2016, the show on Queen Elizabeth II's reign has won many awards, and for good cause. The script, acting, and photography make this show worth watching even by people who avoid historical dramas.
Selling a celebrity comedy about a horse-destructive '90s sitcom star is difficult. Indeed, BoJack is a program about humanoid animals that starkly examines despair, greed, addiction, celebrity, obsession, abuse, and generational trauma. Despite all odds, it's one of the funniest comedies on TV, full of visual gags and acidic language and unafraid to go dark and rebound with tenderness.
This South Korean series became Netflix's most-watched show in 2021 after making an unexpected hit. This is even more impressive given the topic matter. A more class-conscious and brutal variation on The Hunger Games, the show involves financially desperate participants playing children's games.
From episode one, Netflix's most-watched original series changed everything. Though later seasons had issues, OITNB's smart writing and fascinating characters won us over. It's won Emmys for both drama and comedy, so you decide.
Aziz Ansari's witty, ruminative, artistic tale of an Indian-American actor dating, eating, and accessorizing in New York City was a hit in 2015, but it disappeared for five years after its Italian neorealism-inspired second season.
Omar Sy’s master-thief Assane Diop may be the most effortlessly charismatic man on TV just now. The world has been slow to catch up on the stylish adventures of French literary hero Arsène Lupin – think Thomas Crown’s light fingers combined with Sherlock Holmes’s smarts – but Netflix’s smash-hit two-parter, in which Diop channels Lupin in the name of revenge, has brought the non-French-speaking world right up to speed. Even the subtitle-averse will get a major kick out of its super-sexy Parisian backdrops and hairpin plot twists.
Kimmy Schmidt will fill that 30 Rock-sized DVR hole and make you wish Tina Fey was your therapist. Created by Fey and meticulously cast Ellie Kemper, chipper Kimmy remarks on current society with the innocence of a child and the experiences of an adult (trapped in a bunker for much of her life) to make you wonder how we let certain things grow so bizarre.
Happy birthday, kid! In this dramedy, creator-director Natasha Lyonne plays a game developer trapped in a Groundhog's Day-like time loop, who realizes her situation is not so unique. The first season is great, but the second season appears stuck in a temporal loop. Many films and TV shows have addressed existential topics using the same idea, but few are as brilliant and soulful.
The Netflix audience has taken to Ozark slowly, but it's becoming one of the best crime dramas of recent years. After a failed money laundering scam, financial expert Jason Bateman transfers his family from Chicago to Missouri. After the transfer, the Mexican drug cartel and local criminals continue to appear in this crime drama, which frequently feels more serious than Breaking Bad.