Looking for the best shows on Netflix? Well, you don’t need to look elsewhere, as we’ve compiled a list of some of the best original shows to watch in Netflix, ranked! To ensure that this list of the latest Netflix series to watch remains current, new ones are added as they are showcased or when several series wrap up for this season or the next one out.
This list is mostly for Netflix Originals that are worth watching these days, with the priority given to the new ones, but you’ll find a few old Netflix shows at the end. The following are just the most relevant and worthwhile shows to be watched on Netflix.
Table of Contents
Shows to Watch in Netflix
1. Man on Fire
While not exactly a TV series remake of the 2004 Denzel Washington film of the same name, this action-packed thriller gets its title directly from the 2004 movie. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as John Creasy, a formerly depressed ex-CIA agent who is revitalized in his life thanks to taking care of a girl who needs his protection (Billie Boullet and to avenge those who hurt him. This is a typical action-packed story and that’s a good thing.
2. Should I Marry A Murderer
This compelling three-part docu-series is about Caroline Muirhead as she gets caught up in the roll-off romance with Sandy McKellar on Tinder. Their bond grows stronger, and Caroline also discovers a terrible secret that turns her life around in an instant. She finds out that Sandy and his brother were guilty of the brutal murder of a man, revealing a dark world that lies beneath their jolly face. Featuring highly emotional interviews, shocking revelations and true investigative information, the series focuses on human nature and the problems of deceiving, trust, manipulation, and the terrible crimes and disturbing secrets that lurk beneath the surface in someone’s past you have fallen in love with.
3. Nemesis
Courtney A. Kemp, the creator of Power, travels from New York to Los Angeles to launch a new series about two cops on opposite sides of the law who are playing an ultimate cat-and-mouse game. Coltrane Wilder (Y’lan Noel) shows up as a successful businessman, but Det. The idea that Isiah Stiles (Matthew Law) is a pro-thief who is leading the team that killed his partner, Rosa, is his conviction. Stiles will leave no stone unturned in his quest to bring Wilder down and Wilder will do whatever he can to not get caught. Lots of cliches – but only good ones!
4. Arcane
Based on the lore of ‘League of Legends’, Arcane is an animated fantasy that follows the socio-economic dynamics that play out on the streets of Piltover and Zaun. The journeys of the characters are investigated through the lens of corruption, violence and more. This year the series won the Outstanding Animation Program award, a feat that has garnered its critics’ and media’s praise.
5. Breaking Bad
A high school chemistry teacher discovers he’s fighting an inoperable lung cancer and decides to make and sell meth to make sure his family’s future won’t be in jeopardy. Chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) has just been diagnosed with cancer and is based in Albuquerque, N.M. Walter vows to earn a decent income to provide for his family in case of his demise, and resorts to his budding chemistry expertise to join the meth-making game as a part-time operation.
Saying he will work extra hours as a chemist to be able to support his family if he dies, Walter decides to take up meth-making as a ‘side business’. Joining a local drug dealer who was once his teacher, Walter is drawn into a corrupt world of horrific drug trafficking in the southwest of the United States.
6. Beef
Muslim singer Beef plunges back into the Netflix competition with a rethought three-part format for season 2. The cast renews with a new quartet of stars, Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Charles Melton and Cailee Spaeny, and it’s set up in a tightly-bound situation ripe for some explosions. I’ve watched all of the episodes myself and this is even worse.
When newly engaged employees Ashley (Spaeny) and Austin (Melton) spot a violent scuffle between their boss Josh (Isaac) and his wife Lindsay (Mulligan), they seek the case only to find out it is a court case involving their boss’s betrayal of his spouse, and that his wife is an inmate at the local police station. Ashley hides the fight and extorts its reportage from the couple for money and work. The two couples are entangled in a steady cycle of lies as Josh deals with financial difficulties and starts to embezzle from the club.
7. Adolescence
Adolescence is one of the biggest streaming talks of TV 2025 that has been shot in a single continuous take, taking place with a 13-year-old boy accused of killing a classmate. It is fascinating how the project is technically realized, and equally so that the Netflix show portrays how contemporary media has an impact on the minds and behaviour of a 16–18-year-old boy.
It’s the enormous success of the cast, particularly that of young actor Owen Cooper, making a brilliant Emmy-winning debut as Jamie, and the scenes between him and his therapist, Erin Doherty, in episode 3 – one of the most affecting in the annals of storyboarding. As Adolescent goes graphic, it tackles your question of “What is teen boyhood?” from a place of sincerity in a time where the conversation of incels and the loneliness epidemic is becoming more mainstream.
8. Sex Education
YA has proven itself to be a successful genre for Netflix, and this is a rollicking Britcom. Otis (Asa Butterfield), an introverted adolescent, is struggling to adjust to his life with his single mother, an outspoken sex-therapist (Gillian Anderson), who is determined to become a model citizen. However, when he begins to have trouble with other children at his school, Otis’ queer best friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa in a star-making performance) and Otis’ crush Maeve (Emma Mackey) launch a “sex clinic” that allows their classmates to get some “action.” A hilariously sweet comedy set in a variety of sexual and romantic relationships.
9. BoJack Horseman
Weaving the surface narrative of an anthropomorphic horse from the era of Michael Richards, BoJack Horseman is an animated comedy about a washed-up movie star seeking to rebuild his career by writing a ghostwritten autobiography with his agent, Diane (Alison Brie) and bring it back into existence.
The six-season series, however, has weighted emotional depth and profundity, which any fan and enthusiast will tell you. It’s the typical weight of the issues being dealt with—depression, addiction, trauma, self-destruction, to name a few—but with a very large splash of silly, ridiculous humor that will Arnett provides as BoJack Cheevos’s voice. The series won him four Critics’ Choice Television Awards for Best Animated Series and several call it one of the most influential animated series ever produced.
10. Black Doves
Black Doves is the perfect Netflix show to indulge your need for an adrenaline rush at only six episodes. Keira Knightley plays the role of Helen Webb who is married to a British government official, but is also an undercover spy. When her secret lover Jason (Andrew Koji) is killed by an anonymous assassin, Helen’s cover is on the ropes and she embarks on a hunt to find the killer.
At the same time, her old pal Sam (Ben Whishaw), an employee of her spy group, The Black Doves, comes to aid and protects her. The propulsive type of serial will keep you on the edge of your seat but it is most definitely the bantering back and forth between Helen and Sam that makes you stand out from the rest.
11. Orphan Black
Orphan Black is a Canadian Sci-Fi Web Series, which aired first on BBC America, following the storyline of a female named Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany) who discovers another woman whose body looks identical to her own attempting suicide after watching the woman look up to a similar woman over a camera. As Sarah digs into the other woman’s past, she learns that they’re two of many clones who were part of a secret experiment, and now the lives of her and her “sisters” are in danger. With five seasons of the show, it is definitely a solid mystery, but what a marvel Maslany is to the multiple characters she plays.
12. Trust Me: The False Prophet
The latest Netflix true crime binge has come in the shape of a true crime called “The False Prophet” (also called Trust Me). The 4-part doc series hit the number one slot on Netflix 2 days after it was posted and though it doesn’t overhaul the genre, it explores one of the most disturbing manipulation cases around. A chilling and disturbing experience that will leave a visible impact.
Trust Me: The False Prophet follows traveler Christine Marie (who is an expert on cults) and filmmaker Tolga Katas as they enter into an isolated Utah town connected to the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints. As they record their experiences within the sect, they meet Samuel Bateman, a former member who asserts religious authority and who starts to create his own group. Melding into his inner sanctum, Christine and Tolga snoop, collect evidence and pass themselves off as a harmless documentary to entice Bateman to believe they trust their partners.
13. Running Point
Starring Kate Hudson, the Mindy Kaling series features the ambitious but under-the-radar Isla Gordon (Hudson), a player who takes over control of the fictitious Los Angeles Waves NBA team after her brother (Justin Theroux) resigns following a scandal. It’s sort of like if Shiv Roy got dropped into a Ted Lasso situation. Other stars include the Other Two’s, Drew Tarver. Shows are now in the air for two seasons.
14. Insecure
The HBO TV show, just released on Netflix, is the perfect choice if you want to read up on the escapades that have marked the career of the nation’s first “Barbie president. The web series Awkward Black Girl, which Issa Rae created, turned into this sitcom in which Issa (Rae), a non-profit worker, is navigating her post-college life in Los Angeles while struggling. Issa’s best friend Molly is currently a Hulu star as Vacation Friends 2, and looks to be a reasonably successful lawyer, but sure to have some growing to do in the love department when it comes to her less polished friends.
15. Wednesday
The classic Website Mom star Jenna Ortega is playing Wednesday, the latest shows to watch in Netflix to take a modern look at one of the most morbid teens in pop culture history. With show after show following his success, the series, helmed by Tim Burton in some episodes, soon was among the most popular on Netflix when it debuted in 2022 and the volume two finale of season 1 is available today.
16. Derry Girls
Lisa McGee semi-autobiographical series of growing up the weathered Irish towns of its eponymous title during the Troubles may have been a tearjerker coming-of-age dramedy. Luckily, she went in another direction. There are hilariously incompetent teenage girls, who are perpetuating their own chaos every day with the Derry Girls. Add an Irish family, an obnoxious Pick-Me-Girl school classmate (Leah O’Rourke) and the permanently over it Catholic school headmistress (the perfectly dry Siobhán McSweeney), and you have Derry Girls, an absolute corker of a show.
17. Squid Game
Several reasons took it to the top of shows to watch in netflix. The biggest one is the incredible access to the idea — a game show with mortal stakes. Squid Game was released during the pandemic, and it tapped into the desperation of the world. If you could go back and change how things turned out in your life, what would you do?
The story of a quest for a fortune also became a Netflix mountainous critical darling, being nominated for 14 Emmy Awards, and the first time in the awards’ history that a non-English speaking actor won, Kim Jong-jun, Lee Jung-jae. No one said that Netflix isn’t a great company, but the good results of this show allowed the stories from other countries to get on American screens.
18. The Crown
The Crown has already won 24 Emmys, and isn’t far behind the Queen herself when it comes to awards. The series, released in 2016, is at once erudite and “guilty pleasure” fare, with a glimpse (dramatized) of the goings-on inside the British royal house. In its six seasons, the show chronicles almost six decades of Queen Elizabeth II’s life, from before she accedes to the throne to the early 2000s and the marriage of Prince William.
New actors, each interpreting the character in a slightly different way as they mature, bring more level-playing-field talent to the shows, which are recasting roles each season. Join for the vital British and worldwide history, but remain for the filmmaking that won the series the awards.
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