The 15 best new shows on Netflix
Netflix has a lot of shows and movies from which to choose. Like, a lot. Sifting through all the streaming options can cause chronic indecision, leaving us scrolling down the Netflix main page just trying to pick something to watch.
Instead of getting overwhelmed and rewatching a Netflix OG classic like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, or Squid Game, how about trying something new? Sure, even that selection can be overwhelming. But we've done the hard part of watching them, and can confidently vouch for these.
Here are the best new Netflix original series released in the past 12 months.
1. Adolescence
The buzziest title to hit the streamer since Baby Reindeer (and just as unlikely a success story), Adolescence is a four-part series created by British playwright Jack Thorne and actor Stephen Graham. It tells of the murder of a 13-year-old girl and the resulting investigation that narrows in on her classmate Jamie (an astonishing performance from young actor Owen Cooper), who is quickly accused of the crime. The story is refracted through several different perspectives, including Jamie's family (with Graham giving a deeply affecting turn as Jamie's conflicted father, Eddie), the police, and the psychologists grappling with the aftermath. Heralded as an incisive commentary on modern boyhood and parenting, Adolescence is about as can't-miss a television event as there is these days. You should expect this series to win all sorts of awards in the near future. — J.A.
How to watch: Adolescence is now streaming on Netflix.
2. The Leopard
Italian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's 1958 novel has only been adapted one time previously. But since that adaptation, which dropped five years after the book, was from the legendary director Luchino Visconti and starred gorgeous movie stars Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, and Burt Lancaster (among many others), it's understandable it took another 60 years for anybody to want to go near the material again.
Still, the story — which focuses on an aristocratic family during the tumultuous unification of Italy in the 1850s — is epic enough that it made sense for it to now get the big-budget streamer miniseries treatment, and in the re-making, Netflix spared no expense. Costing $45 million, shot on location across Sicily, and utilizing thousands of extras on top of the main cast, The Leopard's six episodes are ones you'll want to watch on the biggest screen you've got in your home. More than one reviewer used the word "sumptuous" to describe it, and it's fitting to a T. — J.A.
How to watch: The Leopard is now streaming on Netflix.
3. Forever
Judy Blume's 1975 novel has long been the subject of controversy thanks to its honest depiction of teenage sexuality — it's pretty much been on banned-book lists since its release. With book bannings in schools getting more frequent, it feels pointed in the best way to finally get a proper adaptation here. Starring Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr. as young lovers-to-be Keisha and Justin, Blume's classic has been modernized a bit by series creator Mara Brock Akil (Girlfriends). Now set in 2018, the two teenagers are Black athletes who, besides the usual high-school anxieties (including getting into college), have dreams of athletic greatness. Produced by Oscar-winner Regina King (who also directed the first episode), the series takes its time across eight episodes to immerse us in Keisha and Justin's lives, making us feel like we're right there in the confusing hormonal tumult of their teenage love story. — J.A.
How to watch: Forever is now streaming on Netflix.
4. The Glass Dome
We do love a dark Nordic crime thriller, and The Glass Dome is checking all of those boxes. Léonie Vincent plays Lejla, a big city criminologist who returns to her small Swedish hometown when her mother dies only to find herself then sucked into the murder of a childhood best friend. Of course Lejla has her own troubling past — she was abducted as a child — and her methodical uncovering of this new mystery begins to dig up long buried memories of her own traumas. And yes, all of this sounds like a dozen other series we've seen before, but if it's an itch you find yourself getting, this is a great way to scratch it, as the six episodes of The Glass Dome are awash in plenty of moody atmosphere and exquisitely disturbing imagery. — J.A.
How to watch: The Glass Dome is now streaming on Netflix.
5. Ransom Canyon
Based on a series of Western romance novels by writer Jodi Thomas, Ransom Canyon should be considered the gingham-sexy flip side to the Yellowstone franchise. Starring Josh Duhamel as the rancher Staten Kirkland and Minka Kelly as the local dancehall proprietress Quinn O’Grady, who catches his stoic eye, it's all very "what Kathleen Turner's character Joan Wilder was writing in the movie Romancing the Stone." Handsome men in denim, handsome women in denim, and their tumultuous love affairs set against the prairies, yadda yadda. Which very much has its place! And Ransom Canyon fits said place like a ranch-hand's beaten up and dusty glove. —J.A.
How to watch: Ransom Canyon is now streaming on Netflix.
6. The Four Seasons
Updating Alan Alda's 1981 film by the same name into an eight-part limited series, Tina Fey co-wrote and stars in The Four Seasons, a light dramedy of sorts that follows three couples across four vacations, one landing in each season of the year. Fey plays Kate, who is married to Jack (Will Forte), and who is longtime besties with Danny (Colman Domingo) and Nick (Steve Carell). For their parts, Danny's married to Claude (Marco Calvani) while Nick is going through a divorce from his wife Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver)...
If that sounds confusing, no worries, it all sorts itself out quick enough for anybody who's ever seen The Big Chill (which this series also gives off distinct vibes of) or any other generational friendship comedy of this kind. Which is to say that The Four Seasons is sweet and slow and observant, nothing like the manic laughs of 30 Rock, so we can properly sit back and watch these relationships shift and change with time while everybody's doing stellar lived-in work in their roles. (Domingo in particular continues being one of the great blessings of our age.) — J.A.
How to watch: The Four Seasons is now streaming on Netflix.
7. Zero Day
While the political thriller Zero Day suffers from the both-sides-ism rampant in our current spineless media landscape — god forbid anyone takes sides when corporations are paying the tab! — it can still be enjoyed as a tangled-up spin on '70s paranoia thrillers with an exceptional and starry cast. You've got Robert De Niro (in his very first TV leading man gig) playing the former president, with Angela Bassett as the current one, and the two forced to work together after terrorists shut down the country via cyberattack. Lending ample support from there, you've got Jesse Plemons, Lizzy Caplan, Joan Allen, Connie Britton, Matthew Modine, Bill Camp, and Dan Stevens — a real who's who of hell yeahs. — J.A.
How to watch: Zero Day is now streaming on Netflix.
8. Tastefully Yours
You know the plot of the classic Jimmy Stewart movie The Shop Around the Corner? What about the plot of You've Got Mail then, since that's Nora Ephron doing a remake? It's the basis for basically every other rom-com in the 80 years since — two people in opposition at work because one values the thing being made while the other values the money the selling of the thing makes. But they fall in love despite their differences! Romance bridges the gap! Well, that's Tastefully Yours, a Korean meet-cute about food conglomerate heir Han Beom-woo (Kang Ha-neul) and picky chef Mo Yeon-joo (Go Min-si) who are forced to work together and end up finding love buried beneath all the kimchi. Bonus: besides the show's two leads being gorgeous and having buckets of chemistry, Tastefully Yours is spectacular food porn to boot. — J.A.
How to watch: Tastefully Yours is now streaming on Netflix.
9. Pulse
A bit of an also-ran that got lost against the tidal wave of love for Noah Wyle's heart-pounding E.R. drama The Pitt, Netflix's similarly themed medical show Pulse still has plenty to recommend. Set in a Miami hospital that's engulfed by a hurricane, the show's first season is aided immeasurably by the ticking-clock feelings you get from its condensed time period — it's as if everything in Mother Nature's arsenal is being tossed at these beleaguered professionals all at once.
That includes a whole subplot about sex in the workplace when it turns out the chief surgeon (Colin Woodell) has been suspended after a report of inappropriate behavior with our lead, Dr. Simms (Willa Fitzgerald). That story lurks in between the show's chaos though — the main event is all of the shock and awe of an emergency room, and Pulse delivers that stuff in spades, staying compulsively watchable enough to keep your heart pitter-pattering the way these medical series are best intended to. — J.A.
How to watch: Pulse is now streaming on Netflix.
10. You (Season 5)
If you've made it all the way to the fifth and final season of You, Netflix's sicko serial killer anti-romance starring a devilishly charming Penn Badgley, congratulations — it has plenty of the outlandish twists and turns you've come to expect. Now a prince of New York in a happily-ever-after marriage to a rich and influential woman (Charlotte Ritchie), Joe's promised to leave all of that nasty murder business in the past.
But that wouldn't make for a very entertaining series of episodes, now would it? Sure enough, before long Joe's back to his old dirty business again, and it's all gotten so over-the-top that you're best off just slamming shut the thinking part of your brain and taking the silly, sexy, sickening ride to its silly, sexy, and sickening conclusion. Don't stop to consider the amorality of it all until tomorrow, once your binge is done. Bad boys for life! — J.A.
How to watch: You is now streaming on Netflix.
11. The Gardener
Romance with amoral psychopaths is really in right now. Just in general — in the world at large, obviously. But also in entertainment! And so it goes with The Gardener, a slick Spanish six-part thriller starring the swoon-worthy Álvaro Rico as Elmer, a contract killer with a green thumb. Or vice versa. While the sign on the door might be for plant rescue, everybody's really buying murder when they walk into this greenhouse.
And that's fine for Elmer, because he was injured in a car accident as a child and doesn't have any of those fussy "emotions" that other people are always whining about. Not until he meets a sweet kindergarten teacher named Violeta (Catalina Sopelana) — nevermind that he's been hired to kill her too. These crazy kids will work through it, I'm sure! If Elmer's mother (Cecilia Suárez), the diabolical brains behind the operation, doesn't get in their way, that is. — J.A.
How to watch: The Gardener is now streaming on Netflix.
12. Bad Thoughts
Comedian Tom Segura isn't for everybody, And not every skit in this twisted six-episode sketch comedy series lands. (Anybody so obsessed with "pushing the limit" can and will occasionally grate.) But when the bits do land, they make for a smorgasbord of hilariously disgusting surrealism and the lesser moments in between seem to fall away. Presented as a series of Segura's worst instincts brought to fantastical life, Bad Thoughts is a lot of shock and awe — mostly shock. (If explicit shit-plop potty humor ain't your cuppa, you'll probably wanna run in the opposite direction.)
And while there are guest stars like Dan Stevens, Rachel Bloom, and Shea Whigham popping up in every episode, Segura saves the biggest humiliations for the characters Segura plays himself. Which, as Johnny Knoxville proved back in the day with a million kicks to his own nuts, is as it should be for any respectable jock o' shock comedy. Transgress unto yourself before transgressing unto others. — J.A.
How to watch: Bad Thoughts is now streaming on Netflix.
13. The Residence
Since we can only get a new Benoit Blanc mystery every couple of years, here comes The Residence to save the day. Starring Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black) as the colorful sleuth slash bird-watcher Cordelia Cupp, a murder has occurred at a White House state dinner, and everybody's a suspect! And that's a lot of mustache-twirling everybodies — eyebrow-raising representatives from across the globe are on hand, played by a wide world of comedy wizards including Jane Curtin, Jason Lee, Ken Marino, Giancarlo Esposito, Randall Park, Bronson Pinchot, Taran Killam, and, naturally, Kylie Minogue as herself. Among many, many others. Produced by Shonda Rhimes, The Residence maybe stretches a single mystery a little thin at eight episodes, but everybody's having so much fun it mostly whizzes by and goes down easy nonetheless. — J.A.
How to watch: The Residence is now streaming on Netflix.
14. Unseen
Now into its second season, this South African action drama stars Gail Mabalane as a wallflower of a cleaning lady named Zenzi whose search for her missing husband leads her into a labyrinthine John Wick–like criminal underworld. Like in the original French series this is a remake of, it's Zenzi's ability to not get noticed that works in her favor… for a while, anyway! Until Zenzi's in way over her head with all of the piling-up bodies. Thankfully for as over-the-top as things get (wait til you see her fight off an attacker while chained to a table in prison early in the second season!) Mabalane remains extremely easy to root for, and Unseen is as addictive as ever. — J.A.
How to watch: Unseen is now streaming on Netflix.
15. Black Mirror (Season 7)
The latest season of Charlie Brooker's astonishingly long-legged science-fiction anthology series is as good as anything the show's put out since premiering in the UK a full decade and a half ago. Brooker is somehow still finding new and stomach-churning ways to mine the unease of technological advances, gifting us with Twilight Zone–ish affairs of humor and horror in equal measure — there's Issa Rae and Emma Corrin starring in a black-and-white classic-Hollywood queer romance by way of AI; you've also got Paul Giamatti mining his memories for public display at an old friend's memorial service.
The real gut-punch of the season (there's always at least one) is the one called "Common People," starring Chris O'Dowd and Rashida Jones as a couple who get sucked into a nefarious medical program run by a terrifyingly chipper Tracee Ellis Ross. Lambasting the nightmare state of healthcare in this country, this episode, the very first of the season, will knock you on your ass if you've ever had to deal with the real-world equivalent of the industry's hamster wheel economics. It's too close to home, Mr. Brooker! — J.A.
How to watch: Black Mirror is now streaming on Netflix.
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