Streaming services are known for having award-worthy series but also plenty of duds. Our guide to the best TV shows on Netflix is updated weekly to help you know which series you should move to the top of your queue. They aren’t all surefire winners—we love a good less-than-obvious gem—but they’re all worth your time, trust us.
Feel like you’ve already watched everything on this list that you want to see? Try our guide to the best movies on Netflix for more options. And if you’ve already completed Netflix and are in need of a new challenge, check out our picks for the best shows on Hulu and the best shows on Disney+. Don’t like our picks or want to offer suggestions of your own? Head to the comments below.
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Stranger Things
After what feels like a thousand years trapped in the Upside Down (although in reality only three and a half), Stranger Things is back for its fifth and final season. Following the reality-tearing events of Stranger Things 4, the residents of Hawkins are now under military quarantine, but not everyone is taking it laying down. Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) is secretly training her powers, aided by adoptive parents Hopper (David Harbour) and Joyce (Winona Ryder), while Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and the rest of the adventuring party are organizing an underground movement to hunt down demonic big-bad Vecna. But when Mike's young sister Holly (Nell Fisher) is dragged into the Upside Down by a Demogorgon, it raises one major question—just why was Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) kidnapped at the very start of the show, instigating the wave of horror that's consumed Hawkins since? The full eight-episode season is being released in three blocks—the first four are out now, three more arrive on December 25, and the overall finale lands on New Year's Eve—but the ultimate end of Stranger Things is off to a strong start.
The Beast in Me
Author Aggie Wiggs (Clare Danes) is struggling on her next book—but when property magnate Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys) moves into the neighborhood, still dogged by lingering accusations that he murdered his first wife, the perfect subject may be right next door. Although she initially rejects his suggestion to write about him, Aggie is drawn ever deeper into the darkly charismatic Nile's world in the wake of another suspicious death, one with a deeply personal connection to her own tragic past. While The Beast in Me boasts phenomenal performances from its wider cast—including Natalie Morales as Aggie's ex-wife Shelley and Brittany Snow as Nile's new wife Nina, who may have her own secrets—it's the increasingly tense and deeply psychologically twisted connection that forms between Danes' and Rhys' characters that makes it impossible to look away from this eight-episode thriller.
Last Samurai Standing
Set in late 1800s Japan, Last Samurai Standing follows retired samurai Shujiro Saga (Junichi Okada), who enters the savage "Kodoku" tournament in a desperate effort to save his family, struck down by cholera. The problem is, he's one of 292 former samurai aiming to win the ¥100,000 prize, and the only way to progress through the competition is to collect tags from fallen enemies and pass through checkpoints set up by the event's mysterious organizers. It's going to be a bloodbath. Based on the series of Japanese novels written by Shogo Imamura and illustrated by Katsumi Tatsuzawa, this packs in some of the finest sword duels and martial arts sequences ever committed to the screen, all while exploring the rapidly changing face of Japanese society after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Think Squid Game set in Meiji era Japan, and you're scratching the surface of this thrilling six-episode miniseries.
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch
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