If you’ve ever lost an entire Saturday to a Netflix series and felt zero guilt about it, this list is for you. Netflix has, against all odds and despite every competitor trying its best to dethrone it, remained the one streaming platform everybody has access to. It’s the default, the streamer we fall back to, the thing you pull up when nothing else makes sense. And Netflix almost always delivers. The library spans every genre under the sun, with originals ranging from brilliant to unmissable, and the best shows on Netflix share one thing in common: they are designed to be binged in large, greedy chunks over a single weekend.
When a Netflix series is deemed 10/10, the seasons are tightly-paced, the writing is purposeful, and the plot twists stop feeling like a minor act of self-sabotage. These are not shows that ask you to be patient; they pull you in hard and fast. The 10 Netflix series on this list cover a lot of ground – dark comedy, fantasy, romance, sci-fi, crime drama – but every single one of them will turn your free weekend into something you’ll still be thinking about on Monday morning – so dive in and clear your schedule.
10
‘Heartstopper’ (2022 – 2024)
Watching a love story that just lets two teenagers be happy is so, so rare. Based on Alice Oseman’s webcomic and graphic novel series, Heartstopper follows Charlie Spring, a shy, openly gay student at an all-boys school in England, who falls for the seemingly straight rugby player, Nick Nelson, after they’re seated next to each other in form. What unfolds is a story about the tender, terrifying joy of realizing someone likes you back.
Heartstopper has the supernatural ability to render small moments enormous. A hand brushing against another in a hallway, a text that takes too long to reply to, a look held a second longer than it should be. Kit Connor and Joe Locke are extraordinary together, but even the supporting cast gets their due attention, with their stories helping explore heavier issues like eating disorders, mental health, asexuality, and the pressures of identity in a world that isn’t always as kind as the show’s pastel palette suggests.
9
‘Dept. Q’ (2025 – Present)
Copenhagen, a cold case unit nobody wants to be in, and a detective who everyone would prefer stayed quiet. Dept. Q, the new Danish-language Netflix adaptation of Jussi Adler-Olsen’s bestselling novels, follows Carl Mørck, a difficult, brilliant investigator reassigned to a basement department to dig into cold cases that everyone else has written off. Accompanying him are his Syrian-born colleague Assad and their administrator Rose.
The show is procedural, methodical, and unsettling in a way only Scandinavian noir tends to be, if you’ve seen any. Each case has layers, and the satisfaction of peeling them back is immense. Also, it’s interesting how Carl is not an antihero. He’s just a person who has been through a lot and emerged on the other side as someone harder to be around, which is both his weakness and the reason he’s so good at the job. The dynamic between him and Assad is warm. For anyone who loved watching The Bridge or Borgen, Dept. Q should be your next Nordic pick.
8
‘Shadow and Bone’ (2021 – 2023)
Fantasy fans know the thrill of stepping into a world so epic it’s intimate, and Shadow and Bone walks the tightrope perfectly. Based on Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels, it introduces Alina Starkov, a mapmaker who discovers she has a rare power that could save her war-torn land. Between the sweeping battles, magical lore, and the irresistible charm of the Crows subplot, the series builds a universe that is endlessly intriguing.
It feels nice to imagine a different reality where Shadow and Bone lasted for at least five seasons, but in this reality, two seasons aired before Netflix canceled it. The decision is still contested loudly by fans. The only silver-lining is that it can be binged in one weekend. The world-building is ambitious and largely successful, and the costumes and frames make every frame look better than any fantasy movie. Overall, it’s a fantasy that feels modern, stylish, and wonderful.
7
‘The OA’ (2016 – 2019)
Created by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, The OA begins with a woman named Prairie Johnson returning after seven years missing, with her blindness cured. She refuses to explain what happened to her and calls herself something else now: The OA. She gathers a group of strangers and tells them about her near-death experiences, captivity, interdimensional travel, and certain physical movements the group must learn and perform together.
The OA is a combination of science fiction and mythology and something else, told with an intensity that demands you to either surrender to it or not bother at all. Both seasons are streaming on Netflix. The performances are superb, particularly Marling herself, whose ability to hold the screen in absolute stillness is central to the show’s emotional core. Netflix canceled it after two seasons, which remains a sore point. It’s not for everyone, but for the audience it’s made for, nothing else comes close.
6
‘Feel Good’ (2020 – 2021)
Mae Martin wrote Feel Good from their own life. It’s not a confessional, but it’s like watching someone mine material they actually lived, which makes it raw. The show follows Mae, a Canadian comedian living in London, navigating a new relationship with George (Charlotte Ritchie), a woman who has never dated a woman before and isn’t sure what that means for how she understands herself.
Underneath the relationship’s warmth and newness sits Mae’s addiction recovery, which the show treats as ongoing and unglamorous and difficult. The seasons are short (six episodes each) and structured like extended plays. Ritchie’s George is frequently the funniest part of the show, but the series belongs to Martin. Their performance is generous and specific and funny, and honestly, the writing alone could not produce something so beautiful without someone who understood its every note.
5
‘Russian Doll’ (2019 – 2022)
Dying once is shocking and sad. Dying over and over again at your own birthday party? That’s just outrageous. Russian Doll throws you into that loop through the eyes of Nadia (Natasha Lyonne), who dies on her 36th birthday, only to wake up again in the same bathroom, forced to relive the night over and over. What could have been a gimmick turns into a sharp, existential comedy-drama that blends dark humor with surreal philosophy.
Lyonne’s performance is electric. Her raspy delivery and defiant energy make Nadia one of Netflix’s most unforgettable protagonists. The show’s New York setting feels live, gritty, and oddly timeless, grounding the bizarre premise in a city that thrives on chaos. Russian Doll is both entertaining and profound because the writing infuses emotional depth into the absurdity, and what’s left is so smart and bingeable.
4
‘Beef’ (2023 – Present)
The inciting incident of Beef is a road rage confrontation between two strangers in a Koreatown parking lot, and neither of them can let it go. It sounds like a setup for a dark comedy. It is dark, and there is comedy, but showrunner Lee Sung builds something very interesting around that premise. We witness the slow erosion of people who have spent decades suppressing what they actually want, and the feud becomes the frame through which the show examines isolation, family pressure, and the exhaustion of maintaining a version of yourself you no longer like.
Steven Yeun plays Danny Cho, and Ali Wong plays Amy Lau. Both Yeun and Wong won Emmys for their amazing performances, and the series won Outstanding Limited Series. Basically, the show abandons all conventional plotting in favor of something more hallucinatory and raw. That’s what earned it a renewal, and the second season just landed its Netflix debut. There isn’t a better time to binge Beef.
3
‘Wednesday’ (2022 – Present)
Wednesday is a delightfully macabre coming-of-age story that follows Wednesday Addams, reimagined here as a teenage outcast navigating Nevermore Academy, a school for the supernatural. She investigates a monster mystery threatening the town of Jericho while alienating almost everyone around her. Jenna Ortega’s turn as Wednesday is the engine of the series. She’s deadpan to the point of parody, but she never lets you forget there is a person under that aesthetic.
Wednesday Season 1 premiere became Netflix’s most-watched series in its first week of release, and the dance scene to The Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck,” performed in the middle of a school function with oblivious disdain to every person present, spread across social media with insane velocity. Season 2 continued the formula and expanded the world. It’s genuinely very fun and very well-done.
2
‘3 Body Problem’ (2024 – Present)
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, known for creating Game of Thrones, adapted Liu Cixin’s celebrated trilogy for Western audiences. The resulting series, 3 Body Problem, takes an ambitious leap into hard sci-fi and tells the story of mysterious deaths among scientists and a cryptic VR game that hints at an alien civilization. It weaves together timelines and perspectives to create a sprawling narrative about humanity’s place in the universe.
3 Body Problem is a complex show, but that complexity is what makes it so gripping. The production values are massive, with stunning effects that bring abstract physics and alien worlds to life. The ensemble cast, including Benedict Wong and Eiza González, keeps the high-concept storytelling grounded. It’s also very faithful to the novel.
1
‘Derry Girls’ (2018 – 2022)
To understand what makes Derry Girls funny, you first need to understand what it is like to grow up in a place that takes itself too seriously while being, objectively, a lot. Set in Derry, Northern Ireland, during the early 1990s, it follows five students at a Catholic girls school. There’s Erin, her cousin Orla, their friends Clare and Michelle, and Michelle’s English cousin, James, who is admitted to the school because the boys’ school is deemed too generous for him.
The comedy is character-driven and very fast, and the characters are all, in different ways, catastrophically unaware of themselves. The ceasefire negotiations, checkpoint queues, and the constant noise of the conflict become an inconvenience for the teenagers. But the show never satirizes the Troubles directly. Instead, it’s used to make teenage concerts funnier by contrast. The series finale, set to the actual Good Friday Agreement referendum, is an emotional halt that the show prepares you for. Three seasons, 18 episodes, and then it’s over.
Have you already binged any of these Netflix shows? Share your thoughts in the comments!
