With the proliferation of streamers that exists these days, it can be hard to keep up with all the great content that’s constantly debuting on the likes of Disney+, HBO’s Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and definitely Netflix — which releases an endless flood of new movies and shows every week. I suspect that, in the case of Netflix specifically, it can be such a chore to regularly identify worthwhile new series to watch that it might even make you question every now and then whether your subscription is even worth keeping.
If that includes you, then keep reading: I’m going to point out six Netflix series that, for whatever reason, might have escaped your attention up to this point or that you might not have gotten around to watching just yet for one reason or another. Some of these series are well-known, while others are less so. In my opinion, though, any of these are perfect to add to your watch list specifically if you’re struggling to find something new to watch and are open to pretty much anything.
6 Netflix series to try before you give up on Netflix
These six picks from me are in no particular order — and, again, I’m specifically speaking to those of you who might be getting a little lukewarm on the streamer at the moment, and maybe even complaining there’s nothing good to watch anymore. These Netflix series below aren’t all my absolute favorites from the streamer. Then again, every show that I like doesn’t have to be my favorite. As long as I feel some degree of satisfaction at the end, I’m happy.
That, for me, is what each of these shows did — they reminded me, okay, I’m still paying for my subscription to get content like this.
Snabba Cash
If you love gritty crime dramas, you can check out our picks for some of the best of those available on Netflix — or you can start with this series from Sweden, which thrusts viewers into the drugs- and gangster-ridden underworld of Stockholm.
The show, the title of which means “easy money” in Swedish, follows an aspiring entrepreneur named Leya who, let’s say, grudgingly comes into contact with the world of drug trafficking by way of a deal with the devil in order to realize her dreams. The show has an intense piece, spasms of violence, and it presents a complex-yet-fascinating portrait of Stockholm’s criminal landscape in a story about power, loyalty, and redemption.
Easily a 10/10 series.
Crash Landing on You
For me, this next Netflix series is the mother of all K-dramas. The genre just doesn’t get any better than Crash Landing on You, a series of cinematic scope and beauty that packs action, drama, romance, and geopolitical intrigue into one perfect and frustratingly single-season Netflix gem. (You’ll see what I mean after you try it and get it to the end. You’ll be ready to riot in support of a second season.)
The story, in brief: A rich, spoiled, South Korean heiress is swept across the border while hang-gliding during a storm and then literally crash lands into the arms of a handsome North Korean soldier. I bet you can’t guess what happens next.
Warrior Nun
Moving right along, we now come to the series that arguably fell victim to what might be one of Netflix’s most head-scratching decisions of all time.
Netflix, for whatever reason, decided to pull the plug on Warrior Nun after its second season, despite the show dominating its global Top 10 charts and developing perhaps the most hardcore, committed global fandom that I think I’ve ever seen a TV show produce. The show is about an order of nuns who fight demons, and it’s a gem that encompasses everything from love to action to epic battles, featuring solid writing and starring one of my favorite actresses (Alba Baptista). What’s not to like?
Sunderland ‘Til I Die
This Netflix docuseries about the real-life Sunderland AFC football club is a marvel for so many reasons, one of which is the way it’s so much bigger than what happens on the pitch.
Sunderland ‘Til I Die is as much about professional English football as it is about the working-class town in the north of England for whom pride in a beleaguered, underdog club is one of the few things that still binds everyone together. Sunderland is a community, I should add, that also feels beaten down and a little forgotten — and certainly abandoned by the once-mighty shipbuilding and mining industries that used to underpin its economy.
“Why is it never us celebrating?” Sunderland supporter Michelle Barraclough laments at the end of season two of the Netflix series (which returned for its third and final season in February). The camera had found her on the day of the 2019 League One playoff final, when Sunderland was facing off against another historically troubled club, Charlton Athletic.
Everything about that golden May Sunday, in the packed Wembley Stadium, seemed to shimmer with opportunity. Sunderland’s eventual eleventh-hour loss, tough as it was to bear, was part of a string of one-too-many losses that bedeviled not only the team but also its fans, and their community. Making Barraclough’s rhetorical question such a heartbreaking outpouring of despair: “Why is it never us?”
Sunderland ‘Til I Die doesn’t so much try to answer that question as it does to simply celebrate the underdog spirit that’s arguably the only way forward for a club and a community like Sunderland. Even the show’s achingly beautiful theme song speaks to the losses the town has suffered: “On the river where they used to build the boats / by the harbor wall, the place you loved the most …”
Kleo
There aren’t enough quality spy shows in the world if you ask me, and there are too many that rely on silly, old, and incorrect assumptions about the secret world. The German-language Netflix series Kleo is, thankfully, not one of the latter. It combines a Killing Eve-style antihero with the rich espionage storytelling potential of Cold War Europe and a killer soundtrack to produce a can’t-miss show for fans of quality spy thrillers.
“After two years in prison,” Netflix explains, “the Berlin Wall suddenly falls and Kleo is released. But she soon realizes that the conspiracy against her is much more complicated than she thought, and that an ominous red suitcase is the key to it all. Kleo thus embarks on a revenge spree that leads her through the anarchic Berlin, improvised electro clubs and Mallorcan fincas all the way to Chile’s Atacama Desert.”
All the while, a West Berlin policeman named Sven is hot on Kleo’s trail, convinced he’s closing in on the case of a lifetime. When the first season launched back in August 2022, Glamour magazine praised it as a “must-see series,” while Stephen King likewise raved: “What a breath of fresh air!” Thankfully, Netflix ordered up a second season of Kleo (and, while you wait, aficionados of the genre can also check out these other top-notch spy series).
Derry Girls
As for the final Netflix series that I’d like you to watch if you feel like there’s nothing good on the streamer anymore, Derry Girls is about a group of friends who confront the challenges of adolescence together while also growing up amid the chaos and strife of Northern Ireland in the 1990s.
Given that these are Irish characters we’re talking about, Derry Girls alternatively had me roaring with laughter — like when the priest tells an assembly of students at one point to welcome “the weans from Chernobyl, who’ve come over to give their wee lungs a bit of a clear out, because, ah, sure, there’s all sorts wafting about in their neck of the woods” — as well as feeling absolutely speechless during moments of profound emotion.
An example of the latter comes at the end of season one, when the show’s core group of girls are dancing and laughing on a school stage, just an ordinary group of children at what could have been an ordinary school anywhere in the world. Except for the way the scene cuts back and forth between the school and the kids’ home, where their parents are huddled around a TV watching a news report about a horrific bombing amid The Troubles. It’s an emotionally devastating moment, made all the more so by the soundtrack’s use of The Cranberries’ Dreams. “All my life, is changing every day, in every possible way …”
