WHETHER YOU ARE BRACING YOURSELF to endure the COVID pandemic (again) or a new mom with months of newborn feeding ahead of you, everyone is scouring their favorite streaming sites for new or under-the-radar shows. With the amount of competition among Netflix, Disney, Apple TV, HBO, and Amazon Prime to name a few, it can be tough to keep track of all the original content offerings. Here is a list of my favorites produced by Netflix—some well-known, and others off the beaten path. However, they all have in common compelling characters, twists, and intriguing world-building. Check out my faves below and share your own! Let's kick off first with Dramas:
Best Epic Drama
Peaky Blinders: Cillian Murphy is electric in the
role of Tommy Shelby, the charismatic and cunning leader of the scrappy Peaky
Blinders street gang in 1919 Birmingham, England. Suffering from post-traumatic
stress following World War I, Tommy rises as a dark Robin Hood who earns the
people’s devotion and the ire of increasingly notorious mob bosses played by
the likes of Tom Hardy and Adrien Brody. Let’s not forget Sam Neill’s excellent performance as a crooked cop, made more shocking for all of us who
predominantly know him as the cranky but loveable paleontologist of Jurassic
Park. Watching Peaky Blinders now is all the more poignant given the
passing of legendary actress Helen McCrory, who plays Tommy’s fearless and
no-nonsense Aunt Polly. The series will wrap up with Season 6.
The Last Kingdom: Join the charming and roguish
Uhtred, a man torn between allegiance to the English Saxons and Vikings, on his
journey to reclaim his kingdom of Bebbanburg during the 9th Century
AD. He makes a reluctant ally of last-Saxon-ruler-standing King Alfred, who
sees Uhtred as little more than a barbaric heathen, and the transformation of
their relationship throughout the course of the series is riveting. It’s
juxtaposed against Uhtred’s equally fascinating relationship with
on-and-off-again frenemy Brida, played effortlessly by Emily Cox. Although
Brida has a similar upbringing to Uhtred, a Saxon-born raised by Vikings, she
has no doubts about where her loyalties lie. Season 5 is coming soon—will
Uhtred *finally* fulfill his destiny? Originally based off the Saxon Stories novels
of Bernard Cornwell.
Best Drama Based on True Events
Narcos/Narcos: Mexico: Detailing the tragic rise of
Pablo Escobar to dominate the cocaine trade in Columbia and Félix Gallardo in México
respectively, each series plunges into the dark underworld and world events
that shaped each kingpin’s rise to power in the 1980s. Narcos is exceedingly
bingeworthy with excellent performances by Wagner Moura and Pedro Pascal, as
you gawk at how many times Escobar twists and spins his way out of increasingly
high stakes situations. Pascal is a scene stealer and even has a season to
himself to take on the Gentleman of Cali.
After watching Narcos, take a break before picking up
the thread with the series Narcos: Mexico. Diego Luna deftly takes on
the role of Miguel Ángel “Félix” Gallardo, founder of the Guadalajara Cartel,
who starts out as a smalltown hero but increasingly justifies the means with betrayal
and violence, until he has created the bottleneck for drug flow into the
biggest client, America. Season 1 is a must-watch which includes a wildly tense
scene between Gallardo and Escobar; the show loses steam in Season 2, as the
supporting cast just can’t keep up with Luna’s charm.
Best Historical Drama
Marco Polo: This is a lavishly developed and
ambitious undertaking which realized too late who the main heart of the show is—the amazing Benedict Wong—and although it attempted to switch focus, it
wasn’t soon enough to muster the audience needed to sustain its massive budget.
Still, we get two seasons that are quite a visual treat. Marco Polo follows
not Genghis Khan, but his grandson Kublai Khan in the late 13th
century, who succeeded in conquering China.
Initially we witness events at Kublai Khan’s court through
the eyes of the Venetian explorer Marco Polo, whose merchant father-of-the-year
barters him off to the Great Khan. From there, Polo earns the Khan’s favor as
one of his “sons,” and we witness the intriguing struggles of the Khan, who
embraces diversity and global expansion over the traditional Mongol values of
maintaining a homogenized nomadic society. As the story shifts to delve deeper
into the man behind the Khan, the drama really takes off. There are a number of
memorable characters, including Hundred Eyes, a renowned fighter who gets his
own Netflix movie, and the battles are top-notch!
Frontier: Starring Jason Momoa as half-Irish,
half-Cree outsider Declan Harp, this is a dramatization of the North American
fur trade in the late eighteenth century. This series starts off slow but grows
on you; the characters are likeable and the historical conflicts interesting.
Sadly the series was cancelled after Season 3, but it is always entertaining to
watch Jason Momoa hunt down evildoers in snow clad forests with death in
his eyes.
Best Limited Series – Drama
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The Queen’s Gambit: The rivalry between America and
the Soviet Union is at its peak during the Cold War, and what better way to
settle it than with a game of chess. Beth Harmon, brilliantly embodied by Anya
Taylor-Joy, is a maverick, a chess unicorn who spends her orphanage days
learning the art of chess, and has such single-minded determination to be the
best that she will do anything to give herself the edge—even take copious
amounts of pills that are handed out to the orphanage children daily as
vitamins. Dismissive of the consequences to her health and relationships with
others, Beth finds solace only in the dance of chess pieces playing out across
her bedroom ceiling every night. However, when the pills fail her against the
Russian chess grandmaster, Beth must undergo an excruciating self-examination
for a second chance at the finals match in Moscow—with the world watching.
Taylor-Joy makes an appearance in Peaky Blinders as
well, and although I loathed her character there (which is a testament to the
actress’s skill), here she takes us on a satisfying self-reflective journey of
her vices that has us rooting for her every step of the way. Beth teams up with
her opportunistic adoptive mother to attend various global chess tournaments. They'll have you flinching at every self-destructive decision and cheering every
little victory. Highly bingeworthy!
Best Limited Series based on True Events
The Serpent: Every horror story you ever heard about
traveling abroad comes frighteningly to life in this limited series based on
the life of serial killer Charles Sobhraj, who preyed on “hippies” visiting
South Asia during the 1970s. Taking full advantage of the time before
smartphones, the suave and coldly calculating gem dealer Sobhraj, portrayed
with equal parts allure and menace by Tahar Rahim, sucks not only tourists into
his web of manipulation, but also Marie-Andrée Leclerc (Jenna Coleman) and Ajay
Chowdhury (Amesh Edireweera). The trio’s actions increasingly escalate in
Bangkok, Thailand when one tourist pair refuses to be their jewel smuggling
mule. An intrepid Dutch diplomat, Herman Knippenberg, begins to unravel the
web with the help of Sobhraj’s plucky neighbors. It’s fascinating to watch the
massive global undertaking it took to go after Sobhraj, who was a master of
altering his victims’ passports for his own use to escape time and time again. Serves
as a friendly reminder to travelers: if something sounds too good to be true,
it probably is.
More recommendations to come—however, due to being one of
the aforementioned new moms, my time is up for today!
