The 25 Best Shows on Netflix to Watch in January

We’ve all been overwhelmed by streaming TV choices, only to give up and watch something we’ve already seen. But this curated list of the best shows on Netflix is here to narrow down your decision-making and help you figure out exactly which titles you want to sample next.

A.P. Bio (2018–2021)

Jack (Glenn Howerton) derived most of his identity and self-worth from escaping his hometown of Toledo, Ohio, for a job as a philosophy professor at Harvard. But when he lost out on being named department chair to Miles (Tom Bennett), a toxically positive colleague, Jack had a breakdown that lost him his teaching position and sent him back to the only place available: his late mother’s Toledo townhouse. It’s fortunate for Jack that his starstruck former classmate Ralph (Patton Oswalt) is willing to help him earn an income by hiring him to teach AP biology; it’s less fortunate for his grade-grubbing students that Jack has no intention of teaching them the subject, and instead plans to use their superior intellects to help carry out revenge schemes against Miles. Start watching one of Netflix’s most joke-dense sitcoms now, and you’ll make it to season three’s loony “Katie Holmes Day” just in time for Christmas!

Beef (2023–)

Amy (Ali Wong) is an entrepreneur in the middle of a protracted negotiation to sell her independent store to a huge home-improvement chain. Danny (Steven Yeun) is a contractor and handyman desperately trying to scrape together enough money to buy a plot of land on which he can build a house for his parents, who moved back to their native Korea after losing their family motel. There’s no reason Danny and Amy should ever know each other, never mind end up as each other’s sworn enemies. But after the two have an unfortunate parking lot run-in, they both become obsessed with avenging themselves in this pitch-black comedy, which cut a swath through awards season last year. Season two is coming, with an all-new cast.

Black Doves (2024)

Helen (Keira Knightley) is the young mother of twins and the wife of Britain’s Tory Defense Minister. She is also a “Black Dove,” spying for a covert organization that isn’t tied to any single government but sells its secrets to the highest bidder. Which is why it’s a big deal when Jason (Andrew Koji), a government official with whom she’d been having an affair, is suddenly assassinated, along with two associates. Helen is determined to exact her revenge on Jason’s killer herself, but her handler, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), reaches out to Helen’s old cohort Sam (Ben Whishaw) to deal with the situation—which grows ever more complex the more he and Helen dig in on it. That all these events are happening around Christmastime make this by far the most festive spy drama on Netflix.

Cunk on Earth (2023)

Between seasons of his sci-fi anthology series Black Mirror, creator Charlie Brooker teamed up with Diane Morgan to build a show around Morgan’s comedic alter ego, Philomena Cunk. A self-serious presenter of deeply questionable intelligence, Cunk had already headlined several BBC programs before Cunk on Earth, a trip through all of human history in just five half-hour episodes that precisely mimic the production and style of educational documentaries. Help make this one a hit, so that Netflix will also bring us the previous series Cunk on Britain, and the one-off special Cunk on Shakespeare. Meanwhile, the all-new Cunk on Everything arrives January 2.

Detroiters (2017–2018)

When Tim (Tim Robinson) was a kid, his father, Big Hank (Kevin Nash), was a legend in the world of local ad production in Detroit. Then Big Hank went to what Tim refers to as “the nuthouse,” leaving his ad agency for Tim to take over. What Tim lacks in natural talent, he makes up for in enthusiasm, intensity, and platonic love for Sam (Sam Richardson), his business partner and best friend. The show really filmed in Detroit, and it is crammed with references to actual local ads that Robinson and Richardson—both favorite sons of the city—know from their youth. Guest and recurring stars include such comedy luminaries as Conner O’Malley, Keegan-Michael Key, and Jason Sudeikis, making this by far one of the funniest sitcoms on Netflix.

Documentary Now! (2015–)

Saturday Night Live alumni Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and (director) Rhys Thomas cocreated this anthology series, in which each episode is a painstakingly specific parody reimagining a real noteworthy—if not Oscar-winning—documentary film. Though its future is uncertain—these are busy people, and one episode of this show takes a lot of work—the four seasons we’ve got so far are impeccable. Spoof subjects include The Kid Stays in the Picture, The Thin Blue Line, When We Were Kings, and, in a rare departure, the Netflix docuseries Wild Wild Country; you quite simply can’t call yourself a fan of musical theater if you haven’t seen “Original Cast Album: Co-Op,” the show’s take on Original Cast Album: Company. Series guest stars include Cate Blanchett, Owen Wilson, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Alexander Skarsgård, and Maya Rudolph, with Helen Mirren appearing to introduce each and every episode.

Entrapped (2021)

In 2015 the Icelandic network RÚV débuted Trapped, a classic Nordic noir. Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who recently costarred in the final season of HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, stars as Andri Ólafsson, the chief of police in a northern Icelandic town. His job gets harder when a dismembered human torso is found just in time for a blizzard to render the town entirely inaccessible to anyone outside it. A second season found Andri working a political assassination case. And after a long (COVID-related) delay, season three premiered in Iceland in 2021, later arriving on Netflix in September 2022, with the new title Entrapped. This time, the murder that kicks off the action exposes the tangled relations between a pacifist commune and a biker gang. The chilly setting and short run make this one of the most binge-worthy shows with which to bunker down.

From Scratch (2022)

Getting chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s book club has smoothed the path for series adaptions before—Tiny Beautiful Things, The Last Thing He Told Me, and Daisy Jones & The Six are all recent success stories. So it was with Tembi Locke’s bestselling memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home. Zoë Saldaña (now getting awards buzz for her turn in the feature film Emilia Pérez, also on Netflix) stars as Amy Wheeler, who’s relocated to Florence to find her voice as an artist. Her path is redirected when she meets and falls in love with Lino (Eugenio Mastrandrea), a sexy chef. The result? One of Netflix’s most delicious romances.

Friday Night Lights (2006–2011)

The small (and fictional) town of Dillon, Texas, doesn’t have much going on, but there is one obsession all residents share: Dillon Panthers football. Loosely adapted from H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger’s nonfiction book of the same name, the series revolves around Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), the new head coach at Dillon High School. Expectations for his performance are already impossibly high, and the pressure on him only grows after a catastrophe befalls his quarterback, Jason Street (Scott Porter), in the series premiere. The much-lauded show, which concluded its run (gulp) 13 years ago, also features Connie Britton in the breakout role of Tami, Eric’s eminently patient, impeccably coiffed wife; later seasons also boast future Creed star Michael B. Jordan. With the NFL season ramping up, this can help you fill the time between games.

Giri/Haji (2019)

If you’ve finished your Emmy-nomination prep and are looking to dive deeper into the careers of The White Lotus’s season two cast, start with Giri/Haji. The limited series, the title of which means “Duty/Shame,” revolves around Kenzo (Takehiro Hira), a Tokyo police detective who travels to London to try to find his brother Yuto (Yōsuke Kubokoza) before fears that he has killed the relative of a yakuza member sets off a gang war. Will Sharpe (now costarring in the acclaimed feature film A Real Pain) appears in a supporting role as Rodney, a sex worker who becomes part of Kenzo’s investigation.

GLOW (2017–2019)

Alison Brie’s Ruth is trying—and mostly failing—to make it as an actor in 1985 Los Angeles. After she blows yet another audition, a casting director gives her a tip on an unconventional production Ruth might be right for: highly choreographed women’s wrestling. Bringing in a bunch of actorly baloney doesn’t help the notably unathletic Ruth make a great first impression on director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron), but before she entirely washes out, her frenemy, Debbie (Betty Gilpin), storms in to confront Ruth about a recent wrong, and Sam sees a great face-heel duo in the making. Gilpin—most recently seen in the Starz original series Three Women—earned Emmy nominations in the category of outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for all three of the show’s seasons. (A planned fourth wound up being a casualty of the pandemic.) There’s no wrong time to dig into one of the best-ever comedies on Netflix; you won’t be sorry you did.

Godless (2017)

The same year Logan, written by Scott Frank, was released, Netflix dropped one of its best crime shows, Godless. Frank wrote and directed the series, and also re-teamed on it with executive producer Steven Soderbergh, who had directed Frank’s screenplay for Out Of Sight nearly 20 years earlier. The seven-episode miniseries is set in La Belle, a Colorado town mostly peopled by women, following a catastrophic mining accident that killed most of La Belle’s male residents. Further crisis ensues when an outlaw on the run is pursued to La Belle by his former gang. Watch while you wait for Netflix’s next western series, American Primeval, to drop in January.

The Great British Baking Show (2010–)

Ten-ish years into the reality-competition boom, a show came along that was the exact antithesis of the cutthroat Survivor or even Top Chef. The amateur contestants of The Great British Baking Show are genuinely warm and helpful to one another, the hosts and judges are gentle and encouraging, and everyone’s striving to produce their very best work in order to win an engraved glass cake stand and absolutely no cash at all. Don’t fret that TV’s sweetest reality-competition show ended its latest season in November: A new season of the special holiday spin-off premiered December 9.

Heartstopper (2022–)

Adapted by Alice Oseman from her graphic novel of the same name, Heartstopper tells the story of British high school students Charlie (Joe Locke, who also costarred this year in Agatha All Along on Disney+) and Nick (Kit Connor). Charlie has been out—and not by his own choice—for the past year before meeting Nick. Since Charlie believes Nick is straight, the two start as platonic friends. Over the course of the first season, their relationship evolves. Season three dropped October 3.

Lost (2004–2010)

The passengers on Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 all board thinking they’re in for a routine flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. Alas, it is not to be: The plane crashes on a remote island, having gone off its original course and disappeared somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. The survivors have enough problems just figuring out what resources are available and how to remain alive until help can find them. But before long, they realize there’s more to this island than they could possibly imagine. Reasonable people can disagree on where (or whether) the show went on longer than it should have by the time it finally ended in 2010; what is not in dispute is that this game changer is one of the most culturally significant TV dramas on Netflix.

Love Is Blind (2020-)

The Bachelor franchise is fine as far as it goes, but between dozens of seasons of both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette—to say nothing of Bachelor in Paradise, Bachelor Pad, and The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart—you might be Bachelor’d out. If so, now is the time to embrace the suite of reality romance shows from chaos king Chris Coelen! Love Is Blind challenges brave singles to try dating partners they can’t see: Women and men are kept apart at the show’s filming location and communicate only while in pods connected by an opaque panel. If they make enough of a connection for one to propose marriage to the other, they (finally) get to see each other; then they live together for a time planning their wedding; and only at the altar do they both state whether they actually take one another in lawful matrimony. In addition to its US seasons—the seventh of which premiered in October 2024—the show has spawned Brazilian and Japanese versions. Not sated? Coelen also created The Ultimatum, in which couples who haven’t decided to get married figure out their issues by dating other people for a while. Netflix also has select seasons of Coelen’s Married At First Sight, which is exactly what its title promises. And as of February 2023, his suite of titles includes Perfect Match, a dating show that lets alumni from various Netflix reality shows try to find love with each other. Love Is Blind: Germany’s first season premieres on January 3.

Maid (2021)

Stephanie Land’s memoir, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, provided the source material for this limited series. Alex (Margaret Qualley, of this year’s acclaimed feature film The Substance) is a young mother whose decision to leave her abusive boyfriend, Sean (Nick Robinson), is fraught with peril: severely limited finances, a Kafkaesque bureaucracy, and insufficient support from the people closest to her. Alex’s determination to create a safe and happy life for her daughter, Maddy (Rylea Nevaeh Whittet), and to become a writer, keeps her pushing through extremely challenging obstacles.

A Man on the Inside (2024–)

Charles (Ted Danson) is a retired engineering professor in the Bay Area, uneasily trying to hew to a new routine since the death of his beloved wife. His daughter, Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), encourages him to mix things up by finding a hobby about which he can be excited. Right on cue, he finds a newspaper classified ad seeking a man, age 75–85, who has his own phone. Before long, he’s been hired by Julie (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) and installed as a mole at a local retirement home to investigate the theft of a necklace from Julie’s client’s elderly mother. The show, which is adapted from the Chilean documentary The Mole Agent, reunites Danson with Michael Schur for the first time since their celebrated collaboration on The Good Place, and it’s perfect for filling the hole in your TV schedule left by the recent finale of Only Murders in the Building.

Mindhunter (2017–2019)

The 1995 nonfiction book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit provides the inspiration for this scripted series, created by playwright Joe Penhall and executive-produced by David Fincher, who also directs multiple episodes. FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) partner with psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) to pioneer the bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit. As part of their work, they visit prisons to interview some of the era’s incarcerated serial killers, most notoriously Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton); David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the Son of Sam (Oliver Cooper); and Charles Manson (Damon Herriman). Though we only got two seasons, fans of true crime will call this one of the best crime shows on Netflix.

Mo (2022)

Comic Mo Amer re-teamed with Ramy Youssef—the star and creator of Ramy, in which Amer plays the titular Ramy’s cousin—to co-create Mo. In this semi-autobiographical dramedy, which has never felt more urgent, Amer plays Mohammed “Mo” Najjar, a Palestinian refugee seeking asylum as a path to US citizenship as he navigates life in Housto. As with Ramy, Mo comes from beloved indie production company A24; its second and final season drops January 30.

Narcos (2015–2017)

How did Pablo Escobar go from a comparatively low-level smuggler to one of the world’s most notorious drug kingpins whose (uh, spoiler?) death came at the hands of an international law enforcement task force? Steve Murphy—a since retired DEA agent who worked on the case—is portrayed here by Boyd Holbrook, who also narrates the story of the DEA’s investigation into Escobar (Wagner Moura); Murphy’s DEA colleague Javier Peña is played by future Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal. The series was followed by a companion series, Narcos: Mexico, in 2018.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (2024)

During his life, Gabriel García Marquez refused to authorize a screen adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, his Nobel Prize–winning novel. But his sons have come on board as executive producers for Netflix’s take on the magical realist classic. The story follows the Buendía family through seven generations, through noteworthy moments of Colombian history, lavishly designed and constructed by a reported 1,100 local artisans and workers. The first eight episodes dropped December 11, with eight more yet to come.

Watch part one of One Hundred Years of Solitude’s first season on Netflix

Squid Game (2021–)

Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is a gambling addict crushed by both his personal debt and his daughter’s imminent move to the US with his ex and her new husband. When a mysterious stranger approaches him, seemingly by chance, and offers him the opportunity to play a series of games with the possibility of winning an unimaginable cash prize, it seems too good to be true. Turns out, it is! The first season was a massive ratings and critical hit, spinning off an unscripted competition show, also on Netflix; the second season premieres December 26.

UnREAL (2015–2018)

Sarah Gertrude Shapiro’s 2013 short film, Sequin Raze, is the inspiration for this drama series, set behind the scenes of Everlasting, a fictional reality dating show; Shapiro cocreated the series with Marti Noxon, formerly a producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Our antiheroine protagonist is Rachel (Shiri Appleby), a producer who, as UnREAL begins, is just returning to Everlasting after a mental breakdown. Rachel is bringing some very dark mother issues to the project, which is part of why she’s so susceptible to manipulation by Quinn (Constance Zimmer), Everlasting’s toxic bitch queen of an executive producer. Though later seasons lost the plot a bit, the first is pretty impeccable. After seeing the ways Rachel messes with the minds of Everlasting’s flock of aspiring brides—not to mention Adam (Freddie Stroma), the man they’re all vying for—you may never be able to watch The Bachelor the same way again.

When They See Us (2019)

In 1989 a jogger was raped in New York’s Central Park. Five young Black and Latino men were wrongly accused and all spent time in prison. Years later, a man who was incarcerated on unrelated charges confessed to the jogger’s assault, and the so-called Central Park Five—more recently in the news for suing then candidate Donald Trump for defaming them (a Trump spokesman called the lawsuit “frivolous” at the time)—were ultimately exonerated. This acclaimed docudrama tells their story and is accompanied by a stand-alone special in which Oprah Winfrey interviews the exonerated men. Jharrel Jerome won an Emmy for his performance as Korey Wise; Joshua Jackson, star of ABC’s Doctor Odyssey, costars as Michael Joseph, who represented defendant Antron McCray.

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