Best Netflix shows of all time

BoJack Horseman▲ Rising

An animated sitcom about a washed-up horse actor that quietly became one of the most devastating meditations on depression, addiction, and self-sabotage ever put to screen — the 'Fish Out of Water' silent episode and 'Free Churro' monologue prove it could do formal experimentation better than most prestige dramas. It smuggled real anguish inside a candy-colored world of pun-based animal puns, and that tonal whiplash is exactly why it lingers.

Premiered: 2014Seasons: 6IMDb: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Narcos▲ Rising

Narcos turned the Pablo Escobar saga into propulsive, subtitle-heavy true crime that made American audiences fall in love with Spanish-language television at scale. Wagner Moura's Escobar — magnetic, paranoid, monstrous — became a template for the antihero biopic, and the show's DEA-agent narration gave true crime a cinematic sheen it hadn't had before. It proved Netflix could globalize a story and still make it feel intimate and bloody.

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 3IMDb: 8.8/10

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Black Mirror▲ Rising

'San Junipero' alone justified the entire series, swapping the show's usual tech-dystopia dread for a heartbreaking love story that won an Emmy and became a cultural shorthand for bittersweet digital afterlives. Black Mirror weaponized anthology television to interrogate our phones, our data, and our worst impulses episode by episode, and it did so with enough craft that 'this feels like a Black Mirror episode' entered the lexicon. Few shows have so thoroughly rewired how we talk about technology's creep into daily life.

Premiered: 2011Seasons: 7IMDb: 8.7/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

The Crown▲ Rising

Claire Foy's tremulous, steel-spined Elizabeth in the opening seasons set a new bar for what a lavish historical drama could look and feel like, and the show's ambitious decade-hopping recasting gimmick let it track a monarchy — and a country — aging in real time. It turned royal minutiae into gripping palace intrigue and made Netflix synonymous with prestige costume drama. The Crown proved streaming could out-BBC the BBC at its own genre.

Premiered: 2016Seasons: 6IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Stranger Things▲ Rising

A group of kids on bikes chasing a monster through 1980s Hawkins turned into the show that made 'Netflix original' mean event television, with the Upside Down and Eleven's nosebleeds becoming instant pop-culture iconography. It revived Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' decades later and proved that pure, unapologetic nostalgia could be a business model as much as an aesthetic. Few shows have so completely colonized Halloween costumes and merch shelves the way this one did.

Premiered: 2016Seasons: 5IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 10 rankings

Daredevil▲ Rising

Before Marvel's Netflix experiment collapsed, Daredevil delivered the hallway fight scene — one unbroken, brutal take that became the gold standard for televised action and made every superhero show after it look soft by comparison. Charlie Cox's blind vigilante and Vincent D'Onofrio's terrifyingly tender Kingpin gave superhero television a grounded, noir menace it rarely had. It's the show that proved comic-book adaptations could be genuinely adult without losing the spectacle.

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 3IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 3 rankings

Mindhunter

David Fincher's clinical, talky procedural about the FBI agents who invented criminal profiling turned interview-room conversations with real serial killers into some of the tensest television ever made, with Cameron Britton's Ed Kemper monologues alone justifying the show's existence. It rejected jump scares for dread built through patience and psychology, influencing a wave of prestige true-crime drama that followed. Its cancellation remains one of the great what-ifs of the streaming era.

Premiered: 2017Seasons: 2IMDb: 8.6/10

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Ozark▼ Falling

Jason Bateman's mild-mannered financial planner laundering cartel money in the Missouri Ozarks escalated into one of TV's bleakest family portraits, with Laura Linney's Wendy Byrde eventually out-cold-blooding everyone around her. The show's slow-burn descent into moral rot, culminating in that ambiguous final gunshot, made it appointment viewing for anyone who loved Breaking Bad but wanted the whole family implicated. It's the show that proved suburban crime dramas didn't need a single likable character to be riveting.

Premiered: 2017Seasons: 4IMDb: 8.5/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

The Queen's Gambit▼ Falling

Anya Taylor-Joy's chess prodigy Beth Harmon, popping pills and staring at ceiling-projected chessboards, turned competitive chess into unlikely must-watch drama and sparked a real-world surge in chess set sales and tournament sign-ups. Its lush period styling and quiet feminist triumph — a woman out-thinking every man across the board — made it a rare limited series that became a genuine cultural moment. It's the show that proved a story about sitting still and thinking could be as tense as any action thriller.

Premiered: 2020Seasons: 1IMDb: 8.5/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Money Heist▼ Falling

La Casa de Papel's red jumpsuits and Dalí masks became a global protest symbol, with 'Bella Ciao' turning into an anthem far beyond the show itself as it became Netflix's most-watched non-English series at the time. The Professor's elaborate heists mixed telenovela melodrama with genuine political anger at banks and austerity, resonating especially hard in Spain and Latin America before exploding worldwide. It's the clearest proof that Netflix's algorithm could turn a modest Spanish drama into a planetary phenomenon.

Premiered: 2017Seasons: 5IMDb: 8.2/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Making a Murderer▼ Falling

Steven Avery's twice-accused, twice-imprisoned saga turned true crime documentary into a national obsession and a genuine cause, spawning petitions, protests, and dinner-table debates about the Wisconsin justice system's failures. The Brendan Dassey interrogation footage alone reshaped public conversation about coerced confessions. It kicked off the modern true-crime documentary boom that streaming platforms have been chasing ever since.

Premiered: 2015Seasons: 2IMDb: 8.5/10

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Squid Game▼ Falling

A deceptively simple premise — desperate debtors playing deadly childhood games for cash — became the most-watched series Netflix has ever released, turning green tracksuits and a giant animatronic doll into instant global Halloween costumes. Its brutal class critique, wrapped in candy-colored playground sets, hit differently in a pandemic-scarred world obsessed with inequality. Squid Game didn't just break streaming records; it proved a Korean-language show could dominate global culture overnight.

Premiered: 2021Seasons: 3IMDb: 8/10

added by IJRin 7 rankings