86 Best Releases Network Netflix on Netflix (Page 4)
Never Have I Ever
SimilarAh! My Goddess, Dante's Cove, The Wallflower,
It’s time once again to return to Sherman Oaks High as Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s bittersweet teen comedy Never Have I Ever returns to Netflix. Picking up right where season one left off, we reunite with Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), her friends, family, and the surprisingly rich cast of secondary characters. Continue Reading →
Tuca & Bertie
SimilarBlack Books Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Catterick,
Lisa Hanawalt’s beloved animated show Tuca & Bertie was prematurely canceled by Netflix back in July 2019. But less than a year later, Adult Swim took a risk by giving the show another life. If the first four episodes of the new season are anything to go on, the show only gets stronger, funnier, and more mature in its sophomore outing. Continue Reading →
Penguin Town
The Patton Oswalt-narrated Netflix docuseries tells a compelling story about the endangered birds' life during their molting and mating season.
“Six hot months! One wild colony! No rules!” With this reality show-esque tagline, Netflix’s Penguin Town appears to be a quirky, comical twist on nature docuseries. They even pulled in comedian Patton Oswalt to narrate. Penguin Town follows the adventures of a wild cast of African penguins. As the series progresses however, dramatic events unfold, pulling the audience in for an emotional trip alongside the endangered birds.
The series follows the journey of African penguins as they hit land on the shores of Simon’s Town, South Africa. Here the birds live it up amongst the “giants” (aka humans) of the town, molting their feathers, hooking up with their mates, and hopefully raising some hatchlings before they depart. This may sound like spring break for penguins, but their time at the beach is anything but a vacation. These penguins fight off predators on land and in the sea, attempt to survive catastrophic weather events, all in the hope their species will survive and thrive. Continue Reading →
Master of None
SimilarTaxi, The Head, The Nanny,
After a four-year absence, Master of None returns to Netflix with a new tone and new focus, but it still grapples with the same emotional beats of the first two seasons. This time around, creator Aziz Ansari focuses his efforts behind the camera, only appearing in two brief cameos in season three’s five-episode arc. Instead, all of the action is focused on Denise (Lena Waithe) and her partner Alicia (Naomi Ackie), who are rusticating in a cottagecore fantasy that not even TikTok could call sustainable. Rather than the buzz of traffic and the cramped quarters of the city, we see Denise and Alicia’s relationship develop against the bucolic splendor of open fields and towering trees. Continue Reading →
Jupiter's Legacy
SimilarAstro Boy, Ben 10, Birdman and the Galaxy Trio, The Amazing Spider-Man,
Hollywood's year-long hiatus on major comic-book adaptation movies has left ample room for streaming services to pick up the slack and then some. Amazon, for example, has wisely curated high-profile releases from existing superhero stories that subvert the genre in ways that would probably ring unfamiliar if attempted by the more mainstream Marvel and DC fare. The Boys is all about poking a gory hole in how superheroes can be vapid, unchecked, and even monstrous celebrities. Invincible just ended its first season with a bang of a finale, taking its colonizer version of Superman to task. And then there's the curious case of Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy. Continue Reading →
Shadow and Bone
I sat down with Trapanese for a lengthy chat about the challenges of scoring an entire series of such grand scope, the creative inspirations he took from the books, and the interconnecting, interweaving musical motifs of the major characters. In a first for the podcast, Trapanese also provides commentaries explaining his process for the cues "Erase the Past" and "Royal Archives Heist." Continue Reading →
YASUKE -ヤスケ-
SimilarHina Logic: From Luck & Logic, Out of This World,
Japan. 1582. The samurai general Akechi Mitsuhide betrayed his liege lord Oda Nobunaga and sets his castle alight. Trapped by the blaze, Nobunaga elected to die by seppuku - ritual suicide. His friend and retainer Yasuke - a Black man and the first foreigner ever granted the rank of samurai - acted as his second. Not long after Nobunaga's death, Yasuke vanished from the historical record. Continue Reading →
Worn Stories
SimilarPope John Paul II,
After eight years of itchy, bland Catholic School uniforms, I was ready for a change. When I entered high school, I switched to one of the only public schools in the state of Louisiana that didn’t require a uniform. Now that I could dress how I wanted, I needed to make a splash. I wanted to show everyone exactly who I was and what I brought to the table. My 13 year old brain decided the best way to do that was wearing this t-shirt featuring the logo of Mr. Sparkle, the Japanese laundry detergent that uses Homer’s head as inspiration in the Season 8 episode of The Simpsons, “In Marge We Trust." Continue Reading →
Nailed It!
Watch afterBlack Summer, How I Met Your Mother, The End of the F***ing World,
The Office
During our pandemic lockdowns, who amongst us hasn’t recruited quarantined friends and family into a baking project beyond our experience? Now imagine the pressure of concocting an elaborate bake with a pal or family member for all the world to see. With Netflix’s Nailed It! Double Trouble, bakers pair up in teams of two to recreate extravagant bakes and win $10,000. While some elements have changed in this new season, host Nicole Byer still panics at the push of a button, chef Jacques Torres still imparts wisdom to the contestants, and the bakers reach new heights of spectacular cake fails. In the words of guest judge Ron Funches, “I love a good hot mess.” Nailed It! Double Trouble is the good hot mess we need, seeing twice the fun and chaos from amateur bakers. Continue Reading →
Pacific Rim: The Black
SimilarSonny Boy, The Dawn of the Witch,
Guillermo del Toro’s 2013 sci-fi blockbuster Pacific Rim certainly has its core group of dedicated fans, but I was never among them. The characters fell flat, the jokes never landed, and even the action sequences lacked suspense. Far from the worst action films, but also nowhere near among the most memorable, I went into Netflix’s anime twist on the story with a healthy dose of skepticism. Continue Reading →
Last Chance U: Basketball
If you’re like me, you may be surprised to find that one of Netflix’s most enduring original franchises is Last Chance U, a documentary series chronicling football players as they juggle sports and academics. Though the show ended after a four-season run last year, Netflix isn’t one to let a recognizable brand name rest. Last Chance U has returned in the form of Last Chance U: Basketball, which shifts the focus from the Friday night lights of football to the indoor basketball fields of East Los Angeles Community College. Continue Reading →
Ginny & Georgia
While Netflix’s Ginny & Georgia (created by Sarah Lampert) has so far been hailed as a sort of edgier Gilmore Girls, the new young adult series arguably has more in common with Richard Benjamin’s Mermaids (1990), starring Cher and Winona Ryder. In essence: what if Cher’s Mrs. Flax kept two pistols in the house? Continue Reading →
Tribes of Europa
SimilarAnna, Batman Beyond,
The apocalypse is never further from our minds in science fiction, to the point where any civilization set after mankind's inevitable collapse invariably lands on a host of tropes and conventions touched on by a million stories before it. Tribes of Europa, Germany's latest addition to Netflix's sci-fi television stable after the incredible Dark, makes the head-scratching decision to use all of them. There's a Mysterious Cataclysm that knocks out all technology, roving bands of survivors battling each other for resources and power, a Magic MacGuffin that might lead to salvation and must be protected at all costs, the list goes on. And yet, there's an ineffable charm to the six too-brief episodes of its inaugural season, chiefly due to the stalwart effects work and production design, and game performances from a cast that recognizes the story's innate schlock factor. Continue Reading →
Behind Her Eyes
SimilarCigarette Girl,
Roswell Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Valvrave the Liberator,
StarringRobert Aramayo,
Following off the success of Bridgerton, the next bestseller to be spun into Netflix gold is Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes, a book that was so aggressively marketed around its super-secret third act twist that early readers were encouraged to use the hashtag #WTFthatending. They aren’t kidding. WTF that ending, indeed. Continue Reading →
Firefly Lane
Netflix’s new romantic drama Firefly Lane, based on the 2008 novel by Kristin Hannah, follows the multi-decade friendship of brash and bold Tully (Katherine Heigl) and smart and nerdy Kate (Sarah Chalke). They meet at age fourteen living on Firefly Lane. From there they spend years cultivating their journeys: Tully is a journalist with a wildly popular daytime talk show, and Kate took a break in her career to marry fellow journalist Ryan (a stilted Ben Lawson) and raise a daughter. Continue Reading →
We Are: The Brooklyn Saints
The Netflix documentary series We Are: The Brooklyn Saints begins with a collection of voiceovers from Brooklyn residents. This narration talks about the misguided perceptions the general public has about Brooklyn and its denizens. “Brooklyn is more than killing and the gangs,” one man says while another notes that the borough is “more than what’s on the news." These lines reflect the thesis of the show, which is to show a whole other side of Brooklyn by following a local youth football team. Continue Reading →
Fate: The Winx Saga
SimilarAmazing Stories, I Dream of Jeannie, The Dawn of the Witch,
Adapted from the Nickelodeon show Winx Club, Netflix’s new series Fate: The Winx Saga attempts to reboot the long-running favorite with gritty live action to fit on the homepage somewhere between The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Cursed. It’s a visually stunning fantasy quest centered around young women that has all the magic it needs to fly but hasn’t yet learned to focus its potential within. Continue Reading →
MINDHUNTER
If anybody could find something new to add to pop culture’s fixation with serial killers and true crime, it would likely be David Fincher. Se7en announced him as a major director while Zodiac revealed him as a master. The Fincher style – dark lighting and sickly colors, obsessive attention to detail, unblinking looks at violence – has served as a template not just for other movies, but also for TV shows of both the prestigious and potboiler variety and for the ever-increasing number of investigative podcasts and Netflix documentaries. In 2017, Fincher returned to the serial killer subgenre by taking his project Mindhunter to the streaming service. Continue Reading →
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
SimilarItaewon Class, The Summer I Turned Pretty,
With its magic, monsters, and ridiculously attractive cast, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina makes no attempt at relatability. However, while its fourth and final season is filled with situations that no person will ever find themselves in, its premise of a world being assaulted with unimaginable terrors before finally succumbing to a soulless void is a #2020mood. Continue Reading →
Cobra Kai
It's hard to know what to make of the '80s nostalgia boom that's hit pop culture in recent years -- that Stranger Things-y crystallization of an entire decade has permeated everything from prestige drama to Wonder Woman flicks, a throwback aesthetic revived for a newer generation (or, more accurately, the same generation who grew up in it and desperately clamors for the apparent simplicity of those times in a chaotic 21st century). But like so many things about our youth, it can be dangerous to romanticize it at the expense of our messy present. That's a lesson that, of all things, Cobra Kai understands more than most of its '80s-inspired kin. Continue Reading →
Bridgerton
SimilarAround the World in 80 Days, Helltown, My Holo Love, No Escape, Santa Evita, The Summer I Turned Pretty,
Thank goodness for Shonda Rhimes, not only for having the clout to bring a beloved historical romance to a major streaming service but for recognizing what’s been missing from historical television drama: Fun. And Bridgerton is fun, bursting at the seams with romantic tropes, six-packs, friendship, and scandal. Continue Reading →