The debate over the best way to consume and watch new television shows—the traditional weekly release schedule versus the popular binge model popularized by Netflix—is never-ending. And while we may never come to an agreement, there’s no harm in occasionally spending a weekend devouring a show you’ve never seen before. The joy that accompanies fresh obsession followed by the satisfaction one gets after finishing a show is a very specific feeling that many of us are constantly chasing.
However, when it comes to crafting a truly bingeable TV show, there’s more to it than just carefully constructed cliffhangers or narratives so engrossing they encourage viewers to press play on the next episode as soon as they’ve finished the last one. Episode length also comes into play (it’s much easier to binge a 30-minute show than it is one that regularly tops an hour), as does subject matter. As compelling and well-made as some shows are, it’s difficult to binge series that deal with difficult topics (see: the limited series Unbelievable). So we took all of this into account as we compiled our list of the best Netflix shows to binge in a weekend.
A note about our selection process: The list below primarily includes shows that have already concluded their runs. Ongoing series that you can currently binge in a weekend, but likely won’t be able to by the time they’re over, were not considered.
Bodyguard
Created by: Jed Mercurio
Stars: Richard Madden, Keeley Hawes, Gina McKee, Sophie Rundle
Number of Episodes: 6
In Jed Mercurio’s exquisite actioner, there are no rooftop chases, no ticking clocks, no fisticuffs with the villain’s henchmen. Instead, the six-part series finds suspense in watchful camerawork and careful pacing, and it’s this thorough control that makes Bodyguard worthy of your next TV obsession: It refuses shortcuts, rejects ellipses, until it approaches the effect of real time. Rather than treat this as a gimmick though, star Richard Madden and directors Thomas Vincent and John Strickland use the technique to create potent echoes of protagonist David Budd’s torturous vigilance, and indeed the nation’s. A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, David receives an assignment to protect Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), a rising political star with her eye on 10 Downing Street—and a reputation as a national security hardliner. The result is an ingenious layering of form atop function, all within the context of a taut political thriller: The series is less 24 or House of Cards than Homeland at its most momentous, stripped of all but its hero’s ability to see what others miss. —Matt Brennan
Teenage Bounty Hunters
Created by: Kathleen Jordan
Stars: Maddie Phillips, Anjelica Bette Fellini, Kadeem Hardison, Virginia Williams
Number of Episodes: 10
It’s a real bummer to put any series on this list that was canceled before its time, but so long as Netflix is going to wield its axe indiscriminately enough that it catches series as critically and popularly beloved as Teenage Bounty Hunters—Kathleen Jordan’s darkly comic vision of hormonal teen girls testing the boundaries of their sheltered white lives by taking up a shadow life as, well, teenage bounty hunters—that’s the reality we’re stuck with. So take this entry in the spirit it’s written, as both warning and recommendation: You will develop an immediate crush on badass telepathic Christian school twins Sterling (Maddie Philips) and Blair (Anjelica Bette Fellini) and their equally badass gruff grandpa-mentor Bowser (Kadeem Harrison), and then when you hit the whiplash end-that-shouldn’t-have-been-the-end of their bounty hunting/twin legacy story, that crush will, in turn, crush you right back. So, you know, have fun! —Alexis Gunderson
Crazyhead
Created by: Howard Overman
Stars: Cara Theobold, Susan Wokoma, Lewis Reeves, Arinze Kene, Riann Steele, Luke Allen-Gale, Tony Curran, Charlie Archer
Number of Episodes: 6
Buried deep within Netflix’s library is the one-season gem Crazyhead. Much like Teenage Bounty Hunters, it too was canceled before its time. But the fact that it’s so short—just six episodes!—means the horror-comedy from the creator of Misfits is the perfect weekend binge. The show stars Cara Theobold and Susan Wokoma as Amy and Raquel, two strangers with the ability to see demons. They initially band together to help Amy save her roommate, who has become possessed. But they quickly find themselves caught in a much larger battle to save humanity from demons who want to bring about the end of the world. What makes the series stand apart from the rest of the popular save-the-day genre, though, is its high energy, unfiltered sense of humor, and two untrained heroines who barely know what they are doing from one moment to the next. It leads to a viewing experience that is familiar and yet unpredictable, but one that is always full of laughs. —Kaitlin Thomas
Feel Good
Created by: Mae Martin and Joe Hampson
Stars: Mae Martin, Charlotte Ritchie, Lisa Kudrow, Phil Burgers
Number of Episodes: 12
Few shows are as emotionally affecting or as funny as Netflix’s dark romantic comedy Feel Good. Co-created by Mae Martin and Joe Hampson, the semi-autobiographical show depicts the relationship between a fictionalized version of Mae, a comedian and recovering addict, and George (Charlotte Ritchie), a school teacher who’s previously only ever dated men. The series’ excellent first season details the couple’s meet cute and subsequent romance, and it only gets better in Season 2. With just 12 short episodes, Feel Good wastes no minute of its run time as it tells a beautiful story about love and identity while digging into deeply complex issues related to trauma, addiction, recovery, and sexuality. Although it can be heartbreaking to watch Mae slowly and reluctantly peel back the layers of their pain, the show has no shortage of laughs. It’s both subtle and not, never shying away from depictions of queer sex or the long-lasting effects of trauma. The result is a show so good you almost can’t believe it exists, let alone that we were blessed with two seasons of it. —Kaitlin Thomas
Beef
Created by: Lee Sung Jin
Stars: Ali Wong, Steven Yeun, Joseph Lee, Young Mazino, Ashley Park, Maria Bello, Patti Yasutake, David Choe
Number of Episodes: 10
In the Emmy-winning Beef, the brilliant Ali Wong—playing the well-off boutique entrepreneur Amy Lau—has become engaged in a feud with the suicidal contractor Danny Cho, played by the equally excellent Steven Yeun. It started with an instance of road rage, in which Lau almost kills Cho, and escalates from there. One is rich, and one is poor, but fundamentally they’re both prisoners who feel no sense of control of their lives. What this violence against one another shows is that, briefly, they are resuscitated; they need this. It’s not healthy, it’s going to harm them both, but you know beyond any doubt that they are going to chase this high as long as they can. A raw thrill brought them both back to life, from a chance encounter in a parking lot, and through it they’ll even come to depend on each other.
As far as premise-setting, you just can’t do it any better, and there’s very little that you need to know about the show beyond that. They fight, and fight, and fight, and as the stifling atmosphere of modern lives continues to let them down, to leave them unhappy and confused, they’ll seek solace in each other, but that solace will come in the form of violence, because what they both require is the thrumming, hot conflict that can be waged between two people without the restrictions that society and the dual strictures of wealth and poverty have put in place. —Shane Ryan
Midnight Mass
Created by: Mike Flanagan
Stars: Hamish Linklater, Kate Siegel, Zach Gilford, Rahul Kohli, Annabeth Gish
Number of Episodes: 7
On Midnight Mass’ Crockett Island, every islander feels rife with misfortune. A recent oil spill nearly annihilated the fish supply, tanking the island’s local fishing economy. Their homes splinter and peel in neglect to the ocean’s elements. The majority of residents have fled the island for lack of opportunity, leaving a paltry few behind. Only two ferries can take them to the mainland. Hope runs in short supply—and a major storm brews on the horizon.
Everything beyond that for this seven-episode series is a true spoiler, but what can be said is that even with its dabblings in the supernatural, Midnight Mass (created by The Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor’s Mike Flanagan), is a show that burrows inwards instead of outwards. With both the physical claustrophobia of Crockett’s setting and the internal suffering of characters placed in center stage, Midnight Mass concerns itself with horrors within: addictive tendencies, secret histories, and questions of forgiveness and belief. At one glance, it’s a series that mines Catholic guilt for gold. In another, it’s a measured, yet spooky take on group psychology, the need for faith in sorrow, and the ethics of leadership with such vulnerable followers, weighing whether these impulses represent human goodness, evil, or simply nothing at all. —Katherine Smith
Derry Girls
Created by: Lisa McGee
Stars: Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Louisa Harland, Nicola Coughlan, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Dylan Llewellyn
Number of Episodes: 19
The lovely, silly, funny, and emotional Derry Girls is a brief series focusing on a group of schoolgirls in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, during the last days of the Troubles. But in Lisa McGee’s series, that darkness is relegated to the background. Instead, the more traditional teen conflicts of school life and being boy crazy take center stage, along with lots of incredibly specific language and jokes about both that region and that time (you will definitely want to watch with subtitles on). Derry Girls is a warm and funny time hop carried by a dreamy ‘90s playlist and the gigantic charisma of its wee leads. —Allison Keene
One Day
Created by: Nicole Taylor
Stars: Leo Woodall, Ambika Mod, Eleanor Tomlinson, Jonny Weldon, Essie Davis, Tim McInnerny
Number of Episodes: 14
We must warn you that if you binge-watch this 14-episode series based on the popular David Nicholls book of the same name you’re willingly signing up to have your heart ripped out. Having said that, we highly recommend having your heart ripped out by Dex (Leo Woodall) and Emma (Ambika Mod), two soulmates who meet at their graduation ball on the last day of university. The unique framing of the series means each episode follows the two on the same day of each year, detailing a complicated history of friendship and love that spans two decades. This arguably makes for an emotional roller coaster, especially when condensed into a single weekend, but we happen to think that is the perfect way to experience their love story. —Kaitlin Thomas
Everything Sucks!
Created by: Ben York Jones and Michael Mohan
Stars: Jahi Di’Allo Winston, Peyton Kennedy, Sydney Sweeney, Patch Darragh, Claudine Mboligikpelani Nako, Quinn Liebling, Elijah Stevenson, Rio Mangini
Number of Episodes: 10
In a perfect world Everything Sucks! wouldn’t be on this list, because in a perfect world, Netflix wouldn’t have canceled the charming coming-of-age show after just one season. But the world is not perfect, and Netflix did prematurely swing the axe, so the show has a short enough runtime that it’s the perfect length to binge in a single weekend. Thus, we simply had to include it.
Set in the town of Boring, Oregon, in 1996, Everything Sucks! follows the members of a high school drama club and AV club coming together to make a short film. Along the way, it offers a compelling look at the familiar highs and lows of adolescence through Luke (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), a freshman whose unrequited crush on classmate Kate (Peyton Kennedy) eventually opens his eyes to a world much larger and richer than the one he’d previously known once Kate begins to come to terms with her own sexuality and accepts herself as she is. While the show can be painfully realistic at times—it is seriously dedicated to authentically portraying what it’s like to be a teenager—it’s also the type of show that is impossible to look away from, especially for anyone who grew up in the ‘90s, with the very same songs backing their own coming of age. —Kaitlin Thomas
Lupin
Created by: George Kay, François Uzan
Stars: Omar Sy, Ludivine Sagnier, Etan Simon, Clotilde Hesme, Antoine Gouy, Fargass Assandé, Soufiane Guerrab, Nicole Garcia, Hervé Pierre, Vincent Londez, Shirine Boutella, Vincent Garanger
Number of Episodes: 17
Lupin is a French show about a boy named Assane who becomes a thief, and may have some identity crisis issues in that he seems to believe he is—and I mean “is” in a literal sense—a gentleman thief named Arsene Lupin from a series of stories by the writer Maurice Leblanc. There are some family issues at play; Assane (Omar Sy) and his father were Senegalese immigrants, and the old man was accused of stealing a valuable necklace when Assane was a child, which provided the seed for how his entire life unfolded. From that tragic backstory, a sort of comic book hero emerges, and his superpower is legerdemain: the artistry of the thief.
In style, Lupin bears some similarity to the BBC’s Sherlock, at least in the frenetic worship of cleverness that makes an hour-long show feel like 10 jam-packed minutes. Lupin is more outlandish, but Sy is just as charmingly irreverent as Benedict Cumberbatch’s bombastic detective. In both shows, though, the viewer is taken into the labyrinth of the mind, where the resolution of a thorny puzzle functions as the pounding impulse behind every plot device. The pleasures of the unraveling mystery are the same—even if the protagonists operate on opposite sides of the law.
While Lupin can strain and often shatters credulity, as Assane coolly manipulates just about everyone he meets in his daily Parisian exploits, it’s also a pretty great way to spend an hour (or more). —Shane Ryan
Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
Created by: Bryan Lee O’Malley and BenDavid Grabinski
Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Mae Whitman, Brie Larson, Satya Bhabha, Alison Pill, Aubrey Plaza, Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman, Johnny Simmons, Mark Webber, Ellen Wong
Number of Episodes: 8
Despite what the marketing suggests, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is not a shot-for-shot remake, but a meta reimagining of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World that tells a (mostly) new story. The result is a delightful animated series that approaches this narrative from a new perspective. Following the movie’s plot throughout the first episode (Scott Pilgrim [Michael Cera] must defeat Ramona Flowers’ [Mary Elizabeth Winstead] seven evil exes before he can date her), it doesn’t take long until Scott Pilgrim Takes Off deviates from the established plot. The main difference here is that in this rendition, we largely follow Ramona as she confronts her previous significant others and tries to piece together why events have gone off course. It synthesizes a transmedia whirlwind as it brings back the movie’s cast and evokes the comic’s art style through creative bursts of animation. Most importantly, it retains the underlying tone and messaging of what came before as it successfully reenvisions this story with Ramona at center stage. In the end, it manages to do something tricky, transposing a more than decade-old tune while barely missing a beat. —Elijah Gonzalez
