41 best things to watch on Netflix UK today

Netflix has paid over US$600m for the rights to adapt Roald Dahl’s written works for the screen. This 40-minute short directed by Wes Anderson is the result of that deal.

Anderson has excellent form when it comes to Dahl, having created 2009’s excellent Fantastic Mr. Fox, and puts together a star-studded cast for this whimsical and enjoyably stagy adaptation of the author’s 1970s short story about a man able to predict the future. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the eponymous Sugar, joined by Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade, Ralph Fiennes and Sir Ben Kingsley.

Can you handle this much quirkiness? Sure you can. And the good news for fans of Dahl and Anderson is that it’s just the first (and longest) of a whole bunch of Anderson-directed Dahl adaptations available on Netflix.

Watch The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar on Netflix

Comedian Richard Gadd writes and stars in this drama based on his real-life experience as the victim of a stalker. If you’re expecting a black comedy, they don’t come much darker than this, as Gadd’s Donny Dunn – a struggling stand-up working in a London pub – enters a nightmare of self-loathing, abuse and exploitation as a result of a chance meeting.

The seven-part series ultimately ends on a reflective, contemplative and somewhat enlightened note, and while Donny’s hellish journey of self-discovery certainly isn’t for the faint-hearted viewer, it’s intensely gripping stuff throughout.

Watch Baby Reindeer on Netflix

Beautifully shot in stark black and white, this eight-part adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel is written and directed by Steven Zaillian (best known as for his Schindler’s List script) and stars Andrew Scott as the eponymous conman. Thomas Ripley is a shapeshifting sociopath who, arriving in 1960s Italy, inserts himself into a young couple’s glamorous lives.

Readers who remember Anthony Minghella’s film The Talented Mr. Ripley may wonder if Netflix’s series can match its compelling concoction of wonder and menace (if not its star-studded cast). Having watched the two adaptations, we think there’s enough room for both. With more time to play with, Scott and co-stars Johnny Flynn and Dakota Fanning deliver a more in-depth and detailed look at Tom Ripley’s life of deceit, deception and murder – even if you sometimes yearn for the film’s brisker pace.

Watch Ripley on Netflix

Everyone’s favourite sleazy-yet-likeable lawyer Saul Goodman (well, Jimmy McGill) returns to Netflix, in a series (now in fact four series, with a fifth on the way) that throws us back seven years before the explosive events of Breaking Bad.

Bob Odenkirk slips into his cheap suit with remarkable ease, and his superb performance allows his character’s desperation, tenacity and humour to seep through the screen and grab our attention with both hands.

It’s always fun to root for the underdog, and from the very first episode you’re right there alongside Goodman, wanting him to fight to the top – all while being aware of the dark things to come. Yet another belting Netflix Original.

Watch Better Call Saul on Netflix

Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss return to the small screen with this adaptation of Chinese author Cixin Liu’s visionary (and utterly terrifying) sci-fi novel. The adaptation makes a raft of changes to Liu’s text – mostly for the better, in our opinion – and while the show’s pacing and script could be better, in general it hits a fine balance. The novel’s most interesting concepts and scenes are all here, and some of Liu’s rather dry exposition has been sexed up somewhat.

We don’t want to spoil too much, but the story involves the Chinese Cultural Revolution, deep-space radio transmitters, a spate of strange suicides, virtual reality video games and a truly paradigm-shifting discovery, all adding up to a science fiction tale that’ll leave you feeling very tiny and insignificant indeed. And with two more gripping, mind-bending books in Liu’s series still to adapt, this could be the start of something truly epic – assuming Netflix renews it for a second and possibly third series.

Watch 3 Body Problem on Netflix

Arguably the biggest sporting icon of all time, Michael Jordan led the Chicago Bulls to a series of NBA championships in the 1990s, was the face of one of history’s most popular sneaker ranges and the star of a Hollywood movie. By 1998, however, it seemed like the Bulls’ era of dominance – and Jordan’s place at its heart – was in the balance. This engrossing, masterfully made 10-part documentary tells the story not just of that fateful season but of Jordan’s rise from green rookie to global superstar, and of how the Bulls planned and built their hegemony after years of underachievement.

The Last Dance will appeal not only to basketball and sport fans, but to anybody who appreciates a story well told and a glimpse into the strangely singular mind of mercilessly driven individuals like Jordan. Those looking for a nostalgic trip back to the 90s won’t be disappointed either – the era-appropriate soundtrack is superb.

Watch The Last Dance on Netflix

Only 80s kids will understand this. Actually that’s not true at all, but Stranger Things is a love letter to many of the movies, TV shows and books that children who grew up in that decade will cherish: it’s replete with references to E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goonies, Stephen King, Dungeons & Dragons and Poltergeist, and the mood and feel is sure to dredge up nostalgia aplenty.

Take away the retro vibes though, and the show can still stand on its own as a decent sci-fi drama-thriller. And it doesn’t mess about too much – unlike a lot of Netflix Original Series, its episodes are reasonably tight (around 40 minutes each), and there are only eight of them in the entire fantastic first season, and nine in the (almost as enjoyable) second.

Watch Stranger Things on Netflix

Sketch shows, once kings of TV comedy, have fallen out of favour of late. But I Think You Should Leave is proof positive that there’s plenty of life left in the old format: it just needed a refreshing jolt of weirdness.

Former Saturday Night Live cast member Tim Robinson co-writes and appears (along with a parade of familiar guest faces like Bob Odenkirk, Tim Heidecker and Andy Samberg) in a collection of crude, inventive and hilarious skits that rarely end up where you expect them to. The humour usually comes from a character “committing to the bit” by taking a social miscue or bizarre personality trait to extremes. It sounds simple enough, but Robinson and co have done nothing less than reinvent the comedy skit.

Watch I Think You Should Leave on Netflix

Featuring some of the most bum-clenchingly tense scenes witnessed on a TV screen since Breaking Bad, Ozark follows Jason Bateman and Laura Linney’s squabbling Chicago couple as they launder money for a brutal and merciless drug cartel. When Bateman’s put-upon financial advisor happens on a risky plan to “wash” the dirty cash in rural Missouri, he and his family must immediately up sticks for a brand new life in one of America’s most deprived places. All of a sudden, murderous Mexican narco-barons become just one of many problems for the family.

Filmed in muted, washed-out tones with bags of brooding and squalor on show, Ozark doesn’t always make for a pretty watch. But if you like your drama series perpetually poised on a knife edge, it’ll be right up your street.

Watch Ozark on Netflix

Subtitle-haters are missing out if they choose to avoid this dark drama series on account of it being Korean (yes, we know you can watch it dubbed into English, but please… don’t do that). The gripping story of a heartless life-or-death tournament in which desperate contestants compete in souped-up playground games for the prospect of a fat winner’s cheque, Squid Game has already become not only one of Netflix’s most popular foreign language series, but its most popular debut series full stop. A grim commentary on late capitalism and how it encourages screwing each other over to get by? Sure, but it’s also entertaining as hell.

Watch Squid Game on Netflix

Black Mirror has made the move from Channel 4 to Netflix in sumptuous, unsettling style.

Not only has the platform given Charlie Brooker and his team the freedom to tell more stories (the two Netflix-made series have six episodes rather than the usual three) and let each one run without ad breaks for as long as it needs to, it’s also given them a budget big enough to expand the scale, scope and special effects.

The feature-length final episode, Hated in the Nation, is a perfect case in point. What hasn’t changed is the overall theme. Each episode may tell a standalone story, but they’re all connected by the threads of modern humanity’s relationship with technology, the internet and social media.

Make no mistake, this is unnerving stuff, enhanced by the fact that the stories are generally set in a very near future that’s all too recognisable. But fear not, the trademark blacker-than-black humour has also been retained, so you’ll guffaw almost as much as you’ll squirm. This is must-see television for anyone who’s obsessed with tech.

Watch Black Mirror on Netflix

Using the word “raunchy” to describe a comedy-drama series makes us feel like 1970s tabloid journalists, but what better term to sum up a bunch of teenage sexcapades tied up by a fun plot and relatable, well-rounded and likeable characters? We’ll be calling it a “romp” next (which it also is) – but Sex Education is a genuinely inventive, engaging, insightful and occasionally moving series, and extremely easy to binge-watch.

Watch Sex Education on Netflix

A series that started life on YouTube Red as a giggle-worthy, nostalgia-fuelled spin-off of The Karate Kid movies, Cobra Kai is now firmly established as a fan-pleasing comedy-action-drama that arguably surpasses the beloved films that inspired it.

Back in the 80s, few could have imagined Karate Kid villain Johnny Lawrence being the nuanced, relatable protagonist of his own TV show over three decades later, but here we are. Johnny is just one of several characters from the movies now firmly ensconced in this new life, and being given far more depth as a result.

Watch Cobra Kai on Netflix

David Fincher’s slick period drama series follows the efforts of two FBI agents to better understand how serial killers think. This sort of profiling wasn’t considered useful by law enforcement top brass in the late 1970s (when the first season of the show is set) but our protagonists believe that working out how murderers’ brains function is the key to stopping them.

If this all sound overly grim, don’t worry – Mindhunter isn’t all doom and gloom, being peppered with moments of comedy (often black, admittedly) and underpinned by the dynamic of the main characters’ strained relationship. It sadly appears to have been put on permanent hiatus since its second season, but rumours of a revival simply won’t go away. Fingers crossed.

Watch Mindhunter on Netflix

Guillermo Del Toro has recruited a horror movie dream team, including the directors of Mandy, The Babadook and Splice, tasking each member with delivering their own hour(ish)-long tale of terror for this brilliant, ghoulish and disturbing limited collection.

The result is a Twilight Zone-style anthology series of tall tales and spooky stories, with weightless CGI gimmickry reduced (if not ditched entirely) in favour of old-fashioned practical effects. From occult rituals and ravenous alien parasites to bizarre beauty products and restless spirits, there’s so much here for horror lovers to enjoy, and it’s all so beautifully made.

Watch Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix

A man takes a fatal tumble from the window of a French mountain chalet. Was it an accident? An act of self-harm? Or murder? His wife immediately falls under suspicion.

If that synopsis makes Anatomy of a Fall sound like an episode of Quincy, don’t worry. This masterful Oscar- and Palme d’Or-winning French film is a lot more than a straightforward whodunnit. While it wears the clothes of a courtroom thriller, this movie is a cerebral, sophisticated character study of a complex marriage between two complex people. It’s anything but clichéd, and by the time the credits roll you’ll be questioning not only whether or not the truth was genuinely uncovered, but the very nature of truth itself.

Watch Anatomy of a Fall on Netflix

If you’ve never seen the Wachowskis’ modern sci-fi classic, drop what you’re doing and “jack in” (we’re not being crude, honest) to Netflix right now. The Matrix isn’t just a great action flick – it’s packed with iconic moments and smart ideas, and it still looks amazing over 20 years after it was first released.

Keanu Reeves plays hacker Thomas “Neo” Anderson, a regular office-bound drudge who finds himself drawn into a reality-bending adventure full of flying bullets, mind-blowing martial arts sequences and some early CGI that doesn’t look like absolute garbage. Whoa indeed!

Watch The Matrix on Netflix

Bong Joon-ho’s Best Picture-winning black comedy bucks lots of Oscar-winning trends, being the first foreign-language film to win the award and cynical and mischievous in tone – an area where the Academy usually favours earnestness and sentimentality – but watching it it’s easy to see why it’s been so lauded: it’s masterfully crafted, funny, shocking, insightful and extremely relevant to the current state of the world, all while moving along at a dizzying pace.

The film revolves around two Korean families: the working-class Kims and the wealthy upper-middle-class Parks. The Kims pull off a dazzlingly Machiavellian scheme to install themselves as well-paid household employees of the trusting Parks, but their victory is short-lived – and suddenly neither they nor the viewer really knows where they stand. An engaging treatise on class, inequality and how modern capitalism brings out the bloodsucker in everyone – rich and poor alike.

Watch Parasite on Netflix

Before he went on to create the TV behemoth that is Yellowstone and its billion spin-offs, Taylor Sheridan established himself as one of Hollywood’s hottest screenwriters with films like Sicario, Wind River and this one.

Hell or High Water is a modern-day Western following a pair of brothers (played by Chris Pine and Ben Foster) who embark of a series of bank robberies in order to keep up with mortgage payments on their family home. Hot on their trail are two Texas Rangers (Jeff Bridges and Gil Birmingham), determined to put the brothers behind bars before somebody gets hurt.

If the plot sounds hackneyed, rest assured the execution isn’t. This film’s atmosphere, acting and dialogue are all top-notch, and it garnered four Oscar nominations.

Watch Hell or High Water on Netflix

How does Tom Cruise keep doing it? Despite being over 60, the man insists on throwing himself out of choppers and sprinting around on top of trains – all in the name of blockbuster cinema. Pipe and slippers time? Not by a long shot.

The seventh (and penultimate, apparently) entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise sees Cruise’s super-agent Ethan Hunt face off against a malevolent rogue A.I. But forget the ostensibly “topical” subject matter – this movie is Hollywood popcorn escapism of the most more-ish flavour.

With its glitzy international locations, star-studded cast and faultlessly filmed stunt sequences this is top-tier stuff. And, unsurprisingly, one of the most expensive films ever made, but you can truly see every red cent up there on the screen.

Watch Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One on Netflix

This riotous horror comedy stars Samara Weaving as a new bride. Freshly inducted into the wealthy clan of her new spouse, she’s cajoled into partaking in the family’s traditional wedding night ritual. Nothing weird there, right? Well, it turns out that this isn’t just a bit of light hazing. One minute she’s basking in the warm post-nuptials glow, the next she’s creeping around their palatial mansion in a deadly game of hide and seek.

Bristling with subversive humour, tension and gory violence, this is one of the more light-hearted horror flicks of recent years – and also one of the best. Its talented cast, satirical and witty script and plenty of crowd-pleasing action add up to a winning combination.

Watch Ready or Not on Netflix

Yes, it’s another Batman reboot. This time around, Bruce Wayne is played by a pallid, soft-spoken and very emo Robert Pattinson. When a series of city bigwigs turn up dead with riddles and ciphers duct-taped to their bodies, Jim Gordon brings in R-Patz’s Batman to help investigate. Meanwhile Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) attempts to track down her missing friend, who disappeared while working in a seedy nightclub owned by a criminal known as the Penguin. Somehow, you sense, all this stuff is linked.

Even if we’ve seen it all before, director Matt Reeves’ sodium-glow vision of a Gotham where it seems to be permanently night-time, raining or both is visually stunning. A sequel is supposedly scheduled for an October 2027 release.

Watch The Batman on Netflix

Of the many serial killer movies that were released in the 90s, Seven stands apart. First, there’s the clever, taut and tight plot, with a murderer punishing what he sees as society’s “sins” in an unnamed, rain-soaked American city. Second, there are the fine performances from Morgan Freeman (no surprises there) and hitherto pretty boy Brad Pitt, flexing his “I’m a serious actor” muscles for perhaps the first time in his career.

Then there’s the aesthetic: director David Fincher’s trademark desaturated palette and inventive camerawork give the movie an unforgettable look that contributes to its overall feeling of bleakness. And that final, gut-wrenching twist? It’s simply to die for.

Watch Seven on Netflix

Adam Sandler excels in this frenetic drama from indie darlings Josh and Benny Safdie, playing a New York jeweller with a gambling addiction. The brothers’ shaky, handheld camera gives us an uncomfortable close look at this anti-hero’s attempts to juggle the demands of his celebrity clients, wife, mistress and a circling group of loan sharks.

If it’s a relaxing watch you’re after, don’t stream Uncut Gems. The cinematography, Daniel Lopatin’s skittering electronic score and Sandler’s fantastic performance (he’s always found it easy playing a man teetering on the edge – but mostly in bad films) invoke feelings of unease and anxiety that never let up over the two-hour running time. It’s delirious, manic and vital stuff – if you can stomach the stress.

Watch Uncut Gems on Netflix

Everyone’s favourite web-slinger takes a break from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, forging an entirely new direction in this outrageously inventive animated film, which uses the multiverse theory to take the Spider-Man we think we all know and love in weird and wonderful directions.

To reveal more would diminish the joy of watching this alternate universe Spidey – Brooklyn schoolboy Miles Morales – embark on his own journey, brilliantly paralleling the one we’ve already seen in so many other movies, comics and games. The fact that it’s all brought to life in an amazing (no pun intended) animation style is simply the icing on a tasty cinematic cake.

Watch Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse on Netflix

Studio Ghibli’s Oscar-winner showcases Hayao Miyazaki’s filmmaking at its very best: magical, thought-provoking and utterly absorbing. While the average Western animated movie is dubbed sophisticated if it throws in a couple of knowing references for any adults that happen to be watching, Spirited Away feels like it’s working on an entirely different plane of existence, confident enough to play by its own set of rules.

This beautifully animated tale of a coddled young girl unwittingly drawn into a strange parallel world of spirits, witches and demons effortlessly touches on universal themes like family, love, friendship and facing your fears, making it a compelling, engaging watch for viewers of any age.

Watch Spirited Away on Netflix

Forget the recent Hollywood-made attempts at bringing the legendary lizard to life. This right here is a real Godzilla movie. It’s got drama, emotion, characters and an actual story – a giant reptile stomping through Tokyo is just one small part of its appeal. Set in the aftermath of Japan’s heavy, humbling defeat in World War II, there’s plenty of pathos on show as the disarmed and battered nation suddenly finds itself at the mercy of a new and seemingly unstoppable foe.

We’re not saying that it’s short on spectacle, though. On the contrary, Godzilla Minus One has some of the best visual effects in the business (it has recently won an Oscar for them, in fact), and its representation of the angry kaiju as an unstoppable force of nature makes for some breath-taking action sequences.

Watch Godzilla Minus One on Netflix

Director Denis Villeneuve is now a fully-fledged Hollywood A-lister, helming the likes of Sicario, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune. And going back to 2013 and his English language debut, it’s easy to see why he’s such a hot ticket.

Prisoners is a brilliant suspense thriller that also works as a family drama and character study. When two young girls go missing and the chief suspect is dismissed by the police as a disturbed but harmless crank, a desperate father (Hugh Jackman) takes matters into his own hands in search of the truth – all while a relentlessly driven detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) pursues his own hunches about the case. Raw, tense and with new twists of the knife around every corner, this is a crime movie with real bite.

Watch Prisoners on Netflix

You don’t need an interest in sport to get engrossed in this Oscar-winning doping exposé. Icarus is really two documentaries in one, with the first third of the film a kind of Super Size Me for performance-enhancing drugs: the filmmaker, a semi-pro cyclist, embarks on a hardcore doping program to show how flawed the drugs-testing process is.

But when his advisor, scientist Gregory Rodchenkov, suddenly finds himself in the eye of an international storm over Russia’s state-sponsored doping program, Icarus handbrake turns into an enthralling fly-on-the-wall thriller about the dangers of being a whistleblower in an authoritarian country. Cue mysterious deaths, tense interviews and a lot of hand-wringing as Rodchenkov goes into hiding from Putin’s cronies.

Watch Icarus on Netflix

Few movie makers believe their own hype as readily as Quentin Tarantino, which is why his films tend to be both over-indulgent and over-long. That’s certainly the case with his Deep South-set melodrama, Django Unchained but, as with most Tarantino movies, those flaws only slightly temper the overall brilliance. Even QT’s ill-advised on-screen appearance as an Australian is minor enough to be forgotten about almost immediately – there’s so much else to admire.

Django is another masterclass of witty, meandering dialogue, artful scene construction and brutal, brilliant action, and it contains some of the finest acting from some of this generation’s finest actors in Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz. Leonardo DiCaprio as a viper-like plantation owner is particularly nasty, evil perfection. 

Watch Django Unchained on Netflix

US remakes of UK series rarely survive the Hollywood treatment with their appeal intact – but the American reimagining of Ricky Gervais’ The Office swiftly unshackled itself from its inspiration, finding its own brilliant and warm voice in the process. And what it lacks in pathos and subtlety it makes up for in sheer pound-for-pound entertainment.

With a fantastic lead in Steve Carell as cringy boss Michael Scott and the talented supporting cast providing plenty of great character moments – even all the way into the Carell-free final seasons – it’s hard to think of a better mainstream US sitcom of the past 25 years. All nine seasons (that’s an astounding 188 episodes by our count) are streaming on Netflix.

Watch The Office (US) on Netflix

Friends? Fuggedaboutit. For us, Seinfeld is the definitive New York-set 1990s sitcom about a group of pals just working their way through this crazy little thing we call life. An inventive, absurd and hilarious examination of the trivialities of the modern world, never relying on slapstick or coddling its viewers with cheap sentimentality (the vast majority of its characters are clearly horrible people), Seinfeld is quite simply a must-watch for all fans of comedy. With each episode clocking in at a little over 20 minutes, it’s also great fare for binge watching.

Watch Seinfeld on Netflix

Tokyo detective Kenzo Mori arrives in London in search of his wayward brother – who may or may not be on the run for a gangland murder – in this superb BBC-made crime drama. The series’ title, which translates to Duty/Shame, gives us a clue as to Mori’s motivations, but he’s a more complex character than to be driven by these feelings alone. Finding unlikely allies in the form of a local detective (Kelly Macdonald) and a drug-addicted sex worker (Will Sharpe), his search leads him deep into the belly of the London underworld – all while the fallout back in Japan threatens to erupt into an all-out gang war.

Watch Giri/Haji on Netflix

All nine seasons of Peep Show are streaming on Netflix, so if you haven’t yet watched Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong’s groundbreaking sitcom – the longest-running in Channel 4’s history, no less – now is the perfect time to venture into the minds of David Mitchell’s Mark and Robert Webb’s Jez, two best friends and flatmates who lurch from one disaster to the next.

Peep Show‘s “gimmick” is that we often see the action from Mark or Jez’s point-of-view, hearing their inner thoughts as audible voice-overs. In the great British comedy tradition self-delusion, self-hatred and social awkwardness loom large here, and though both the main characters are indisputably despicable, selfish idiots, it’s impossible not to get sucked into their (often horrifying) antics. Many a true word is spoken in jest, as they say – and Peep Show is as much a meditation on the human condition as it is a comedy show. As the joyless Mark internally remarks after his girlfriend takes him to a fairground, “I suppose doing things you hate is just the price you pay to avoid loneliness.”

Watch Peep Show on Netflix

Massive robots fighting gigantic monsters may seem like an anime cliché, but Neon Genesis Evangelion’s more nuanced (or, dare we say it, artsy-fartsy) take on the genre has established it as one of Japan’s most beloved cult phenomena.

The series revolves around three teenagers who pilot Evas, the towering mechs that represent humanity’s final hope against a race of otherwise unstoppable otherworldly creatures known as “angels”. But the Eva-versus-angel fights are far from the most interesting thing here – it’s the complex characters and rarely explored themes that elevate Neon Genesis Evangelion to the level of classic anime.

As well as the series, Netflix includes the two feature-length movies that conclude the story.

Watch Neon Genesis Evangelion on Netflix

The first two series of Channel 4’s riotously funny and beautifully observed sitcom are now available on Netflix, so if you missed them the first time round (or just couldn’t deal with All 4’s terrible picture quality and proliferation of ads), now’s your chance to be whisked away to early 1990s Northern Ireland and into the lives of four Catholic girls (and one English boy) as they navigate their teenage years against the background of the Troubles. Not that Derry Girls ever takes itself too seriously or drifts into mawkishness; sectarianism is just another comic seam to be mined in this joyous and hilarious coming-of-age comedy show.

Watch Derry Girls on Netflix

Every single episode of this beloved Canadian sitcom is available to stream on Netflix, which means many hours of strangely reassuring, utterly enjoyable telly lie before you. Schitt’s Creek stars Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara as a once-wealthy couple who, after losing their entire fortune, must slum it in a tiny town they previously purchased as a joke. Managing to be both sharp and full of heart, this is a perfect show to binge-watch, especially if you’ve already made it through the older classics.

Watch Schitt’s Creek on Netflix

What, did you think we’d forgotten? Breaking Bad has been praised to the heavens by critics and those members of the public who clap their hands over their ears and shriek “spoilers!” when you start talking about it. So of course it’s going in this list.

Like Tony Soprano and Don Draper, Bryan Cranston’s Walter White is one of the great protagonists of 21st-century television; a mild-mannered chemistry teacher whose cancer diagnosis prompts him to turn his skills to creating crystal meth, enlisting wayward former student Jesse as his partner in crime. Series creator Vince Gilligan pitched the show as being the story of “a man who transforms himself from Mr Chips into Scarface” and while early episodes play up White’s faltering attempts to enter the drugs trade, as the series progresses he develops into a genuinely chilling character.

Watch Breaking Bad. Now. If only so that you don’t have to keep clapping your hands over your ears and shrieking “spoilers!” whenever anyone mentions it.

Watch Breaking Bad on Netflix

The Office’s Mackenzie Crook writes, directs and stars in this quintessentially English sitcom about a group of Essex metal detector enthusiasts. On paper it sounds like the recipe for a broadly comic, canned laughter-laden Last of the Summer Wine-style “aren’t these country folks weird?” series, but Detectorists (the proper name for people who use metal detectors) is far more sophisticated.

It’s funny, certainly, with sharp writing and fine performances from Crook and Toby Jones, but aside from its well-drawn, likeable and flawed characters there’s something special in its depiction of the English landscape that these men and women trudge over in search of Roman gold or Saxon silver day after day – almost always coming away empty-handed aside from a few ring pulls. Warm and affectionate without being sentimental, and a beautiful homage to hobbies, it’s a series that somehow feels both low-key and significant.

Watch Detectorists on Netflix