2017-01-09

NETFLIX

Last Updated: January 9th

There are a lot of good TV shows on Netflix (and you can find more with these secret codes). The bread-and-butter of the Netflix service, however, is its original programming. If you’re trying to figure out exactly which original show to watch next, here’s a great place to start with a look at the 27 best Netflix original series right now.

Related: The 20 Best Movies On Netflix Right Now, Ranked

27. Flaked (1 season, 8 episodes)

AMC

Flaked is one of the few Netflix originals that never managed to generate any buzz, and it turns out, there was a reason for that: It’s not a very good series. Developed by Will Arnett along with his Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, Flaked follows Chip, a so-called self-help guru who dispenses advice to friends and neighbors in his Venice neighborhood. Chip, however, has problems of his own (he’s in AA, for instance, but he’s still drinking). Much of the storyline revolves around whether Chip will screw over his best friend and begin dating the woman with whom he is smitten, London (Ruth Kearney). Flaked is aimless, dreary and moves like molasses. There’s a decent cast here (Annabeth Gish, Kirstie Alley, and Heather Graham also show up), and a great deal of talent behind the camera. Unfortunately, little of that talent translates into what’s onscreen.

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26. Hemlock Grove (3 seasons, 33 episodes)

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Executive produced by Eli Roth, Hemlock Grove was one of Netflix’s first original series. It was also one of the first to end its run. Buoyed by interest in a horror series and Netflix’s new bingewatching model, the first season of Hemlock Grove was popular worldwide, but poor reviews and the slow pacing led to dwindling interest. Hemlock Grove follows the investigation of two brutally murdered teenage girls into the secrets of a town in Pennsylvania (chief among them, the town’s werewolf population). There’s plenty of gore in the series to keep horror hounds satiated, and there is the occasional spark of life. Unfortunately, the interesting moments are few and far between, and what’s left in between is an inscrutable mystery, disjointed storylines, and far too many loose ends. It’s a ridiculous mess, but not ridiculous enough to be consistently entertaining.

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25. Fuller House (2 seasons, 26 episodes)

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One ratings service suggests that Fuller House may be the most popular series on television, but popularity doesn’t make something good. Full House was bad; Fuller House is worse, but nobody watched either series for high art. Fuller House mostly gets by on nostalgia, but its brand of family-friendly themes make it a serviceable series for the tween demographic while the ease with which it is watched makes it decent Saturday morning hangover television for wistful adults.

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24. Marco Polo (2 seasons, 20 episodes)

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Inspired by Marco Polo’s early years in the court of Kublai Khan, the 13th century-set Netflix series combines a lot of genres — historical fiction, martial arts films, and softcore erotica — but it doesn’t do any of them particularly well. The cinematography is gorgeous, the period costumes are amazing, but neither the writing nor the B-movie acting lives up to the visuals. Comparisons to HBO’s Game of Thrones are unavoidable, but the comparisons do no favors to Marco Polo.

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23. The Ranch (2 seasons, 20 episodes)

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Netflix’s attempt to replicate the success of Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men with laugh track sitcom actually falls in between the two in terms of quality. It’s not quite Big Bang, but it’s much better than Two and a Half Men thanks mostly to a deep sense of pathos that runs through the series, as well as strong performances from Debra Winger and Sam Elliott. About a washed-up football player (Ashton Kutcher) who returns to help his dad (Elliot) and brother (Danny Masterson) run a faltering ranch, the series surprisingly works as decent background noise, boosted by the likable, familiar presences of Elisha Cuthbert, Brett Harrison, and Megyn Price. It’s an easy series to dismiss, but it’s also an easy one to watch.

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22. The OA (1 season, 8 episodes)

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The OA has been wildly divisive among both critics and viewers alike, with about 50 percent strongly disliking it and the other 50 percent incredibly intrigued by the Brit Marling series. Marling stars as Praire Johnson, an blind, adopted woman who disappears for seven years and when she returns, she has scars on her back, she’s clearly been underground for a long period of time, and she can see. She calls herself The OA, and shares the details of her disappearance with only a few select people, her cult of followers. It’s an ambitious, imaginative series and though it is wildly uneven, it still remains watchable, full of moments both profound and eye rolling. The problem with The OA, however, is that it buys too readily into its own ethos and ultimately takes itself way more seriously than any viewer could. While it also manages to build a compelling mystery, it fails to resolve it in a satisfying manner.

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21. Easy (1 season, 6 episodes)

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Anyone who has seen the work of Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies, Happy Christmas) should know to expect from his TV series: A lot of well known, well-liked actors (Aya Cash, Dave Franco, Jake Johnson, Orlando Bloom, Hannibal Buress, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, etc.) improvising through a premise supplied by Swanberg. That kind of arrangement — usually shot quickly and cheaply — can provide mixed results, and Easy is no exception. It is at turns aimless, clever, boring, sexy and compelling, depending on the storyline. It’s broken up into six very-loosely connected half-hour vignettes that all take place in Chicago and explore different facets of love. They’re basically short films, and some are good, and some are not so good, but in all, it’s more worth watching than not.

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20. Love (1 season, 10 episodes)

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Like FX’s You’re the Worst and Amazon’s Catastrophe, Netflix’s Love is another anti-romcom sitcom, but unlike the the other two series, its leads aren’t funny or boisterous enough to overcome how unsympathetic they are. Gillian Jacobs plays Mickey, a woman with substance abuse problems and insecurity issues, who falls for Gus (Paul Rust) in part because he’s so nice and non-threatening. It turns out, however, that Gus is “fake nice, which is worse than being mean.” Gus presents himself as something he’s not and uses his non-threatening looks and his awkward nice-guy demeanor to exploit lonely women searching for safe men who won’t screw them over. The series, exec-produced by Judd Apatow, succeeds in what it’s attempting to do, but the characters are so thoroughly unpleasant that all we can do as viewers is hope they get as far away from each other as possible.

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19. Grace and Frankie (2 seasons, 26 episodes)

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Starring veteran actors Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sam Waterston, and Martin Sheen, Grace and Frankie follows the lives of two reluctant best friends who move in together after their husbands leave them for each other. The series can best be described as amiable. It’s funny, but not hilarious; occasionally clever; and always pleasant. The conceit is novel, but the storylines are familiar and don’t really go anywhere. They don’t really need to. It’s a great lot of people to hang out with, boosted by a strong supporting cast that includes Brooklyn Decker, June Diane Raphael, and Ethan Embry. For longtime fans of the main cast, the series borders on irresistible.

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18. The Get Down (1 season, 6 episodes)

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Baz Luhrmann’s (The Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge) lavish, ambitious and expensive series explores the burgeoning hip-hop scene in the South Bronx in the 1970s. Messy and over the top, Lurhmann threatens to derail The Get Down with a campy bombastic style that overshadows substance. The movie-length pilot episode is too long and unfocussed, but once the series gets going, it improves dramatically. After all the major characters are introduced and the storylines begin to congeal, The Get Down transforms into an eclectic, infectious and delightful 1970’s cultural remix. The storylines don’t always hold, but every episode delivers at least one show-stopping musical number that will stop viewers in their tracks.

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17. Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp (1 season, 8 episodes)

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Viewers who didn’t like the original Wet Hot American Summer movie or haven’t seen it shouldn’t bother with the Netflix series without at least watching the film first. The series operates like an inside joke within an inside joke referencing a bunch of ’80s teen movies (Zapped, Summer School, School Spirit, Meatballs, etc.) that only a particular demographic will understand. It’s a parody series that uses a very small window as a reference point, but for those who get the joke, it’s impossible not to appreciate the attention to detail that David Wain and Michael Showalter put into the show. The Netflix series sees 45-year-old actors playing teenagers in a prequel to a movie in which the same actors at 30 were playing teenagers at a sleepaway summer camp. It also provides an origin story to many of the characters in the original film. There’s a lot of meta humor, scores of callbacks, and it is littered with Easter Eggs. WHAS is a special kind of brilliant, but as a stand-alone series it doesn’t function particularly well.

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16. Narcos (2 seasons, 20 episodes)

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With Narcos, Netflix takes on the rise and fall of Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar and the Medellín drug cartel. Splicing together dramatized scenes and actual news footage, Brazilian filmmaker José Padilha (Elite Squad) combines Scarface and Goodfellas to track the life of Escobar. However, the real story here is not the characters as much as it is the Colombian drug trade and the spread of cocaine from South America into the United States in the 1980s. Escobar is used as a vehicle to illustrate the futility of the American drug war and the toll it took on both the criminals in Colombia and the authorities in the United States. As dramatic series go, Narcos is decent. As a historical examination of the drug trade, it is absolutely fascinating.

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15. Lady Dynamite (1 season, 12 episodes)

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“I’m a 45-year-old woman who’s clearly sun-damaged! My skin is getting softer, yet my bones are jutting out, so I’m half-soft, half-sharp!” Maria Bamford says in a shampoo commercial fantasy sequence within the show within the show that’s drawn from the life of a real-life stand-comedian, who suffers from depression and bi-polar disorder. It’s that kind of show, and its surrealist brand of comedy is not for everyone. The pilot episode sees Bamford, recovering from a breakdown, attempting to ease her way back into the entertainment business with the help of friends and her manager (Fred Melamed), a process that begins by putting a bench in her front yard so that she can better connect with the community (something the real-life Bamford did herself). Creators Pam Brady (South Park) and Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) bring extreme versions of those shows’ sensibilities to Lady Dynamite, although it also possesses the absurdist streak of Brady’s Hamlet 2. To give potential viewers an idea of what to expect, at one point Patton Oswalt — who plays an actor playing a cop within the show about Bamford’s life — breaks character to advise Bamford as Oswalt not to frame her series with her stand-up because it didn’t work for him. Oswalt and Bamford then have a conversation about Breaking Bad, before using a Breaking Bad reference to indicate a time jump. In other words, there’s a lot of balls in the air in Lady Dynamite, but it rewards those who can keep up.

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14. F is for Family (1 season, 6 episodes)

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Set in 1973, the Netflix animated series from Bill Burr is based on his childhood experiences in Massachusetts, and while it is not a particularly original family sitcom, it’s deceptively smart, hilariously profane, and pays great attention to the details of the 1970s. F is for Family will appeal to anyone who shares Bill Burr’s worldview — dark, unapologetically politically incorrect, and honest. Despite its vulgarity and crude animation, the series also boasts a few poignant turns that border on heartbreaking. For people of Burr’s age, F is for Family really captures what it was like to grow up in the early 1970s.

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13. The Crown (1 season, 10 episodes)

Netflix

At once intimate and sweeping, The Crown presents an inside view of the ascension of Queen Elizabeth II, played by Claire Foy, and the first few years of her reign. John Lithgow is featured as the indomitable Winston Churchill, struggling with the ignominy of age at the end of his career. Churchill’s support and mentorship of Elizabeth, despite his limitations, creates an important emotional center around which various historical events turn. Elizabeth’s relationship with her husband, Prince Phillip (Matt Smith) is also wonderfully explored; his role as consort is one that he by turns delights in and rebels against. The production spared no expense in painstakingly recreating the physical environments and rigid protocols that constrained and defined the royal family. The challenges posed by modernity and the postcolonial period are filtered through the Palace’s political structure, in which despite her role, Elizabeth’s personal needs and wishes are continually subsumed to protocol and appearance. This series will appeal to anyone who enjoys costume drama, but it is also a fascinating exploration of the post-WWII period and the development of a monarch who managed to maintain and even expand the popularity and stability of the British Monarchy against significant odds.

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12. Travelers (1 season, 12 episodes)

Netflix

Travelers is a sci-fi series co-produced by Netflix and a Canadian television network Showcase starring Eric McCormick (Will & Grace). It’s a light sci-fi drama about people from hundreds of years in the future whose consciences are sent back to the present day to take the place of others who are already about to die. They’re sent back, a la Terminator, to prevent a bleak future from taking place. In the present day, this group of people are tasked with missions to prevent the future dystopia from happening, but they also have to acclimate into the lives of their host bodies. It is a quintessential Netflix show: Easy-to-binge, madly addictive, fun as hell, and immediately engrossing. While it certainly borrows heavily from other sci-fi shows and movies, it does an excellent job of shaking it up and bringing fresh life to the genre.

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11. Stranger Things (1 season, 8 episodes)

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A throwback and love letter to the early 1980s movies of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter, the Duffer Brothers Stranger Things feels both familiar and new. It’s about a boy named Will (think E.T.‘s Elliot) who is captured by a The Thing-like creature and trapped in a Poltergeist-like world. His mother (Winona Ryder) recruits the local sheriff to investigate Will’s disappearance. Meanwhile, Will’s dorky, Goonies-like best friends take to their bikes to do some sleuthing of their own and eventually befriend an alien-like girl with telepathic powers (the E.T. of the series). The investigation into Will’s disappearance and the arrival of the telepathic girl all seem to lead back to a power plant operated by a character played by Matthew Modine. It’s great PG horror/sci-fi, like the blockbusters of the early ’80s, but for those who didn’t grow up in the era or aren’t intimately familiar with Amblin Entertainment’s catalogue, the series may not hold as much appeal.

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10. Sense8 (1 season, 12 episodes + 1 Christmas special)

Netflix

The Wachowksis’ Sense8 is about a group of people around the world who are suddenly linked mentally. Like Cloud Atlas, the disparate stories about love and relationships weave in and out of each other. For all its sci-fi flourishes, however, Sense8 is about big, sloppy profound love, and as unwieldy as the series can often be, there’s at least one moment in every episode so powerful that viewers can’t help but to feel moved by the affection the characters feel for one another. It is sometimes cheesy, and occasionally illogical, but it is also one of the most diverse, multi-cultural, romantic, life-affirming sci-fi series ever. It may require some patience from viewers, but for idealists and romantics, it’s a truly special series.

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9. House of Cards (4 seasons, 52 episodes)

Netflix

Kevin Spacey’s highly bingeable political series is the grandfather of Netflix original series, and now with four seasons under its belt, it’s had a lot of highs and plenty of lows. The first season is impeccable, as we see the beginning of Frank Underwood’s ascent to power from Speaker of the House to eventual President of the United States. The series, however, hits some rough spots, especially in season three when Underwood and his wife Clare (Robin Wright) turn against each other. The series is best when the two are working together, and as House of Cards moves into its fifth season in 2017, it’s beginning to run out of political room to maneuver. Still, the series is never short on twists, turns, and the occasional huge surprise, and it’s always a pleasure to watch Spacey — nominated for three Emmys for his work on the series — chew scenery with delight and disdain in equal measure. The supporting cast — which includes Molly Parker, Michael Kelly, Reg E. Cathey, Constance Zimmer, and Corey Stoll, among others — is always excellent, even if their storylines often run into dead ends.

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8. Bloodline (2 seasons, 23 episodes)

Netflix

While the second season doesn’t quite live up to the near-perfect first, that freshman outing offers slow-burning greatness, doling out revelations about the Rayburn family incrementally. The series follows the Rayburn siblings, John (Kyle Chandler), Meg (Linda Cardellini), Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz) and Danny, portrayed by the Emmy-nominated Ben Mendelsohn, who gives one of this decade’s best television performances It’s Danny who’s the powder keg, the black-sheep brother who returns home to hotel business and upends the entire family, outing their secrets and putting them all in danger. Bloodline is a stressful series. It seems designed not to entertain, but to give viewers a panic attack. It’s a series that demands to be binged, not because the viewer wants to find out what’s next so much as not pushing through means living with these characters’ anxiety that much longer.

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7 Luke Cage (1 season, 13 episodes)

The third entry in Marvel’s Defenders series, Luke Cage follows the title character — introduced originally in Jessica Jones) — to Harlem, where he works as a sweeper in a barbershop and as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Cage –who has superhero strength and unbreakable skin — gets dragged against his better instincts into crime-fighting in order to save Harlem from violence and corruption. Mike Colter is the real draw here — he manages to perfectly straddle the line between imposing and kind — and Luke Cage is every bit as thematically complex as Jessica Jones before it. Cage only falters in pace and storytelling. It’s thematically bold, but the storylines are conservative and predictable, and it might benefit by cutting its episode count from 13 down to eight or ten.

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6. Marvel’s Jessica Jones (1 season, 13 episodes)

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As an episodic series, Jessica Jones occasionally falters. Jones is a private detective with certain special powers, but the series doesn’t put her P.I. talents to much use, instead focusing on one storyline surrounding the big bad, Kilgrave (David Tennant) for the entire 13 episodes. Tennant’s character, however, is the best reason to watch the series — he’s captivating yet repugnant, alluring yet vile — and the themes about rape and domestic abuse resonate loudly. Unfortunately, when Kilgrave is not onscreen, the series drifts. Krysten Ritter’s title character is too often dour and sarcastic, robbing the series of some much needed levity. Still, it’s a captivating, thematically-rich series that covers ground no other superhero series would dare to explore, and while that doesn’t make it the most entertaining Marvel series, it is the bravest and most original.

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5. Master of None (1 season, 10 episodes)

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Aziz Ansari’s Master of None is a post-racial dating and relationship sitcom about millennials. Like the better dating sitcoms of the past, the series still manages to capture the anxieties of dating, of new relationships, and of settling down, only it successfully brings in texting and social media into the mix naturally and without calling attention to itself. It also explores intimacy without resorting to gender stereotypes or relationship clichés. It’s new, and unique, and most of all, it is kind. It’s a good series about genuinely good people, and the chemistry between Ansari’s character and his love interest (Noel Wells) is electric. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, but Master of None is funny in its observations, clever in its writing and honest in the depiction of its characters. It’s a truly great sitcom, and something of a roadmap to dating for a new generation.

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4. Marvel’s Daredevil (2 seasons, 26 episodes)

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Brilliantly shot, excellently choreographed, and superbly written, Daredevil lives so far outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as to be completely distinct. It is darker, more brutal, and grittier than the film franchise, although there is enough light and humor in the show to make its characters sympathetic. The series nails the tone of the comic, the characters are complex, and it really understands the grey area between hero and villain, and the fine line between the two where violence is concerned. The fight scenes are brutal, and one couldn’t ask for a better Matt Murdock than the one depicted by Charlie Cox. The villains — Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin in the first season, and Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle in the second — are not caricatures. They’re three-dimensional and at times sympathetic in their own right. It’s a potent combination of writing, acting, and directing that makes Daredevil the best superhero series on television.

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3. BoJack Horseman (3 seasons, 36 episodes)

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One of Netflix’s best series is also its most underrated. Set in a world where anthropomorphic animals and humans live side-by-side, Bojack Horseman is about a horse named Bojack (Arnett), the washed-up star of the 1990s sitcom Horsin’ Around. After a decade boozing on his couch and sleeping around, Bojack tries to resurrect his celebrity relevance with decidedly mixed results. His agent and on-again, off-again girlfriend is a Persian cat (Amy Sedaris); his rival (Paul F. Tompkins) is a golden labrador; he’s in love with a human woman who works as a ghostwriter (Alison Brie); and he has a layabout roommate (Aaron Paul) with whom Bojack has a co-dependent relationship. On the face of it, it’s a zany satire of Hollywood and celebrity culture. What’s unexpected, however, is that Bojack Horseman may be television’s most honest and thorough examination of depression. The writing is sharp, the jokes are layered, and the situations are hilarious, but there’s a melancholy undercurrent to the series. Despite being a horse, Bojack is also one of the most human characters on television. It takes two or three episodes to hook viewers into its world, but once it does, it’s an impossible series to stop watching.

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2. Orange is the New Black (4 seasons, 52 episodes)

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Jenji Kohan’s knack for social commentary mixed with humor is perfect for a prison story. Orange Is the New Black is as funny as Weeds in its early years, but Kohan has found a way to infuse poignancy to the overall vibe of her stories. The diverse, engaging ensemble cast is chock-full of fan favorites, and while Orange is the New Black traffics in stereotypes, it also challenges and complicates them. The acting is superb, the writing is brilliant, and the storylines are addictive. More importantly, it forces us to root for people who make poor decisions and appreciate the fact that we all make poor decisions because we’re human. The series will make viewers laugh and think, and every once in a while, it will break viewers’ hearts. It is a smart show, but most of all, it is good, in every sense of the word.

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1. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2 seasons, 26 episodes)

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Relentlessly positive, infinitely quotable, and insanely likable, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt applies the quick-witted, reference-heavy comedy of 30 Rock to the life of Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper), a woman who moves to New York after being rescued from a doomsday cult. Kimmy, a 30-year-old woman with the pop-cultural IQ of a ’90s teenager, must navigate the cynical big city while dealing with her own form of PTSD. She’s helped along by her conspiracy-theory minded landlord (Carol Kane) and her irresponsible, flighty gay roommate (Titus Burgess). Its fast pace and wide-eyed wonder of its lead makes it the most bingeable series on Netflix. It’s almost impossible not to finish each season in one or two sittings, because it’s a near-perfect sitcom about the power of human optimism that’s as life affirming as it is funny.

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For everything else you should be streaming on Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, check out our comprehensive What To Watch guide.

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