Only a few years ago, Netflix was a company that sent you DVDs in the mail. They still are, at least in the U.S, but that side of the business became overshadowed after the company moved into online subscription-based video streaming in 2007. The innovation wasn’t a hit straight out of the gate, but in the last five years or so, it’s become the central feature of the company’s service, attracting 80 million subscribers worldwide. And part of that success has come from Netflix’s original programming.
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The company started off very strong with “House Of Cards,” produced and occasionally directed by David Fincher and starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Since then, Netflix has up-ended the TV world, its 27 original series to date (more are being added on an almost weekly basis) raking in huge amounts of press, a stack of Emmy nominations, plenty of viewers, and even a euphemism for sex (#netflixandchill, in case you’ve been in a coma for a year).
Netflix are now major players, battling with HBO to be known as the number one destination for creatives looking to move into the small-screen, and with its first talk show, starring Chelsea Handler, debuting this week, and new comedy “Lady Dynamite” airing next week, we thought it was time to rank all 27 shows from best to worst.
To clarify, we have a specific definition of Netflix Originals, which excludes one-off movies, kids’ shows, co-productions with other networks, or continuations of shows that had aired elsewhere (as with “Arrested Development” or “The Killing”). But for now, you can find our verdicts on all 27 below —let us know what you make of it in the comments.
27. “Fuller House”
Netflix might have turned the TV industry upside down, but the company clearly isn’t above embracing ancient premises and old forms, as “Fuller House” demonstrates: it’s an old-school, multi-cam sitcom of the kind that traditional TV networks have relied on for decades. Indeed, “Fuller House” is, as the title suggests, a sequel to the long-running ABC family sitcom “Full House,” reuniting several original cast members and the original location. In fact, it isn’t so much a sequel as a stripping-to-the-bone-and-repurposing of the original, as well as a pointless, nearly laugh-free nostalgia wallow that’s quite strictly for hardcore fans of the original. The story sees D.J. Tanner Fuller (Candace Cameron Bure) eerily in the same spot as her father (Bob Saget, popping up only intermittently) was, widowed at a young age with three children and enlisting her sister and her best friend to move in to help raise the kids. Aside from making it seem like the Tanner family is the subject of some kind of multi-generational curse, it also means that it’s going through the motions of the old show, which weren’t particularly interesting in the first place. Vacillating between being broad and mawkish, it’s a show utterly out of time (the first 30 seconds see references to hot 2016 pop culture properties Rocky & Bullwinkle), and while it occasionally sparks into life when old pros like Saget and John Stamos are involved, it shows that most returning cast members have barely acted in two decades, while the new ones have barely acted at all. We’re honestly fascinated to know if anyone’s actually been watching this show.
26. “Hemlock Grove”
Like some kind of unholy hybrid of “True Blood” and… well, basically every other supernatural drama on TV, like a “Twilight” saga put together by people who make direct-to-video horror movies, “Hemlock Grove” snuck onto Netflix a few months after “House Of Cards” had put them on the map, and though it made it to three full seasons (and has now completed its story), seemed to go largely unpromoted, and mostly unseen except for a small hardcore of fans. Which may have had something to do with it being absolutely rubbish. Directed and exec-ed by Eli Roth, though based on the novel by author Brian McGreevy, it’s set in the titular blue-collar Pennsylvania town, beset by supernatural goings-on and murders, with a young Romani werewolf boy (Landon Liboiron) teaming up with the privileged Roman (Bill Skarsgård — the show’s “True Blood” fetish stretched as far as casting Alexander’s brother) to solve a series of killings, while Roman’s mother Olivia (Famke Janssen) plots in the background. The show’s best feature is the level of blood and guts: some truly disgusting things happen on the regular, and gorehounds should be happy enough. There’s also, we suppose, the occasional bit of respectable acting, mostly from Janssen scenery-chewing, or Lilli Taylor trying to find some semblance of emotional truth. But mostly, it’s badly written, badly acted and badly made (some of the effects are truly dreadful), a daytime soap in wolf’s clothing, and it’s baffling it got as far as did when there are literally hundreds of better things to watch on Netflix.
25. “Marseille”
With shows like “Borgen” and “Deutschland ’83” proving international hits, it makes sense for Netflix to try and make international drama to capture that sort of audience (not least because they’re attempting to gain footholds across the world). But if their attempts in that direction are all as dire as “Marseille,” their first French-language show, which just launched this past Thursday on the service. Created by novelist Dan Franck (who co-wrote Olivier Assayas’ wonderful “Carlos”), and directed in part by Florent Siri, who made half-decent Bruce Willis thriller ‘Hostage,” it’s unashamedly setting out to be a Gallic equivalent to “House Of Cards,” pairing up a legendary character actor, in this case Gerard Depardieu, with a younger upstart (Benoît Magimel, of “The Piano Teacher”). Depardieu plays Robert Taro, the veteran mayor of the Southern French city of Marseille, finally on the verge of retiring and handing power over to his protege (Magimel). But when the latter betrays him on a vote on what’s meant to be his final legacy project, a casino development that he hopes will finally break the stronghold that the Mafia holds over the town, it’s the start of a rivalry that becomes increasingly bitter. It’s undeniably impressive in scope and scale, with some serious production value clearly thrown at it, not least in hiring its two leads, who are unquestionably the main reason to watch the series. But they’re possibly the only ones: the show somehow manages to make “House Of Cards” feel gritty and realistic, its overblown plotting and ludicrous dialogue (which, judging by the toxic French reviews, don’t play any better when not subtitled) making the show increasingly ridiculous as it goes on. The shadow cast by the great U.S> cable dramas from “The Wire” to “The Sopranos” has clearly made it as far as the other side of the Atlantic, because it sometimes feels like a ludicrous, Hollywood-ized take on Gallic politics, whereas the cultural specificity of, say, “Borgen” was always part of the charm there. A sad disappointment.
24. “Flaked”
Will Arnett is hugely talented, and has always been a tremendous boon to other people’s shows and movies, from his trademark role as Gob in “Arrested Development” to cameos in things like “30 Rock” to voicing Batman in “The Lego Movie.” Indeed, he’s the title character on a show that’s much, much higher on this list. So it’s a shame that his own baby “Flaked,” a show he created and co-wrote, and that is clearly very personal, is such a brutal disappointment. The show fits into the current vogue for sad-coms, with Arnett playing a furniture-store owner and recovering alcoholic, who’s made a home in Venice Beach after killing a man in a drunk-driving accident, who falls for a beautiful waitress (Ruth Kearney). It looks like it should be a critically acclaimed dramedy (with some major indie-film vibes from the look and feel), but unfortunately, in reality it’s rather undernourished. Arnett gets to show some range, and is as good at sad-sack as he is at buffoon, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that the show is a vanity project, particularly once a series of increasingly ludicrous plot twists make his character feel more and more saintly. Perhaps more than that, though, it’s simply not very funny. Other shows, like “Togetherness” or Arnett’s other role in “Bojack Horseman” (which the show resembles to a surprising degree) can bring in a melancoly tone while still being funny, but the jokes mostly fall flat here, the series seemingly more interested in Instagram-pretty imagery than tight writing (Christopher Nolan DoP Wally Pfister may not have been the best choice to direct most of the series in retrospect). The ultimate result is something that feels unfinished, rushed and neither one thing nor the other.
23. ”Cooked”
For a show that’s all about reframing the food debate, reconnecting with our food, involving ourselves in food culture and understanding the history of our daily bread (quite literally, one of the episodes is primarily about bread and baking) Michael Pollan‘s four-part documentary series (produced by doc machine Alex Gibney, based on Pollan’s book of the same name) feels surprisingly formulaic, baked to a recipe that we already know pretty well by heart. It’s pleasantly shot, with lots of shallow-focus food photography that shows off the texture of cheese or the unctuous ooze of a slow-cooked stew. It’s unimpeachably multicultural, as Pollan goes around the world teaching himself to cook better and teaching us that we all should be doing the same. And it’s occasionally insightful, especially when linking major anthropological and social changes to seemingly minor revolutions in food history — the invention of pots that can withstand heat leading to the development of regional cuisines and palates; the demand for grain, with its many uses from bread to booze, essentially creating and defining entire societies. But mostly it’s a kind of buzzing-in-the-background show, failing to land any punches in anything but the most generalized “hmm, that’s quite interesting” way (the suddenly omnipresent gluten intolerance may not be about gluten at all? Hmm, quite interesting). Pollan is an earnest evangelist for a good cause, if coming from a slightly more rarefied point of view than most, and “Cooked” is unobjectionably tasteful, yet it lacks distinct flavor. In the end, it’s slightly ironic losing four hours to a TV show whose greatest effect will be making you wish you spent that time in the kitchen with a crockpot and mound of fresh vegetables instead. Still, the bit with the Connecticut-based cheesemaking nun is pretty fab.
22. ”Marco Polo”
We hope some major retooling has gone on prior to the July 1st premiere of season 2 of Netflix’s most expensive, would-be flagship historical drama, (and the hiatus throughout 2015 with only a Christmas special airing suggests they’ve had the time), because season 1 was a slog. Unavoidably languishing in the shadow of the incomparable “Game of Thrones,” the difference between it and HBO‘s behemoth is of course that “Marco Polo” is (incredibly loosely) based in historical fact. But it gains nearly nothing from its real-world associations except limitations (the dragons here can only be decorative) and it lacks the moreish brio of George RR Martin‘s expansive universe. The title character is a cipher (albeit a pretty one, played by Lorenzo Richelmy) and while it’s nice to see so many Asian actors onscreen (it’s pretty unobjectionably cast, to be fair) it’s unfortunate they’re mostly given cliched, often Orientalist notes to play. The one major exception to the wily minister/seductive courtesan/petulant prince/blind martial arts mentor stereotypes is Benedict Wong‘s terrific turn as Kublai Khan — by far the show’s most complex and conflicted character. It’s just a shame for Wong, who is on scintillating form, that nothing around him, bar maybe Joan Chen as his manipulative, cunning queen, meets that standard. The blame has to fall on showrunner John Fusco (the screenwriter behind “Young Guns,” “Loch Ness” and “Hidalgo“) because the level of investment by Netflix is all up there on screen, but the problem is the plodding, cramped storytelling that feels at best like an over-padded lesser segment of ‘Thrones.’ For all its lavish production values, “Marco Polo” is like being stuck in the court of Dorne for ten long hours with, I don’t know, Rickon as your hero.
21. ”Club de Cuervos”
On the one hand, it’s very positive that Netflix chose to invest some of its production budget and newly acquired clout in creating an original series that’s wholly not in English (as opposed to co-productions like “Lilyhammer” and “Atelier” which are in other languages but are not “Originals” in the narrowest sense). The Spanish-language comedy/drama (which is how it is described, though it’s more the former really) is set and shot in Mexico and details the rivalry that ensues between high-achiever sister Isabelle and shallow, media-obsessed brother Chava, when Chava inherits the presidency of the titular soccer club following the death of their father. Its showrunners, director Gary Alazraki and Michael Lam, are Mexican, as are some of its writers, it’s aimed at the Latin American audience and deals directly with cultural issues, such as the problem of machismo in an evolving world, that feel pertinent to that region. All good. But on the other hand, it’s a shame that having gone this far to break new ground, Netflix didn’t go just a little further; for all the good intentions on display “Club de Cuervos” feels strangely toothless. The observational gags about modern life, while they usually land due to game playing by the cast, feel familiar, even if you’re reading them in subtitles, and it’s also hampered by not being able to escape the specter of telenovela that hangs over the plot and gives it its broader, soapier elements like pregnant trophy girlfriends and heartthrob doctor cousins who literally make poor children smile again (like, in a medical procedure). And so it feels in form and approach like an interesting new avenue for Netflix to explore, but in actual content it disappoints, albeit engagingly, feeling ultimately closer in tone to something like “Ugly Betty” than to the edgier and more inventive fare that marks out the best of Netflix’s original programming.
