5. “Making A Murderer”
It’s interesting that some of Netflix’s biggest talking points haven’t been their most hyped shows, their Fincher-and-Spacey dramas or Marvel series, but the sleeper hits, the little prison dramedy, mostly-subtitled drug thriller or strangely sad animated show about a horse. Perhaps their most notable sleeper to date, though, might be their non-fiction show “Making A Murderer,” which arrived perfectly at a time when true-crime has become a big concern in the mainstream. The timing of the series (a decade in the making for filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos) couldn’t have been more perfect. though landing in the Christmas rush, the same day as “Star Wars” no less, saw it initially overlooked, it came a week after the debut of season 2 of podcast hit “Serial,” which failed to capture the same murder-mystery must-listen value as the first season, and hitting just before the holidays let word-of-mouth spread organically. And no wonder: the story it told, about Steven Avery, victim of a Manitowoc County miscarriage of justice only to be rearrested soon after for a murder, was as gripping and full of twists as any fiction thriller, told with both sobriety and a little flair by the directors, and expertly structured for maximum binge-ability. It’s possible to take some ethical issue with the show: it’s clearly coming from a place of advocacy rather than journalistic even-handedness, and can feel porous and unconvincing in places as a result (not to mention that, like many true crime pieces, it fails to do much justice to the victim of the murder). But little that Netflix have aired to date has inspired as much debate, for all its flaws, and its real-world impact may still be coming.
4. “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”
There’s an alternate world in which “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” aired as a traditional network show, as was originally intended — it was originally picked up by NBC. That’s also probably also an alternate world where the show was swiftly cancelled: the network had more or less given up on comedy, had nothing to pair it with, and it was always a cultish proposition (no pun intended). So thank The Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne that Netflix stepped in and swept it away from traditional broadcast TV (they’ve already renewed it for a third season), because while the show hasn’t yet reached the dizzying heights of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s previous show, “30 Rock,” it’s as laugh-out-loud funny when it hits its heights as anything else on TV right now, and has a surprising depth to it too. The show revolves around the title character (the wonderful Ellie Kemper), who is one of the so-called Indiana Mole Women, having spent 15 years in a bunker after being tricked by a cult leader (and wedding DJ) into believing that the apocalypse has happened. Keen to rebuild her life and start over, Kimmy heads to New York, where she ends up with some new friends in Broadway has-been Titus Andromedon (the transcendentally funny Tituss Burgess) and batty, gentrification-hating landlady Lillian (Carol Kane), plus a new job as a nanny for the wealthy Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski). It’s a dark premise, but the series is mostly bright, fast and silly, and though it has peaks and troughs (a Season 2 attempt to dismiss criticisms of racism was tin-eared), it has jokes as inspired as anything in its predecessor — Daddy’s Boy, the “Interstellar” burn, Anna Camp’s rich-wife rival, to name but a few. But it’s when it digs into the darkness, when ti becomes an odd sibling to “Jessica Jones” in its comic exploration of trauma, that it starts to brush against greatness.
3. “Master Of None”
The TV boom has seen a rise in comedy-dramas hitting the screen, to the extent that it felt like the genre was approaching an overload — for every great show like a “Girls” or a “Transparent,” there was a “Casual” or a “Married,” very fine shows that nevertheless start to feel a bit interchangeable in their wry-but-not-quite-funny demeanor. And it would have been easy to file “Master Of None,” Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang’s comedy as one of those shows: twentysomething romance in Manhattan, hipster, bla bla bla. But their utterly winning creation is something else: loose, inventive, infectiously charming and quietly revolutionary. Created by the stand-up with his “Parks & Recreation” colleague Yang, it follows in the footsteps of plenty of shows created to showcase comics, with Ansari playing a thinly-veiled version of himself, a New York actor of Indian descent tackling life and love in 2015. But while it looked on the surface like a stablemate of something like “Girls,” it’s actually closer to a “Louie” — whereas everyone else is going in on serialized stories, “Master Of None” goes episodic, with the subject, tone and even style shifting a little each time, from an episode examining second-generation immigrant kids’ relationships to their parents, to a compressed rom-com taking place entirely inside an apartment over a year. The performances can be a little stiff to begin with but eventually settle in (Noel Wells, as Ansari’s love interest, is particularly strong), the writing is light, funny without forcing jokes, and often insightful, but it’s in the show’s point-of-view that it feels so fresh. Like so many of the best recent comedies, from “Fresh Off The Boat” to “Black-ish,” “Master Of None” approaches the world from a different perspective than most sitcoms, and by painting a familiar world that’s as full of non-white characters as, well, the real New York, it breaks down all kinds of barriers. Beyond that, it’s just a funny, sweet, delightful show, and Season 2 can’t come soon enough.
2. “Bojack Horseman”
We’re in something of a new Golden Age of animation at the minute. Since “The Simpsons” debuted, over 25 years ago, dozens of people have chased its success, but bar a few outliers (“South Park” being the most notable), it feels like only now that we’ve got a wealth of different adult-skewing animations that have learnt from the best of Matt Groening’s creations, while marching to the beat of their own drum. Shows like “Archer,” “Adventure Time,” “Bob’s Burgers” and “Rick & Morty” all have huge fanbases, but one of the best to date was Netflix’s first foray into the not-for-kids animation world, “Bojack Horseman.” Quite deliberately, it seemed oddly generic at first: the story of Bojack (Will Arnett), a washed-up sitcom star (who happened to be horse-shaped) attempting a comeback, and the first episode or two suggested something skippable. But those who stuck with it, especially through the superior second season, found that it was a strange, remarkable beast, a deeply melancholy “Mad Men”-style drama cunningly disguised as a wacky talking-animal comedy. One of the best casts on television right now (taking in regulars Aaron Paul, Alison Brie, Amy Sedaris, Paul F. Tomkins, and killer cameos from the likes of Stanley Tucci, Olivia Wilde, J.K. Simmons, Keegan-Michael Key, LIsa Kudrow, Ben Schwartz, Alan Arkin, Philip Baker Hall, Naomi Watts, Ilana Glazer, Liev Schreiber and, of course, Character Actress Margo Martindale) deliver material that’s often legitimately hilarious — was there any joke in the last year as pure and beautiful as the improv/Inception one?. But it’s the show’s deep, existential sadness, as Bojack struggles to find meaning in his lavish lifestyle, and the people around him grapple with happiness, that makes it not just a great animated comedy, but a great TV show period (and one with the best opening credits/theme tune combo in years).
1. “Orange Is The New Black”
Perhaps you still recall that first advertising campaign for “Orange is the New Black.” Back in the immediate thinkpiece-heavy aftermath of the first season of “House of Cards” which more or less instantaneously shifted the balance of power in Netflix’s favor, those banner ads began to crop up everywhere. It was actually an irritation, to be so heavily bombarded with online marketing for a show we knew nothing about, with a weird title, no name-stars and a tone that was hard to gauge. It smacked of either immense confidence, or massive overcompensation for a potential dud. Then we saw it and were all “Oh right, yeah, it was confidence.” Jenji Kohan‘s women’s-prison comedy/drama is a wholly original Netflix Original (even “House of Cards” was based on a BBC show) and it is everything you could possibly want as a kind of mission statement for your new platform’s future programming: it’s effortlessly ethnically diverse, it has an incredibly refreshing and overdue approach to gender and sexuality (with its largely female ensemble that includes a spectrum of sexualities and a well-drawn transgender character), and it’s by turns bittersweet and clever and scary, but mostly hits that perfect nexus between scathing and hilarious. And it has maintained pretty unparalleled consistency across its three seasons to date: season 2 gave us a tighter structure overall with the arc of the indelible Vee (Lorraine Toussaint), but if season 3 returned to a more diffuse approach, the sheer breadth of the ensemble and the care taken over each character, meant it was no less compelling. Oh, and in introducing the WASPy high-maintenance Piper (Taylor Schilling) as our putative lead at the start and then frequently sidelining her in favor of other inmates and storylines, Kohan pulled off one of the most satisfying TV bait-and-switches in recent memory. We, certainly, were hooked.
That’s everything so far, though their numbers will soon grow — “Lady Dynamite” starring Maria Bamford hits a week on Friday, on the 20th, and the Winona Ryder-starring “Stranger Things” comes in July, with Baz Luhrmann’s “The Get Down,” Marvel’s “Luke Cage” and royal drama “The Crown” coming before the year is out, among others.
Netflix completists might also want to check out some of the shows they continued after they aired on other networks, most notably “Arrested Development,” “The Killing,” “Trailer Park Boys” and “Longmire,” or some of their co-productions like “Atelier,” “Lilyhammer,” “Between” and “Degrassi: Next Class.” And this also doesn’t include shows that Netflix bought up after they aired in other countries first: shows like “The Fall,” “Happy Valley” and “Black Mirror” are billed as Netflix originals, but were actually first shown by UK broadcasters.
And finally, we kept this to shows, rather than one-offs. That means that Netflix movies like “Beasts Of No Nation,” “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” “A Very Murray Christmas” or “Special Correspondents” weren’t included, as were stand-up specials and feature-length documentaries. What’s your own favorite Netflix show? You can let us know your personal rankings in the comments.
