Image via Netflix
Published May 15, 2026, 12:08 AM EDT
Jessica is a journalist, editor, TCA critic, and multimedia storyteller with a decade of experience covering pop culture, film, TV, women's sports, lifestyle, and more. She earned her degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a focus in creative writing before moving to N.Y.C. and getting her start at The Huffington Post. (She still misses those nap pods.) She's covered multiple film festivals, recapped some of your favorite series, worked too many red carpets to count, and even yapped on a podcast or two. When she’s not interviewing your favorite showrunner or ranking Ryan Gosling's best roles for places like UPROXX, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, The Daily Beast, and Cosmopolitan, she’s busy being a full-time hype woman to her cat, Finn. You can find her on Bluesky and, sadly, Twitter.
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So you think you've seen every Netflix original the streamer has to offer. Well, no, you haven't. Between the algorithm-driven churn, the relentless release schedule, and the platform's habit of canceling shows before they find their audience, plenty of underrated Netflix shows end up slipping through the cracks.
In fact, some of the streamer's best original series are still waiting to be queued up. We're talking hidden gems that don't fall apart in the final season and well-lit prestige storytelling you can actually see. Of these forgotten Netflix shows that are perfect from start to finish, each one, regardless of genre or popularity, offers a flawless binge-watching experience from the first episode to the series finale.
'The Last Kingdom' (2015–2022)
Image via NetflixBased on Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories novels, The Last Kingdom chronicles the formation of England through the eyes of a Saxon-raised Dane named Uhtred of Bebbanburg (Alexander Dreymon) navigating loyalty, identity, and an endless series of kingly coronations and the religious upheavals that come with them. A historical action series that goes hard on the action — if you were to play a drinking game tied to the number of battles per episode, we'd worry about your liver after just one season — the show's also got a cast that never lacks chemistry with Emily Cox, David Dawson, Ian Hart, and Mark Rowley.
It never quite got the prestige television conversation it deserved, possibly because it looked like Game of Thrones bait when it premiered. However, it outlasted the show it was compared to and finished on its own terms with a feature film that did Dreymon's character justice.
'The Society' (2019)
Image via NetflixWe'll be upfront here and admit that, despite how fun The Society is, it only lasted one season, which means its story is permanently unresolved. Netflix renewed it, then reversed course during the pandemic, so you'll be ending on a cliffhanger should you take this one on. That said, you absolutely should watch this series because it happens to be one of the most underrated pieces of young adult science fiction streaming right now. It centers on a group of teenagers from a wealthy New England town who return from a cancelled school trip to find their entire community emptied of every adult and cut off from the outside world, with no explanation and no rescue coming.
With no one to defer to and limited resources, they have to either build a society from scratch or, you know, embrace the chaos. (A bunch of horny, rebellious young adults? We wonder which they'll choose?) The show has a slew of young Hollywood talent — names like Kathryn Newton, Gideon Adlon, Kristine Froseth, and Rachel Keller — and a truly compelling premise that it wrings for every thrill and shocking twist you could hope for.
'Godless' (2017)
Image via NetflixScott Frank's seven-episode Western limited series is one of the most purely cinematic things ever made for television. Set in 1880s New Mexico, Godless has the scope of a dusty theatrical epic with a fascinating based-on-a-true story plot line to match. The show follows an outlaw named Roy Goode (Jack O'Connell) who flees his former gang and takes refuge in La Belle, a mining town whose population is almost entirely women after a catastrophic accident killed most of its men. His arrival makes the town a target, but the women of La Belle have no intention of becoming victims.
Jeff Daniels, Merritt Weaver, Scoot McNairy, and Michelle Dockery are all at the top of their game here. The finale, in particular, is an extended action sequence that rivals anything the genre has ever produced.
'GLOW' (2017–2019)
Image via NetflixSet in the world of 1980s women's wrestling, GLOW is a show about performance, reinvention, failure, and the specific experience of being a woman trying to make something of yourself inside a system that wasn't built for you. Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin are extraordinary as Ruth and Debbie, former best friends with too much water under the bridge to traverse working together in the ring. And they're joined by a ragtag group of outcasts (played by some severely underrated talent) managed by Marc Maron's Sam, a washed-up producer with an opportunistic streak.
The writing is sharp and filled with jokes, the period detail is impeccable, and the fact that Netflix cancelled it one day before the cast was due to begin filming its fourth and final season is one of the streaming era's cruelest cancellations. Still, the three seasons of near-perfect television we did get weren't really diminished by the streaming platform's lack of vision.
Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz
Which Taylor Sheridan
Show Do You Belong In?
Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn't write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
🤠Yellowstone
🛢️Landman
👑Tulsa King
⚖️Mayor of Kingstown
FIND YOUR WORLD →
01
Where does your power come from? In Sheridan's world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
ALand, legacy, and a name that's been feared and respected for generations. BKnowing the deal better than anyone else in the room — and being willing to walk away first. CReputation. I've earned it the hard way, and everyone in the room knows it. DBeing the only person both sides will talk to. That makes me indispensable — and dangerous.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan's universe is always absolute — and always costly.
AFamily — blood or chosen. The ranch, the name, the people who carry it with me. BThe company — or whoever's signing the cheques. Loyalty follows the contract. CMy crew. The men who stood with me when it counted — I don't abandon them for anything. DMy community — even when my community is a powder keg and I'm the only thing stopping it from blowing.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it's crossed.
AQuietly, decisively, and in a way that sends a message to everyone watching. BI outmanoeuvre them legally, financially, and politically before they even know I've moved. CDirectly. Old school. You cross me, you hear about it to your face — and then you deal with the consequences. DI absorb it, calculate the fallout, and find the move that keeps the whole system from collapsing.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan's worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
AWide open land — mountains, sky, silence. Somewhere you can see trouble coming from a mile away. BThe oil fields of West Texas — brutal, lucrative, and indifferent to whoever happens to be standing on top of them. CA mid-size city where the rules haven't quite caught up yet — fertile ground for someone with vision and nerve. DA rust-belt town built around a prison — where everyone's life is shaped by what's inside those walls.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
AI do what has to be done to protect what's mine. I'll answer for it eventually — but not today. BGrey is just business. The line moves depending on what's at stake, and I move with it. CI have a code — it's not the law's code, but it's mine, and I don't break it. DI've made peace with it. Keeping the peace requires compromises most people don't have the stomach for.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they're defending.
AA way of life that the modern world is doing everything it can to erase. BMy position — and the leverage that comes with being the person everyone needs to close a deal. CRelevance. I've been away, I've been written off — and I'm proving that was a mistake. DWhatever fragile order I've managed to build — because without it, everything burns.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan's world is never given — it's established, maintained, and constantly tested.
ABy example and force of will. People follow me because they believe in what I'm protecting — and because they know what happens if they don't. BThrough negotiation and leverage. I don't need people to like me — I need them to need me. CBy being the smartest, most experienced person in the room and making sure everyone quietly knows it. DBy being the calm centre of a situation that would spiral without me — and accepting that nobody thanks you for it.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
Someone new arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction? Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
AThey'll learn. Or they won't. Either way, the land was here before them and it'll be here after. BI figure out what they want, what they're worth, and whether they're an asset or a problem — fast. CI was the outsider once. I give them a chance — one — to show they understand respect. DNew players destabilise everything I've built. I assess the threat and manage it before it manages me.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
AMy family's peace — maybe their innocence. The ranch demands everything, and I've let it take too much. BRelationships, time, any version of a normal life. The job eats everything that isn't nailed down. CYears. Decades in some cases. Time I can't get back — but I'm not done yet. DMy conscience, mostly. And the ability to ever fully trust anyone on either side of the wall.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
When it's over, what do you want people to say? Sheridan's characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
AThat I held the line. That the land is still ours and everything I did was worth it. BThat I was the best at what I did and that no deal ever got closed without me at the table. CThat I built something real, somewhere nobody expected it, and I did it on my own terms. DThat I kept the peace when nobody else could — and that the town is still standing because of it.
REVEAL MY SHOW →
Sheridan Has Spoken You Belong In…
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you're complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
🤠 Yellowstone
🛢️ Landman
👑 Tulsa King
⚖️ Mayor of Kingstown
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world's indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you're willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family's weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what's yours, you don't escalate — you finish it. You're not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone's world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn't make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You're a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they'll do to get it. You're not naive enough to think this world is fair. You're smart enough to be the one deciding who it's fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you're not above reminding people that the two aren't mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they'd be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they're more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don't need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you're the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky's world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You've made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
'Marco Polo' (2014–2016)
Image via NetflixIn the early 2010s, everyone was chasing HBO's Game of Thrones coattails, which is likely why Netflix dropped an absurd amount of resources into this sweeping historical drama chronicling Venetian explorer Marco Polo's (Lorenzo Richelmy) time at the court of Kublai Khan (Benedict Wong). The result is one of the most visually lavish things the streamer has ever produced — an intricate, morally complex political drama wrapped in gorgeous fight choreography and stunning Central Asian landscapes.
It was expensive, ambitious, and ahead of its time, especially for a Netflix original series, which is probably why it got cancelled. What remains is two seasons of genuinely exceptional television that hold up better now than they ever got credit for.
'Maniac' (2018)
Image via NetflixCary Joji Fukunaga directing. Patrick Somerville writing. Jonah Hill and Emma Stone in the lead roles. A limited series that mashes up pharmaceutical dystopia, dream logic, and genre parody, all in one heart-pounding psychological thriller. What more could you want? Maniac is one of the strangest, most formally daring things Netflix has ever greenlit, a show that changes aesthetics from episode to episode while somehow maintaining a coherent narrative throughline.
The episode in which Hill and Stone find themselves inside a bizarre, '80s-set thriller — complete with a con, a lemur, and a mistaken-identity caper — is a peak example of the show's ability to be hilarious and heartbreaking within the same 30 minutes. It was too weird to market when it landed nearly a decade ago, which meant most people never found it. Their loss.
'Sense8' (2015–2018)
Image via NetflixThis 2015 sci-fi series is the Wachowskis swinging for the fences on a global scale. The show follows eight strangers across eight cities, all psychically linked and hunted by a shadowy organization while discovering what it means to truly share consciousness with another person. Sense8 is maximalist in every sense: emotional, inclusive, ambitious, and expensive. There’s a Season 1 sequence in which all eight sensates — scattered across the globe — simultaneously experience 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up," cutting between their separate worlds in a moment of pure collective joy, which kind of serves as a thesis statement for what the show would end up being.
Netflix, not knowing what they had, cancelled it, then reversed course after some online fan outrage, ultimately delivering a feature-length finale that gave the story the ending it deserved. The complete run is a one-of-a-kind viewing experience that's utterly unlike anything else on the platform. Treat yourself to a watch soon.
'Bodyguard' (2018)
Image via NetflixRichard Madden plays war-veteran-turned-protection-officer, David Budd, who's assigned to guard a politician he despises in Jed Mercurio's propulsive, tightly wound political thriller. Bodyguard, which also stars Sophie Rundle and Keeley Hawes, unfolds over six episodes of nearly unbearable tension, with a central performance from Madden that should've convinced the world he could do more than traipse around Winterfell in thick furs.
The British drama is a masterclass in sustained dread with an extended train sequence in which Budd talks a suicide bomber down from detonating her vest, that doubles as one of the most gripping cold opens in recent television history. Every episode after only raises those life-or-death stakes. Nothing is wasted here, and the finale delivers in a way that feels earned rather than convenient.
'Sex Education' (2019–2023)
Sex Education used the trappings of the British teen comedy to do something radical for its time: treat adolescent sexuality, identity, and emotional confusion with intelligence and compassion, without ever becoming preachy about it. Asa Butterfield plays Otis Milburn, a sexually inexperienced teenager whose mother is a renowned sex therapist. Armed with secondhand knowledge and a knack for giving advice he can't follow himself, he starts an underground sex therapy clinic at his British high school and things spiral magnificently outward from there.
The show introduced a fresh batch of talent from across the pond when it dropped, names that included Ncuti Gatwa, Aimee Lou Wood, and Emma Mackey, with TV vet Gillian Anderson doing brilliantly restrained comedic work as Otis' mom, Jean. It ran four seasons, said everything it needed to say, and ended with grace. In the landscape of streaming television where shows are either cancelled too soon or run until the goodwill is gone, that kind of clean, complete arc is genuinely rare.
'Dead to Me' (2019–2022)
Image via NetflixChristina Applegate and Linda Cardellini are two of the most underrated performers of their generation, and Dead to Me is the show that proved it beyond any reasonable doubt. A dark comedy about grief, guilt, and the kind of female friendship that can survive almost anything — including murder — it threads a needle that almost no show manages. Applegate plays a sharp-edged widow named Jen, still raw after her husband's hit-and-run death, who forms an unlikely friendship with Judy (Cardellini), a warm, eccentric, seemingly guileless woman she meets at a grief support group.
There is, of course, a secret. Several, in fact. And fans learn them, often before the characters do, across three seasons that are devastating, surprising, and laugh-out-loud funny, often all at the same time. With a finale that more than sticks the landing, this is a show worth pouring your weekend into.
Dead to Me
Release Date 2019 - 2022-00-00
Showrunner Liz Feldman
Directors Liz Feldman
Writers Liz Feldman
English (US) ·