Netflix Quietly Drops a 21-Episode Psychological Drama Viewers Will Wonder How They Missed

5 days ago 9

Published Feb 6, 2026, 12:03 PM EST

Netflix is always adding animated titles, but occasionally one slips onto the service that doesn’t feel like a content grab at all — it feels personal. The kind of show you don’t discover through a banner push or a giant trailer drop, but through someone casually posting a clip that gets you thinking, wait… what is this? That’s the energy around the French micro-series that’s already gone viral in other corners of the internet, and it’s exactly the sort of low-key addition that can become a word-of-mouth obsession.

One such title was recently added to Netflix, and what makes it stand out is how small it is on purpose. Instead of trying to be a big animated event, it leans into a minimalist black-and-white 2D style and tells its story in quick diary-like bursts — short episodes that play like memories, confessions, and little emotional jolts. It follows a 10-year-old boy navigating the early-2000s chaos of middle school: friendships, awkward crushes, and that specific brand of childhood anxiety where everything feels huge even when it’s nothing. It’s sweet, funny, and disarmingly sharp in the way it captures feelings you forgot you had.

The hidden gem is Samuel, created, written, and directed by Émilie Tronche, and it’s a quick binge by design. The series is made up of 21 short episodes, most of which are only a few minutes long, which is part of why it took off on TikTok and Instagram before becoming a Netflix pickup after its success with Arte. Netflix has now quietly rolled it out in the U.S. and select regions, giving subscribers a genuinely underrated, psychological coming-of-age story that’s easy to start and finish in one sitting and surprisingly hard to shake once you do.

Netflix Has Picked Up Multiple Viral-First Shows Previously

Netflix has a solid track record of picking up (or benefiting from) titles that already had momentum on social media and then watching them explode once they hit the platform. Suits is a big example. Clips and TikTok chatter helped reframe it as a bingeable comfort watch for a new audience, and the show surged on Netflix after landing there. Old Enough! also fits the pattern: its instantly shareable premise made it a social favorite, and Netflix’s distribution pushed it into a wider mainstream conversation. For animation, Bee and PuppyCat built years of online fandom through YouTube and fan sharing before its Netflix run introduced it to viewers who’d never seen it.

Samuel is available to watch on Netflix and is pure binge-fuel because it’s so short. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.