Netflix in 2024: the best shows and movies

2024 will go down as the year Netflix made its huge push into sports. It was the exclusive home for the “disgusting-but-can’t-look-away” hot dog eating contest between Joey Chestnut and his rival, Takeru Kobayashi. The streamer also broadcast the Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul boxing match that would have been abysmally boring if not for the bloody women’s match right before the main event. Then there are the million-dollar deals Netflix struck with the WWE and NFL to bring even more live sports to the platform. 

Thankfully, Netflix also added a healthy amount of original programming, movies, TV shows, anime, and documentaries that’ll be much easier to watch. So here’s a list of Netflix’s best shows and movies to watch in case you never get past the buffering icon.

It’s hard to recommend anime nowadays, especially to folks looking to get into the genre. A lot of shows have gotten simply too quirky, we’ll say, to recommend to the average person. Dan Da Dan… does not fix this problem at all. It blows beyond quirky into weird as hell territory, featuring ghosts, magic, alien abductions, and penis abductions, all within the first 25-minute episode — and it rules. Despite Dan Da Dan being about the supernatural shenanigans that ensue when a girl (who believes in ghosts but not aliens) befriends a boy (who believes in aliens but not ghosts), it’s actually a true-blue romance anime. It is so much fun watching the two main characters deal with their burgeoning affection for each other that you don’t mind (or are, in fact, delighted by) the turbo horny weirdness of literally everything else in the show.

The tagline for Arcane season 2 should be “Everybody is really, really bad at this.” Bad at communication, bad at relationships, and definitely bad at staving off a civil war. Season 2 picks up right after the events of the first, in which everyone has to deal with the fallout of Jinx’s attack on Piltover’s council. This season’s events feel very ripped from the headlines, concerning a simmering class war about to boil over and whether such a struggle can be resolved peacefully. Though there were some brilliant emotional moments between Vi and her sister Jinx or Vi and her girlfriend Caitlyn, I didn’t feel much connection to most of the main cast. Even still, Netflix and Riot told a really good, complete story in two seasons, filled with superslick fight sequences that more than made up for my antipathy for the cast.

I thought I was going to have to caveat this recommendation by saying “I know this show appears on this list every year.” But I was surprised to find out that The Great British Baking Show has never been featured in The Verge’s “Best of” lists. And to that, I say… all of my colleagues are monsters. The Great British Baking Show is hands-down the best annual competition show since Eurovision. Every year, Britain manages to find 12 of the most wholesome humans to compete in a series of challenges baking delicious-looking foods most Americans have never heard of. After years of watching this show, I’m still not clear on what the hell a pudding is, but damned if I’m not gonna cheer these wonderful and talented people on each week.

Yes, technically this show came out in 2022. But Interview’s first season debuted on Netflix this year, exposing it to a much wider audience. This television adaptation adds some interesting updates and twists to Anne Rice’s 1976 novel. The main character, Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson), is no longer a white slave owner but a Black man hustling his way through 1910s Louisiana. There, he meets the enigmatic Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), and the two begin a torrid affair exacerbated by the racial tensions of the time and the fact that Lestat is a terribly eccentric and dramatic Frenchman… who is also a vampire. Interview with the Vampire is easily the best drama television show joining rarified air enjoyed by Severance and Succession. It is certainly the best acted show on television, with incredibly moving performances from Reid, Anderson, Bailey Bass, Eric Bogosian, and just about everyone else.

This is another “came out in another year but debuted on Netflix this year” recommendation. It’s one of the few Godzilla movies guaranteed to make you sob like a baby. If there’s a list of superlatives, this movie’s going on it. Minus One is a retelling of Godzilla’s first appearance in Japan shortly after the end of World War II. Most of the movie’s runtime barely even features Godzilla but instead focuses on the struggles of his human victims. This choice heightens Godzilla’s impact when he finally shows up. And when he does, it doesn’t matter if you’re watching this with theater-quality sound or just with your TV’s speakers, you’ll feel the needle drop of Akira Ifukube’s iconic theme song in your liver. It’s so chilling.

Netflix has been importing a goodly number of shows from Asia, which is great to satisfy my historical drama habit (shout out The Double and The Princess Weiyoung). But I’ve discovered some of the reality shows are also great watches, too, like Physical: 100 and Culinary Class Wars. In Culinary Class Wars, a gaggle of up-and-coming chefs (designated as Black Spoons), compete against Korea’s elite culinary masters (White Spoons). The Black Spoons are known only by an alias that describes their skills and achievements and will earn the right to have their real name known (and a big cash prize) if they can triumph over the White Spoons. The Black Spoons are true underdogs going by nicknames like Comic Book Chef, a guy who uses recipes he learned from manga, or Master of School Meals, an older woman who spent decades running school cafeterias. I love it when they overcome the odds to beat the White Spoons.

After 20 years of World of Warcraft, it’s well known how the game has brought people together — but sometimes people underestimate just how much. The Remarkable Life of Ibelin tells the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian man born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Steen’s parents lament that their son was unable to participate in many of the activities of daily life, unaware of the rich life he constructed for himself roleplaying World of Warcraft. After Steen’s passing at 25, his parents discover a blog he wrote chronicling his life and are overwhelmed by the messages they receive from his Warcraft friends explaining just how much Steen — known to them as Ibelin — impacted their lives. With the help of voice actors, animators, Steen’s blog, and the archived chat logs between Ibelin and his online friends, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin recreates Ibelin’s many World of Warcraft adventures in a way that imparts a true appreciation for just how much gaming can change people’s lives for good.

Guy Ritchie — director of Lock Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch — makes his Netflix debut with The Gentlemen. It chronicles the struggle of the Horniman family, led by Edward “Eddie” Horniman (Theo James), who discovers that his father, the 14th Duke of Halstead, has been keeping their land-rich-but-cash-poor family afloat by allowing a marijuana growth and distribution business to operate on their land. The Gentlemen isn’t the best gangster television show you can watch on Netflix — that distinction belongs to Peaky Blinders — but it’s generally fun watching James and his no-account brother (Daniel Ings) come up with clever ways to stay one step ahead of the rival gangsters coming for their share of England’s weed industry. 

A late addition to Netflix’s lineup of originally produced movies, and unlike some of its big stinkers this year like Atlas or Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, it’s damn entertaining. Carry-On stars Taron Egerton as a shiftless TSA agent trying to show his girlfriend he’s serious about his career after a surprise pregnancy announcement. But he’s forced into a deadly confrontation with a terrorist — played to chilling effect by Jason Bateman — who threatens to kill his girlfriend and the thousands of holiday travelers passing through LAX on Christmas Eve if he doesn’t let a bomb suitcase through security. Carry-On is very much a “dad” action movie but with much better execution. It’s also very clearly a TSA propaganda movie, designed to remind travelers this holiday season that everybody would get to their destinations with a lot less stress if they remembered that TSA agents aren’t personally out to get them and are just trying to do their jobs.