The best Netflix TV shows of 2024 so far

The streaming landscape may be on the cusp of change, but in this kingdom of content, Netflix is still the supreme ruler. Networks may be cracking down on password sharing and pulling back on output, but there’s still a dizzying number of things to watch on the streaming giant — and here are the best new shows from the biggest streaming platform out there. These simulcast anime hits, long-awaited science-fiction epics, cult hits rescued from cancellation, and gripping reality competition shows prove that there’s still a reason to treasure your Netflix password. Here are the best Netflix series of 2024. Delicious in Dungeon [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25231575/GDnKFnXWAAAlM0l.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Delicious in Dungeon starts out very episodic, with the group of plucky adventurers venturing deeper into a dungeon and finding new monsters to cook. But the lower they descend, the higher the stakes rise. There’s a moment about midway through the season where the plot takes a sharp, chilling turn and suddenly, the show becomes one of the most thrilling fantasy stories out there. The worldbuilding is intricate and fascinating, the characters are all compelling. But even with bloody chimeras and harrowing backstories, the core of the show is about the transcendent power of sharing a good meal with friends. —Petrana Radulovic Bodkin [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25536310/AAAAQcUZfvW_KhwE6pMN73oeJkxwbsWxHrgmG_AvjK6gwAzvy3_0En5_6bIY5dfQ88Glp_3RruOJd7JEbRT_cImh9evb58L7wYYXJ2u8VpitbI7DIjEce_HJG6SgQCuXnmw613_e4Z5FnACV6Hhdx52hxeUc.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Bodkin isn’t so sure true crime podcasts get the whole story. So what — who isn’t thinking that these days? But this murder mystery drives straight at this point by largely dropping it completely. Though ostensibly about a group of journalists sent by The Guardian to make a podcast about the return of a festival with a dark past in the small Irish town of Bodkin, it’s not really. While Gilbert (Will Forte) wants to tell a heartfelt story filled with sappy podcast cliches, Emmy (Robyn Cara) is desperate to prove herself, and Dove (Siobhán Cullen) is mostly looking to get out of there. The show is more about what they find when they get there, their wacky adventures, and how the truth has a funny way of seeking the light even when everyone wants to keep it shrouded, and it’s all the smarter for it. It’s funny and poignant, and smart about the true crime boom without lingering on it. After all, that story’s played out — and the Bodkin team is chasing the next big thing. —Zosha Millman Girls5Eva season 3 [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25332999/GIRLS5EVA_EA_302_032923_00456_R.jpg_GIRLS5EVA_EA_302_032923_00456_R.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Netflix brought the Peacock comedy back to life for a new audience, and thank goodness for that. A one-hit wonder early-2000s girl group reunites when they’re all in their 40s, and hilarity ensues. Lots of hilarity. The four women navigate the tumultuous world of the music industry, while juggling the more mundane aspects of their lives like PTA email lists and breakups. Not only is the show incredibly funny, with the most perfect pop-culture parodies, the music is also infectiously catchy. Once you start watching a few episodes, you won’t be able to get the theme song out of your head. —PR Sweet Tooth season 3 [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25476420/STOOTH_304_Unit_01571RC.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Sweet Tooth is an adaptation that’s almost nothing like its source material, and that’s exactly how Jeff Lemire, writer and artist behind the original Sweet Tooth series, wanted it. By the time the comic was picked up for adaptation, Lemire told Polygon in 2021, so much stark, post-apocalyptic TV had come and gone that he was excited to give showrunners Jim Mickle and Beth Schwartz the freedom to find a new angle on the story. Netflix’s Sweet Tooth begins with Gus the Deer Boy traveling with his gruff guardian “Big Man” on a quest to find his mother through miles and miles of post-apocalyptic wilderness. Society was felled by twin threats: The rise of a deadly plague known only as the Sick, and a mysterious quirk in human reproduction that causes all children to be born as animal-human hybrids. The show has been a truly unique fable, dark and hopeful, dreamy and earnest — a family-friendly series about a global pandemic with Creature Shop vibes. This year’s third and final season closes the book on this Americana-laced fairy tale about how we respond to a sense of cultural doom, and how we might reckon with feeling complicit in our own destruction. —Susana Polo The Gentlemen [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25536322/The_Gentlemen_n_S1_E2_00_57_01_19.png_The_Gentlemen_n_S1_E2_00_57_01_19.png?quality=90&strip=all] This is actually the second time Guy Ritchie has created a television spin-off for one of his gangster movies, following 2000’s Lock, Stock…, a Channel 4 production that included a pre-The Office Martin Freeman and a pre-Game of Thrones Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. But this time, the source material wasn’t nearly as strong — while The Gentlemen did well at the box office and has its fans, it’s not up to the same standard as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels or any of the director’s best works. Luckily, Ritchie’s on a bit of a hot streak as of late, delivering banger after banger since The Gentlemen movie. Wrath of Man and The Covenant are among the best movies in his filmography, and Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare are ludicrous and fun in equal measure. While Netflix’s The Gentlemen show doesn’t reach the heights of his best recent work, it’s still significantly better than the movie version and a fun time that gets by on the charisma of its stars. When his father dies, former Army captain Edward Horniman (Theo James of the Divergent movies, The White Lotus) inherits his father’s vast estate and the title of Duke of Halstead. This surprises both Edward and his older brother Freddy (Daniel Ings), who was expected to be next-in-line. But the Hornimans have another surprise in store: Their father had secretly struck a deal with a criminal empire to allow their land to be used to grow weed. And that leaves Edward to use all his wits and considerable skills to navigate this new relationship with the calculating gangster Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario, of the Maze Runner movies and Crawl). It’s a smart set-up for a show, and James and Scodelario are both fantastic as the leads. Add in strong supporting performances from Giancarlo Esposito (playing to type) and Vinnie Jones (playing against type), and you have a fun, very Guy Ritchie time. –Pete Volk John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A. [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25536309/NIAJ_051024_John_AR_00088C.jpg_NIAJ_051024_John_AR_00088C.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] In a day and age when talk shows have become chaste and boring, Everybody’s in L.A. exists to be not that — or, at least, to borrow their form so as to create something new, distinct, and weird. Hosted by John Mulaney, Everybody’s in L.A. felt at first like it had to be part of something bigger: something for Mulaney to parlay into a late-night hosting gig? Netflix’s play for more live (and lucrative) programming? An extended bit? Ultimately, Everybody’s in L.A. works because it’s just a very specific kind of weird. It’s hyper focused on Los Angeles, but only as a jumping-off point into people and their environments (even if, yeah, we’re always circling back around to the 213). The whole thing is built on curveballs, be they unexpected guests or peculiar segments. If it is a bit, it’s a great one, and I’d definitely be down to watch more than a bit more. —ZM Dead Boy Detectives [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25415871/DBD_101_EA_11102022_0155_R.jpg_DBD_101_EA_11102022_0155_R.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Dead Boy Detectives is a supernatural procedural that has some wonderful quirks, including but certainly not limited to: a walrus-turned-man who owns a curio store, a sexy cat boy who can’t be normal about a crush, a pair of heavily swearing tiny people who live in a jar, a hot Goth butcher, and the life-changing power of yaoi. Basically, it rules. The two titular dead boys end up in Port Townsend, Washington, where they solve some supernatural mysteries with their psychic friend. It has some pretty chilling moments, but there are plenty of laughs and a strong bond between all the characters to balance that out. —PR Masters of the Universe: Revolution [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25248563/Masters_of_the_Universe__Revolution_u_S1_E1_00_04_31_06.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Kevin Smith’s loving continuation of the classical, 1980s-style cartoon adventures of He-Man is great because it takes its action-figure source material both dead seriously, and not seriously at all. Smith doesn’t smirk at the outlandish camp and day-glo heavy-metalness of the characters; he celebrates it. But he also gleefully — almost subversively — overwrites the lore when he feels like it, because Masters of the Universe is not about continuity. It’s about the continual escalation of ridiculous power, and the characters’ constant evolutions into cool (and saleable) new forms. By the power of Grayskull — everyone has the power! —Oli Welsh Physical 100: Underground [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25369153/physical_100.png?quality=90&strip=all] To watch a reality competition show is to understand how quickly you can go from admiring something as an outsider to grading it like an insider. Watching Physical 100, I felt this acutely; I routinely critiqued grip hold or strategy, all while I sat on my couch also affirming to myself I would simply never do this; RIP to this grandpa but I’m different. And yet still, Physical 100 offers all the robust pleasures of a good competition show, drawing you into narratives and personalities all while thinning the herd in agonizing displays of strength. Although you’ll never catch me in one of these competitions, I will happily watch another 10 seasons of this. Bring on the muscles. —ZM The Brothers Sun [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25206709/BROSUN_102_Unit_04756RC.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] This fun but inconsistent Netflix original was unfortunately canceled after just one season — it’s the kind of series that was well on its way to hitting its stride and could have had very fun follow-up seasons. Instead, we’ll have to make do with the season we got — a mash-up of genres with some inspired performances. A culture-clash comedy set within one family, The Brothers Sun follows two very different brothers: Bruce (Sam Song Li), an inspiring improv comedian, and Charles (Justin Chien), an infamous gangster. After being separated as children when their mother (Michelle Yeoh) moved with Bruce to the United States, the brothers reunite when Charles surprises them in Los Angeles with the news that their father has survived an assassination attempt. It’s a fun setting for the two brothers to clash over their approach to life, and Chien in particular excels in a breakout performance that, in a just world, would be a ticket to A-list action-star projects. The Brothers Sun has inconsistent writing (mainly in its overwritten dialogue), but makes up for it with strong direction and some of the best (and silliest) fight scenes on television. —PV 3 Body Problem [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25325944/3_Body_Problem_n_S1_E3_00_34_33_04RC.jpg_3_Body_Problem_n_S1_E3_00_34_33_04RC.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] For five years, the names Benioff and Weiss could not be mentioned without an acknowledgement of the dismal reaction to the end of Game of Thrones. But if Netflix’s sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem reminds us of anything, it’s that when the two showrunners have solid material to adapt, they can make great damn television. Based on Cixin Liu’s internationally bestselling science-fiction novel trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past, 3 Body Problem features a suite of characters discovering an unimaginably powerful alien race’s plans to invade Earth, first by destroying humanity’s capacity for scientific advancement and then, once they finish their 400-year journey through interstellar space, by conquest. It’s also a crash course in modern Chinese history, and maybe one of the best depictions of a fictional video game in cinema? Go figure. —SP Baby Reindeer [Image: https://platform.polygon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/chorus/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25412400/BR_101_Unit_00320_RT.jpg_BR_101_Unit_00320_RT.jpg?quality=90&strip=all] Richard Gadd’s extraordinary autobiographical series, about his time as a struggling comic dealing with an obsessive stalker, has been mired in controversy since it blew up and fans (with heavy and unfortunate irony) tracked down and outed the real woman behind the show’s fictionalized “Martha.” There are definitely questions to be asked about whether the producers and Netflix did enough due diligence to protect everyone involved. But these shouldn’t obscure Baby Reindeer’s raw honesty and its unnerving mix of dark comedy, guilty thrills, and tragedy, all rooted in Jessica Gunning’s riveting performance as Martha. The show is more generous to Martha and critical of Gadd’s own role in its moral quagmire than the scandal might lead you to believe. A simultaneously queasy, thought-provoking, and irresistible marathon. —OW