6 Best Netflix Shows Released Since 2015

Published Aug 18, 2026, 1:31 PM EDT

Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories. 

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From BoJack Horseman to Stranger Things, there are so many phenomenal Netflix shows that have become fundamental to the streamer's legacy. Netflix may have a number of classics that have long ended, but in the last decade, it has still continued to deliver excellent original content. From terrifying horror shows, to laugh-out-loud funny sitcoms, to emotional coming-of-age series, these shows have stood out for their nuanced characters and well-written dialogue.

Netflix has always been best appreciated for its core series that built its reputation, but over the years, it has continued to add a number of incredible new series to its catalog. Some of these series have since ended with excellent finales, while others are still ongoing. These are the 6 best Netflix original shows that the streaming platform has released since 2015, ranked.

6 'Heartstopper' (2022–2026)

Image via Netflix

Based on the webcomic turned graphic novel series by Alice Oseman, Heartstopper is a coming-of-age romance series that tells the love story of teenagers Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) and Nick Nelson (Kit Connor). After being assigned to sit next to each other in form class, Nick and Charlie strike up an unlikely friendship. The two live very different lives; Charlie has been bullied at school since getting outed as gay the year before, and Nick plays for the rugby team. Still, Nick and Charlie become very close very quickly, and they start to fall for each other along the way.

Heartstopper is a truly beautiful and well-written series that puts Nick and Charlie's romance front and center. There is a sweetness to all of their scenes, but the show also doesn't shy away from each of their deeper struggles. Additionally, Heartstopper is full of fantastic LGBTQ+ representation all around, with a fully-developed and nuanced cast of main characters who each have their own meaningful arcs throughout the course of the series.

5 'Santa Clarita Diet' (2017–2019)

Image via Netflix

Santa Clarita Diet is a hilarious dark comedy series that follows a normal family living in the suburbs of Santa Clarita: married couple and realtor duo Sheila (Drew Barrymore) and Joel (Timothy Olyphant), and their teenage daughter, Abby (Liv Hewson). One day, though, Sheila gets sick with a mysterious stomach virus and suddenly dies. Immediately, she comes back to life, and Joel and Abby realize that Sheila is now a zombie.

Despite her unfortunate new circumstances, Sheila feels like becoming a zombie has finally given her the chance to truly live for the first time. She wants to take risks and feel alive, and she's ready to shake things up. It also means killing and eating people to survive, which she's a little more concerned about. Joel loves Sheila more than anything, so he works to figure out how to help her kill as ethically and discreetly as possible. The result is a laugh-out-loud funny series with excellent zombie lore, a wonderfully over-the-top sense of humor, and a beautiful family story at its center.

4 'Julie and the Phantoms' (2020)

Image via Netflix

Julie and the Phantoms follows Julie Molina (Madison Reyes), a teenage girl who's been grieving since the death of her mother a year earlier. Julie and her mother shared a love of music, so Julie's been unable to sing or play since then, and she's now being kicked out of her school's music program. While cleaning out her mother's older studio, Julie accidentally awakens the spirits of three ghosts who used to use the space to practice for their band: Luke (Charlie Gillespie), Alex (Owen Patrick Joyner), and Reggie (Jeremy Shada).

Luke, Alex, and Reggie were in a band called Sunset Curve 25 years ago, but they died right before they were expected to finally become successful. Now, the three of them encourage Julie to start singing and playing music again. They push her to re-audition for the music program, but during the audition, they accidentally play with her. It then becomes clear that the ghosts can be seen while they're performing with Julie, so the four of them start a band together. Julie and the Phantoms is a beautiful show about grief and love – and it has phenomenal music.

3 'Bridgerton' (2020–Present)

Image via Netflix

Based on the book series of the same name by Julia Quinn, Bridgerton is a regency-era romance series that follows the love lives of the eight Bridgerton children, with different romantic leads each season. The series is now four seasons in, and has so far told four love stories: those of Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) and Simon Basset (Regé-Jean Page), Anthony Bridgerton (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan), and Benedict Bridgerton (Luke Thompson) and Sophie Baek (Yerin Ha). The series will be returning next year for its fifth season to tell the love story of Francesca Bridgerton (Hannah Dodd) and Michaela Stirling (Masali Baduza).

Bridgerton has become one of Netflix's standout series. It is a swoonworthy romance series that crafts an excellent central relationship each season, while also giving each of the leads their own arcs outside of their relationship. It also has an excellent setting, a playful and more modern take on the regency aesthetic, and deeply compelling storylines – not to mention some of the best and most romantic quotes of any Netflix series.

Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs

Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.

🚨The Pitt

🏥ER

💉Grey's

🔬House

🩺Scrubs

FIND YOUR HOSPITAL →

01

A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.

AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview.

ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.

ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question.

AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.

AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.

AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours?

AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.

AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job.

REVEAL MY HOSPITAL →

Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…

Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.

The Pitt

You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away.

• You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
• You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
• You've made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
• Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.

ER

You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.

• You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
• You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
• You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
• ER is television about endurance. You have it.

Grey's Anatomy

You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.

• You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
• Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
• You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
• It's messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.

House

You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.

• You're not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it.
• You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
• Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they're smart enough to keep up.
• The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.

Scrubs

You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.

• You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
• You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that's not a flaw, it's a survival strategy.
• You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
• Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

2 'Dark' (2017–2020)

Image via Netflix

In 2017, Netflix released one of the greatest time travel series of all time. Dark is a German sci-fi thriller series that starts with a simple premise: in 2019, a child has just disappeared from the small town of Winden, and not for the first time. Back in 1986, another child suddenly disappeared, and both of these tragedies connect back to four central families. The series moves through its initial two timelines to follow these two investigations, all while slowly revealing more about the underlying supernatural factors at play.

Dark is a brilliant and suspenseful series with clever and thoughtful storylines, complex characters, and deeply emotionally resonant themes. Its core mysteries are engaging and handled very well, culminating in some of the best TV plot twists of all time. Dark draws its viewers in early on with its mystery box style of storytelling, while also slowly delivering a series of truly gut-wrenching and tragic reveals throughout its run.

1 'Midnight Mass' (2021)

Some of Netflix's best series, especially from this last decade, are Mike Flanagan's collection of horror miniseries. An especially phenomenal show among these is Midnight Mass, which is set on the small and isolated Crockett Island. Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford) returns home for the first time in a very long time, after four years in prison for killing a teenage girl in a drunk driving accident. Riley lost the new life he'd built away from home when he was arrested, so he now has to move back in with his parents and reunite with familiar faces from his past. At the same time, a new pastor named Father Paul (Hamish Linklater) comes to town to take over for the church's aging and ill priest.

Riley struggles to both make amends to the people from his past and stick to his sobriety without the routine of prison. All the while, Father Paul starts to perform shocking miracles that quickly win the entire town over. Riley is no longer religious, but through one-on-one AA meetings, he gets to know Father Paul. Slowly, though, Riley starts to realize that Father Paul is hiding massive secrets that could affect the whole town. Midnight Mass is a terrifying and suspenseful horror series with a captivating central mystery, but it is also just a truly beautiful masterpiece of a series. It explores themes of loss, religion, and guilt in creative and insightful ways, and its characters all feel very real.