7 Netflix Shows That Are Perfect From Beginning to End
Chris is a UK-based film and TV writer, editor and occasional filmmaker. For more than a decade, he has written news, reviews and features covering movies, television and pop culture. He has also made short films and worked in video production, giving him experience on both sides of the screen. Chris runs the We Love Movies More Than You TikTok channel and has a particular interest in overlooked and short-lived TV shows.
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When Netflix first revealed it was going to make original TV shows and movies, the rest of the industry was doubtful that the company that used to mail DVDs in the post would pose any real threat to the established network structure. Now 15 years on, we’re drowning in streaming services making TV shows at a rate that’s almost impossible to keep up with.
In that time, Netflix has had some serious hits, plenty of misses, and an alarming habit of canceling TV shows far too soon. While some of their biggest originals couldn’t stick the landing, all the shows on this list started strong and ended in a satisfying way, even though two were canceled before they could reach their planned endgames. To keep this list from being largely populated by Mike Flanagan and adaptations of Harlan Coben books, you’ll find no miniseries here. From the return of The Karate Kid to one of the best sci-fi series of the 21st century, these Netflix TV shows are all perfect from beginning to end.
1 'Cobra Kai' (2017–2025)
A belated sequel series to the 1980s classic The Karate Kid didn’t have to be this enjoyably heartfelt or this good. A middle-aged Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) finds himself broke and at a low point, but he finds renewed purpose when he meets bullied teenager Miguel (Xolo Maridueña). Reopening his old karate dojo reawakens a decades-old feud with former rival and successful business owner Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). Over the six seasons, Johnny and Daniel have more than one rematch, steadily become friends, and begrudgingly train the next generation of champions together.
Cobra Kai rarely takes itself completely seriously, and that’s part of its overwhelming appeal. Fights break out between LaRusso’s Miyagi-Do and Johnny’s more aggressive Cobra Kai students, truces are made, and ghosts from their past return in the form of John Kreese (Martin Kove), Ali Mills (Elisabeth Shue), and Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith). Yet Cobra Kai is more than a nostalgia grab with a training-montage-friendly soundtrack. The expansive young cast can more than hold their own, forging friendships and rivalries as they step out of their sensei’s shadows.
2 'Ozark' (2017–2022)
There’s no shortage of TV shows that put usually law-abiding people in circumstances that force them to break the law. Yet Ozark takes a different approach: the main characters are morally compromised from the start. Jason Bateman stars as financial advisor Marty Byrde, who has spent a decade laundering money for a cartel, but after his business partner is caught stealing, Marty has to uproot his family to the Ozarks to launder hundreds of millions of dollars.
Laced with dark humor and unexpected turns, Ozark keeps the tension mounting through its four seasons as each problem they solve only creates a fresh crisis that threatens to unravel them. While all the performances are electric, the show’s MVP is Laura Linney as Marty’s wife Wendy. She goes from a bored stay-at-home mom who gave up her career to someone getting dangerously comfortable in the criminal world; Wendy is in her element, making shady deals and power plays. For her, it’s about letting her true self take the wheel after years of being on autopilot. Not all crime dramas are so willing to take their characters to such dark places and still keep their audience completely invested, but Ozark manages that right up until the final credits roll.
3 'Mindhunter' (2017–2019)
Created by Joe Penhall and produced by David Fincher, Mindhunter is the second show on this list to end prematurely. Set in the late 1970s, the series charts the groundbreaking work of the Behavioral Science Unit. FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) team up with brilliant psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) to interview some of the most notorious serial killers to understand how they think and build psychological profiles that may help catch other killers.
Much like Fincher’s Se7en and Zodiac, Mindhunter focuses more on the psychology behind the murders and the toll it takes on the team that’s trying to make sense of the madness. The interviews with Edmund Kemper (Cameron Britton) are incredibly tense. He speaks calmly and intelligently about the truly terrible things he has done. The first season is more about gathering information; the second puts their theories into practice by investigating the Atlanta child murders. Now that Fincher won’t be renewing his deal with Netflix, a revival seems unlikely, but the two existing seasons are an engrossing and frequently disturbing crime drama from a master of the genre.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Netflix Character Would Be Your Best Friend? Dustin · Emily · Wednesday · Gi-hun
Some friends drag you out of the house. Some sit with you on the worst night of your life. Netflix has written both, plus the one who tells you the truth you have been avoiding all week. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually do friendship, and find out which of them was always going to end up in your corner.
🧢Dustin(Stranger Things)
🗼Emily(Emily in Paris)
🕷️Wednesday(Wednesday)
🟢Gi-hun(Squid Game)
01
How do you usually end up making a new friend? The origin story says a lot about the friendship that follows it.
02
What is a perfect Saturday with your best friend? Friendship is mostly built out of very ordinary hours.
03
You call them at two in the morning. What happens? This is the real test of a friendship, and everybody knows it.
04
What do you want from them when you are clearly wrong? The best friendships are the ones that survive being corrected.
05
What do your friends actually value about you? The friend you attract says something about the friend you are.
06
You have a falling out. How does it go? How a friendship repairs itself matters more than how it breaks.
07
What do you actually need a best friend for? Everybody is missing something. The right friend fills that gap.
08
Ten years from now, what keeps the two of you close? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who you get.
The Group Chat Has Spoken Your Best Friend Is…
Four Netflix characters, four completely different ways of showing up for somebody. This is the one who fits how you actually do friendship, and what having them in your life would be like.
Dustin Henderson
You do not do friendship at half volume, and neither does he. What you want is somebody who says yes to the plan before you have finished describing the plan.
- Dustin is the friend the entire show runs on: loyal past the point of sense, enthusiastic about everything, and incapable of leaving anybody behind.
- You have the same instinct. Your friendships are loud, specific and slightly ridiculous, and they last for decades because of it.
- He is also the one person who would take your strangest interest completely seriously, which is far rarer than it sounds.
- You would have a group chat. It would never once be quiet.
Emily Cooper
You are the friend who makes things happen, and so is she. Together you would be mildly exhausting to everyone around you and completely delighted with yourselves.
- Emily treats an ordinary Tuesday as something that could be turned into an occasion, which is either the best or the worst quality in a friend depending on your energy levels.
- You share her refusal to sit still. Neither of you has ever accepted a night in when something was happening somewhere else.
- She is far more loyal than people give her credit for. She defends her friends loudly, publicly, and occasionally before checking the facts.
- She would post the photo without asking. You would forgive her, because it is a very good photo.
Wednesday Addams
You have no patience for pleasant lies, and she has no ability to tell them. What looks like coldness from the outside is the most reliable friendship on this list.
- Wednesday never says a kind thing she does not mean, which makes the rare ones count for an enormous amount.
- You would rather be told the truth than be made comfortable. She is constitutionally incapable of offering you anything else.
- Underneath all of it she is ferociously protective. She simply refuses to make a performance out of caring.
- Do not expect a birthday message. Do expect her to ruin anyone who wrongs you.
Seong Gi-hun
You look after whoever is having the worst day. So does he. It is the least strategic way to move through the world and the best possible quality in a friend.
- Gi-hun is not the strongest player in Squid Game, or the cleverest. He is the one who keeps choosing to protect somebody else, over and over, at genuine cost to himself.
- You have the same instinct. You notice who is struggling and you stay with them, long after anybody would blame you for leaving.
- He is a flawed friend, and that is part of why it lands. He lets people down, then comes back and tries again, which is more than most manage.
- He would give you his last chance and never once mention that he had done it.
4 'Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' (2015–2020)
Tina Fey and Robert Carlock’s effervescent sitcom might have a premise that sounds like an emotionally devastating crime drama, but Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is one of Netflix’s best original comedies. Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) emerges alongside three other women from a bunker they’ve been held in for 15 years under the rule of a charismatic cult leader (Jon Hamm). Once the media frenzy dies down and the shock that the world didn’t end wears off, Kimmy sets out to start a new life in New York City.
Kimmy’s upbeat resilience is tested by everyday life, and her lack of people skills often gets her into trouble, but her newfound friends help her in their own, often odd ways. Deluded out-of-work actor Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), a wild-card landlady (Carol Kane), and her unhinged socialite boss (Jane Krakowski) all become her eclectic support system. As you’d expect from the makers of 30 Rock, the jokes arrive fast and ridiculous, with a supporting cast full of scene stealers. Even though the interactive special Kimmy vs. The Reverend has been removed alongside all of Netflix’s choose-your-own-adventure-style shows, the four seasons remain a joyfully absurd comedy masterpiece.
5 'Bojack Horseman' (2014–2020)
Proving that adult animation could be more than just obscenities and crass jokes, BoJack Horseman was an early Netflix original and one they’ve yet to surpass. Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the series stars Will Arnett as the titular washed-up actor, with his days on a hit sitcom a thing of the past, along with his sense of purpose and relevance in the ever-changing entertainment industry. He attempts to mount a comeback by writing a tell-all memoir, and the publisher sends ghostwriter Diane (Alison Brie) to get an up-close-and-personal look at the horse behind the star.
Intertwined with Hollywood satire and the obvious comedy mined from a world where anthropomorphic animals and humans live side by side, BoJack Horseman is a far deeper show than its glossy animation suggests. Delving into his traumatic childhood, his adult depression, and problems with addiction, BoJack continuously tries to work on himself, but his self-destructive nature becomes hard for his friends to sit by and watch. The writing never excuses his behavior or shies away from showing the hurtful repercussions of his actions or paints the road to recovery as anything less than hard work. While the series has a constant melancholy, BoJack Horseman is a beautifully woven story that uses a horse to show us what it means to be human.
6 'Dark' (2017–2019)
Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese’s elegant German sci-fi series frequently appears on lists of Netflix’s best original shows, and with good reason. The small town of Winden has known many tragedies, and many of its residents have spent generations hiding secrets that connect four families in unexpected and unsettling ways. Grappling with his father’s sudden death and the mysterious disappearance of his friend Mikkel, Jonas (Louis Hofmann) embarks on a journey to uncover the past and prevent an apocalyptic future.
Few TV shows have successfully pulled off such ambitious creative swings and told a richly complex yet rewarding story, but Dark makes it look easy when all its puzzle pieces fall into place. Despite the global ramifications, the emotional stakes of its time-travel mystery remain personal, especially in the complicated relationship between Jonas and Mikkel’s sister, Martha (Lisa Vicari). Naturally, for a series that deals with grief, time travel, and alternate universes, there’s a lot to take in, so repeat viewing is almost essential, as even slower episodes prove vital by the time it reaches its heartbreaking conclusion.
7 'Glow' (2017–2019)
While Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch’s 1980s-set series was another TV casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the final season canceled after filming the first episode, GLOW remains perfect from beginning to end. Out-of-work actress Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie) attends an open audition held by B-movie director Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron) to try out for a new television series, The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Among the diverse mix of women looking for a second chance or their big break, Ruth’s former best friend Debbie (Betty Gilpin) arrives to confront her and ends up joining the team.
Their rivalry eventually spills into the wrestling ring, with Debbie taking on the heroic role of Liberty Belle and Ruth playing Russian villain Zoya. All the cast completely commit to their wrestling personas no matter how outlandish; they each bring something different and make the women behind them feel real. For all the neon lights, spandex, and training montages to iconic '80s music, what sits at the heart of GLOW is friendship. From characters learning to stand on their own to the tentative steps Ruth and Debbie take to rebuild their fractured bond, GLOW is a heartfelt series that prizes characters as much as power slams.
- Release Date
- 2017 - 2019-00-00
- Showrunner
- Liz Flahive
- Directors
- Liz Flahive
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