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20 Hidden Gems to Watch on Netflix Right Now

Look beyond the choices on your browser screen to discover some buried treasures


spinner image actors in netflix shows amaka okofar in bodies jack and michael whitehall in traveling with my father lionel ritchie in the greatest night in pop sandra oh in the chair seo hyeon ahn and tilda swinton in okja background from life on our planet
Clockwise from top left: Amaka Okafor in "Bodies"; Jack and Michael Whitehall in "Traveling with My Father"; Lionel Ritchie in "The Greatest Night in Pop"; Sandra Oh in "The Chair"; Seo-Hyeon Ahn and Tilda Swinton in "Okja"; background from "Life On Our Planet."
Netflix

Netflix has a huge catalog of movies and TV shows, but its powerful algorithms often favor the streamer’s most recent and most watched fare, like the historical drama The Crown, the buzzy drama Baby Reindeer and the rediscovered 2010s legal drama Suits.

While many rival studios have clawed back movies and shows for their own streaming services, there are still tons of less popular gems buried on Netflix, from originals like the sexy Swedish dramedy Love & Anarchy to memorable films like Damien Chazelle’s First Man. Here are 20 buried treasures to add to your queue. 

Apollo 13: Survival (2024)

Ron Howard’s Oscar-winning 1995 drama was a thrilling depiction of the 1970 NASA mission that had to scuttle its planned moon landing after a crucial oxygen tank ruptured two days after liftoff. Director Peter Middleton’s gripping documentary, which relies on interviews and archival footage, offers a step-by-step breakdown of how the astronauts as well as those on the ground narrowly averted disaster.

Watch it: Apollo 13: Survival

First Man (2018)

Two years after his Oscar-winning musical La La Land, director Damien Chazelle reteamed with Ryan Gosling for a fact-based film about the life of astronaut Neil Armstrong. But instead of your standard-issue Hollywood hagiography, we get a much more brooding look at an American hero whose ability to bottle up his emotions may have served his dangerous mission even if it complicated his home life. We also see how dangerous it was trying to put men on the moon with 1960s technology.

Watch it: First Man

UnREAL (2015–18)

This addictive series follows the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of a fictional dating show like The Bachelor and the struggles of one young producer (Shiri Appleby) to meet the demands of her unscrupulous, ratings-obsessed boss (Constance Zimmer) while trying not to be completely evil. Although later seasons were a bit uneven, there’s a vicarious thrill to watching all the off-camera backstabbing and scheming.

Watch it: UnREAL

Bodies (2023)

What if four different police detectives — spread out in different time periods over 150 years — stumbled on the body of the same murder victim in London’s Whitechapel? That intriguing premise is at the heart of this eight-part limited series, which adds a time-bending element to the old Jack the Ripper saga.

Watch it: Bodies

The Chair (2021)

The fictional Pembroke University seems like a fitting avatar for modern academia, with its stubbornly old-school faculty resisting most efforts toward modernization despite the appointment of the English department’s first female chair. Sandra Oh, in a delightfully flustered performance, faces down both crotchety colleagues and eager-to-cancel students while also nursing her crush on a hotshot colleague (Jay Duplass) who’s been spiraling since the death of his wife. Plus, this sadly short-lived series smartly casts David Duchovny as a celebrity actor-novelist-failed Ph.D. student (like Duchovny himself) who’s recruited as a guest lecturer to boost the department’s visibility.

Watch it: The Chair

Cunk on Earth (2018)

In this five-episode mockumentary series, the brilliantly deadpan comic Diane Morgan plays an inept interviewer named Philomena Cunk who quizzes real-life experts about world history. “Why are the pyramids that shape? Is it to keep homeless people from sleeping on them?” she asks an Egyptologist. The show plays the absurdity straight, which adds to the humor, but there’s an underlying curiosity behind the naivete that’s endearing.

Watch it: Cunk on Earth

Documentary Now! (2015-present)

SNL alums Fred Armisen, 57, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, 50, and Rhys Thomas created this uproarious series that parodies classic documentary films — and imagines them playing in a long-running public TV series hosted by Helen Mirren, 78, who introduces each episode in the four seasons to date. Hader and Armisen camp it up as aging socialites in a spoof of Grey Gardens, while the Muhammad Ali doc When We Were Kings morphs into an epic battle involving a Welsh version of dodgeball with rocks. The results are equal parts silly and smart.

Watch it: Documentary Now!

Five Came Back (2017)

Did you know some of Hollywood’s biggest directors in the early 1940s — John Ford, Frank Capra, John Huston, George Stevens and William Wyler — were recruited during World War II to produce propaganda films and shoot footage of the battlefield? Netflix streams not only the original films but also a three-part docuseries about these Old Hollywood filmmakers, with analysis from contemporary auteurs like Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Guillermo del Toro. This show, based on a best-selling book by journalist Mark Harris, is a treat for World War II buffs and film fans alike.

Watch it: Five Came Back

Frances Ha (R, 2012)

Pre-Barbie Greta Gerwig plays a struggling 27-year-old dancer in this black-and-white indie gem, which she cowrote with director Noah Baumbach, 55. The film captures all the financial and emotional anxieties of a new generation of creatives in early-21st-century New York City and features before-they-were-famous performances by future stars Adam Driver (Marriage Story) and Michael Zegen (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel).

Watch it: Frances Ha

Godzilla Minus One (PG-13, 2023)

The latest iteration of the Godzilla franchise is a throwback — and not just because the film focuses on a former kamikaze pilot struggling with survivor’s guilt in Japan in the years right after World War II. With its focus on the human drama and tightly budgeted effects that ratchet up the tension rather than going for visual overkill, this film recalls not only the original Godzilla movies of the 1950s but also low-budget monster movies like Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. It’s no wonder the film nabbed an Oscar for visual effects despite a $15 million budget that’s a fraction of what a Marvel movie costs.

Watch it: Godzilla Minus One

The Greatest Night in Pop (PG-13, 2024)

Don’t you wish you could have been a fly on the wall during the rushed all-star recording of the 1985 song “We Are the World,” a single intended to raise funds for famine relief in Africa? Well, now you can. Lionel Richie, who cowrote the song with Michael Jackson, leads a series of interviews looking back on how they managed to corral the decade’s biggest stars (and egos) to collaborate on one of pop’s most memorable odes to selflessness. This is a delightful, almost giddy piece of nostalgia.

Watch it: The Greatest Night in Pop

Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father (2017–21)

Travel shows about mismatched couples have never been quite as different as this one: Jack Whitehall is a millennial British comedian with an edgy sensibility despite his posh upbringing. His father, Michael, is a longtime theatrical agent (with clients like Dame Judi Dench) who favors absolute propriety and insists on dressing in a suit, tie and pocket square just about everywhere he goes. Over 18 episodes, the two embark on hilarious road trips to southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and the American West in which they lovingly push each other’s buttons and expand their personal boundaries.

Watch it: Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father

Leave the World Behind (R, 2023)

Sam Esmail, best known for creating Mr. Robot, directed and co-adapted the unsettling bestseller for this movie about a family of four (led by Julia Roberts, 56, and Ethan Hawke, 53) who rent a ritzy vacation home in New York’s Long Island — only to be interrupted by a man and his daughter (Mahershala Ali, 50, and Myha’la) who turn up claiming the house is really theirs and that a cyberattack has forced them to seek shelter in a familiar place. Prepare to be unnerved in all the right ways.

Watch it: Leave the World Behind

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Life on Our Planet (2023)

Executive producer Steven Spielberg, 77, and the creators of Our Planet teamed for a docuseries using the latest CGI technology to imagine the very origins of life, from dinosaurs to woolly mammoths to the first amphibians crawling out of the sea. The series includes spectacular imagery that recalls Sir David Attenborough’s work on the multiseason Our Planet shows (which are also worth seeking out on Netflix). If only the fittest survive, this show looks to be a Darwinner.

Watch it: Life on Our Planet

Love & Anarchy (2020–22)

Sofie is an unhappily married consultant hired to revamp a struggling book publishing house in Stockholm. But from the moment she arrives, Sofie strikes up a curious relationship with the 20-something IT guy. They dare each other to perform stunts (walk backward for the day, dress like Cyndi Lauper) that escalate into a full-blown romance. This Swedish series (dubbed for American audiences) is both steamy and smart, with a darker psychological undercurrent that’s more fully developed in the second season.

Watch it: Love & Anarchy

Okja (PG-13, 2017)

Two years before his Korean-language film Parasite won a surprise four Oscars, including one for best picture, Bong Joon-ho released this provocative and decidedly offbeat English-language fable about a young girl and her pet pig, the Okja of the title. But as with other films by director Bong, there’s a lot more just beneath the pigskin: sharp critiques of the food industry and blinkered environmental groups, as well as some gonzo performances by Tilda Swinton, Jake Gyllenhaal and Paul Dano.

Watch it: Okja

Rustin (PG-13, 2023)

Bayard Rustin, one of the most overlooked figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, gets the spotlight in a biopic from award-winning director George C. Wolfe and executive producers Barack and Michelle Obama. Colman Domingo, 54 (Fear the Walking Dead), earned an Oscar nod for his performance as Rustin, who took the lead in organizing the historic 1963 March on Washington — where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech — yet faced blowback within the Black community as an openly gay man.

Watch it: Rustin

Sing Street (2016)

Nearly a decade after his Oscar-winning hit Once, Irish director John Carney revisited his 1980s youth with a gentle coming-of-age yarn about a teenager who starts a rock band to impress a slightly older girl. The film has a big heart, winsome performances and toe-tapping original tunes that become homemade music videos we see in both their rough-around-the-edges “real” versions and the more polished MTV-ready productions the band members imagine in their heads. This is a film that will leave a smile on your face — and stick with you.

Watch it: Sing Street

Unorthodox (2020)

The young actress Shira Haas is a diminutive spitfire in this four-part limited series about a 19-year-old woman who flees her arranged marriage in Brooklyn’s hyperinsulated Hasidic Jewish community and flies to Germany in search of her estranged mother (who herself escaped Brooklyn years before). This is a domestic drama that unfolds with the suspense of a spy thriller as young Esty seeks to forge a new, more independent life for herself. It’s also a peek into a self-isolating world where many women find both comfort and refuge.

Watch it: Unorthodox

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (PG, 2023)

Has there ever been a better cinematic match than director Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl? Anderson, famed for his fussy storybook production design, brings his typically stylized approach to a series of grownup-ish short stories by the creator of Willy Wonka, Matilda and James (of giant peach fame). The title yarn, which won an Oscar for live-action short, stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a wealthy eccentric who goes to preposterous lengths to study a yoga’s clairvoyant powers just so he can cheat at blackjack. The film, along with three other Dahl adaptations, unfolds like an illustrated book read aloud in the family den.

Watch it: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

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