Money Heist

What kind of crazy gang decides to rob the Royal Mint of Spain, one of the heaviest-guarded buildings in Europe? El Profesor and his gang, that’s who. Money Heist, a Spanish crime drama series about a gang of thieves with nothing to lose, follows them as they attempt to pull off the biggest heist in recorded history: stealing billions of euros from the Royal Mint. Don’t let the language barrier stop you: the tough-but-loyal characters and heart-pounding surprises translates into any culture.

Crash-Landing On You

The show that launched a thousand Korean fried chickens. This heartwarming K-drama begins with a paragliding accident that drops a South Korean heiress into the life of a stern North Korean officer. He must decide whether to betray his sworn duty by hiding her, or protect her and let her escape back to South Korea. Aside from everyone in this show being good-looking, everyone also constantly eats samgyupsal and fried chicken, which may finally inspire you to learn how to cook.

Watch the trailer here.

Itaewon Class

It’s hard not to cheer on the underdogs of Itaewon Class, the K-drama revenge epic of a young ex-convict against the corrupt family that ruined his life. Set in South Korea, ex-convict Saeroyi starts a bar and restaurant in the famously-competitive restaurant neighborhood of Itaewon. Through street smarts and his loyal employees, he makes plans to crush his rival family’s food company. The truths of chasing your dreams as a millenial makes this so relatable. Its woke characters and willingness to discuss hard topics like discrimination in meaningful ways also strike a chord.

Stranger Things

Kids in a small town battling monsters in the 1980? Count us in. This drama-horror series begins with the disappearance of a young boy, Will, and the parallel appearance of Eleven, a girl with psychokinetic abilities. Eleven and Will’s fellow nerdy friends then team up to find him, unraveling creepy government experiments and fighting the paranormal results of said experiments along the way.

Watch the trailer here.

Sex Education

Every person who had gone through the bumbling awkwardness and embarrassment of teenage puberty will surely relate to Sex Education. This British comedy-drama series features Otis, a socially-inept high-schooler who has no sexual experience. Yet he finds himself in the business of playing school sex counselor — due to absorbed knowledge from his sex therapist mom, combined with his crush Maeve’s need for cash. Otis’s expertise, awkwardness, and genuine desire to help navigate his classmates’ sexual issues create a lot of laugh-out-loud but relatable moments. 

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

This comedy series starts with an interesting premise. Rescued after being trapped in a doomsday cult for 15 years, 29-year-old Kimmy Schmidt moves to New York to start over with nothing but a few possessions and a positive attitude. Her quest for a normal life despite her naivete is funny enough. The people she encounters are even funnier: her gay roommate alone, Titus Andromedon, is so extra he exits situations he doesn’t like by singing Broadway tunes.

Watch the trailer here.

Russian Doll

On her 36th birthday, jaded, sarcastic Nadia attends her birthday party, dies, and then revives in the same birthday party. This is the premise of the dark comedy Russian Doll, but if the plot sounds too similar to the movie Groundhog Day, the similarities end there! Nadia is on a loop of dying and reviving again and again. She must figure out why, and in doing so, she finally confronts truths about her life: addictions, traumas, and the importance of introspection and emotional closure in order to heal and move on.

GLOW

GLOW stands for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the remake of an actual 80s TV show that, well, featured gorgeous ladies wrestling. But Netflix’s comedy-drama version doesn’t just follow a ragtag group of women banding together in the 80s to create a decent but campy ladies’ wrestling show. It also features smart humor and social commentary, exploring the harsh realities of being a woman during the 80s. Check it out for the big hair, sexy leotards, and real wrestling moves. Stay for the touching relationships, vicious betrayals, and the female empowerment that wrestling — a traditionally-male sport — somehow brings to women’s personas and personal lives.

Bojack Horseman

This adult animated series — emphasis on adult — pairs a colorful, animated world of ridiculous humanoid animals with the gut-wrenching story arc of BoJack Horseman, a faded 90s actor trying to make his Hollywood comeback. It begins slowly and builds up into six darkly-comedic seasons of incredible storytelling. Covering family trauma, addiction struggles, and even gun rights and sexual harassment, the show provides a beautiful, philosophical perspective on the true meaning of happiness. It also provides us animations of hammerhead shark-carpenters who hammer in nails using their heads.

Sense8

This science fiction thriller begins with a simple premise: eight strangers from different parts of the world discover that they are “sensates”, or human beings who are mentally and emotionally linked by a single violent vision. From there, it unravels into a fast-paced chase across different countries, balanced out with the empathy of its characters and a progressive view of religion, race, identity, gender, and even politics. If you’ve enjoyed Lost or Heroes, Sense8 fits neatly into the groove in-between.

Watch the trailer here.