Streaming has led to a wild array of choices, but it’s also led to the possibility that you never actually watch anything at all. If you’re spending all your time on Netflix scrolling, looking for the perfect thing, then we’ve got you covered.
We’ve pulled together a list of three very different shows available on Netflix for you to watch now. Whatever you might be looking for, you’re likely to find something intriguing among these choices.
We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+.
One of the most unsung series Netflix has ever produced, 1899 follows the multinational immigrants aboard a passenger ship in the open ocean who are confronted by a second ship floating near them. This second ship’s origins and destination are mysterious, as is what happened to everyone on board.
As the immigrants search for answers, they question the nature of their own reality and whether their fates are truly in their own hands. 1899 is riveting precisely because it knows how to dole out its mystery and keep you hooked through the entirety of its eight-episode season.
You can watch 1899 on Netflix.
The early 2020s were the peak era of shows about various startups launched a decade earlier, and Super Pumped got somewhat lost in the shuffle. Chronicling the chaotic rise of Uber and its quest to become a profitable company, Super Pumped stars Joseph Gordon Levitt as Travis Kalanick, the company’s volatile CEO who is ousted from the company after a variety of internal and external fissures become too wide to cross.
Levitt is genuinely excellent in the lead role, and Super Pumped ultimately becomes a story about the way all of these companies can continue to exist without actually making money.
You can watch Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber on Netflix.
One of the greatest parody series ever made, Documentary Now! feels a little bit like a show about a bunch of friends trying to make each other laugh. Each episode is a parody of a different famous documentary, which may make the series sound niche, but part of the joy is reveling in the specificity of each episode.
Even if you haven’t seen the documentary that’s being lampooned, there’s plenty to admire about the jokes in every episode and the way the show’s creative team, led by Bill Hader and Fred Armisen and often featuring a variety of other comedic geniuses, chooses to format each episode.
You can watch Documentary Now! on Netflix.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?