Yes, now we have the Easter weekend here and it’s time to recommend series for those looking for something to watch on TV and not spend the nights on the menu, blindfolding themselves, not to see anything interesting. But this list, for the record, is intended to be practical. These proposals have two things in common: they are miniseries (and, therefore, can be aired quickly) and, in the server’s opinion, they are the best that Netflix has in its catalog (or, at least, the ones that I have been able to remember):
Westerns were almost always written from the point of view of the heterosexual white man. It was the quintessential male gender in cinema along with war. Scott Frank, however, wanted to update it with a story that focuses on women and also on native, black or lesbian people. And how does he do it?
Godless tells the story of a town that, after an accident in the mine, leaves all the women widowed and looking for a way to survive. In this vulnerable situation, an injured young man (Jack O’Donnell) appears at the home of Alice (Michelle Dockery), who lives on an isolated ranch, who is wanted by a lethal bandit (Jeff Daniels).
The music, the photography, the performances of Michelle Dockery and Merritt Weber, and the way the themes are approached (with harshness, verisimilitude and strength) make this miniseries a beautiful rarity.
Vera (Tessa Ia), Rocío (Bárbara López) and Carlota (Lucía Uribe) are three opposite friends, with less and less in common, who improvise a weekend getaway where, in reality, they escape from their problems. This raises the tension palpably, especially when they meet Marcela (Coty Camacho), a poor girl fleeing from criminals.
Rampant by Diego Martínez Ulanosky, so that we understand each other, is a Thelma and Louise for the millennial generation, which is a journey in itself. It starts out as an irritating comedy because of how unfriendly Vera can be or the tense interactions between the characters. But, as we understand what each of them is running away from and the problems they carry in their vital backpack, it becomes an emotional and empathetic drama.
It is one of the great treasures buried in the Netflix catalog, with a memorable climax and an undeniable sensation: Desfrenadas is (just like that) one of the most refreshing things the platform has ever released (and with a soundtrack that is always vindicated). .
Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter (Leo Woodall) meet at the university’s end-of-year party on July 15, 1988. What begins as a flirtation turns into a friendship that the audience can see from the July 15 of subsequent years. And, with this formula taken from the novel by David Nicholls, Always the Same Day demonstrates that a great romantic series depends on the quality of its characters, who follow each other beyond their flirtation and friendship dynamics.
Leo Woodall, after The White Lotus, proves that he has the essence of a star with his Dexter, who must transmit charm, a charismatic conceit and also the frustration of the obstacles that life presents him.
The Haunting of Hill House is a loose adaptation of the novel by Shirley Jackson. Here the story is told from two timelines. In the present, the Crain brothers are estranged, tortured, and lost in their respective lives. The pieces fit together after seeing his past: that summer of 1992 in which his parents decided to settle in the Hill House mansion to renovate the estate… without knowing that it was haunted.
Timothy Hutton, Carla Gugino, Elizabeth Reaser, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Michiel Huisman, Kate Siegel and Victoria Pedretti lead this look at Mike Flanagan, who confirmed himself as a master of contemporary horror with his dramatic, emotional and familiar vision of the house subgenre delighted. He far surpasses his other creations such as The Haunting of Bly Manor or The Fall of the House of Usher, although the viewer can recover his Midnight Mass.
On paper, maybe I should ignore From Scratch. With the help of Reese Witherspoon as executive producer, Zoe Saldaña produced a shining vehicle for herself, after her talent was always overshadowed by makeup and visual effects (remember that she is part of Star Trek, Avatar and Guardians of the Galaxy).
What is it about? American artist, during a stay in Florence, she falls in love with an extremely attractive Sicilian cook. But how can you ignore a miniseries that knows how to play the keys of romantic and tear-jerking drama so well? It is also freely inspired by a true story, that of Tembi Locke, who is listed as the creator with Attica Locke.
When this adaptation of a novel by Walter Tevis appeared on the release calendar, the media did not understand anything. Who could be interested in a period drama with a female profile focused on the world of chess? But Scott Frank (yes, the same one from Godless) conceived the perfect miniseries: a complicated but virtuous heroine, well-thought-out visual resources to convey her mental processes when competing on the board, and a mentality that defies period conventions.
And by applying the biopic mold to a fictional story, Scott Frank creates a kind of alternative history for the viewer: an aspirational past that never happened. This is her secret, in addition to Anya Taylor-Joy who, since the premiere of The Queen’s Gambit and her extraordinary word of mouth, became a star.
This is one of the toughest proposals on the list. Marie Adler (Kaitlyn Dever) is in a sheltered flat when one night, while she is alone, she is raped. Her traumatic experience and her distrust of the authorities prevent her from giving as clear a testimony as the police detectives would like, and they soon prefer to assume that Marie is simply lying: she wants attention. In parallel, two distant police detectives (Toni Collette and Merritt Wever) investigate a serial rapist who attacks women in the states of Washington and Colorado.
Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon conceived a drama about the psychological consequences of a sexual assault, the shortcomings of the system in the treatment of victims and the profile of rapists with respect for the victims. The testimonies are a way to humanize the sexist problem.
You are in a shopping center parking lot and a car is about to crash into you. Maybe you curse at the other person or honk your horn, but then you go back to your life. Danny (Steven Yeun) and Amy (Ali Wong), however, are unable to turn the page after insulting each other from one vehicle to another: they chase each other down the street, try to find out each other’s identity and, to top it all off, they spend time to ruin the life of the other driver.
Lee Sung Jin created a miracle: a tense, funny but at times suffocating comedy about the frustrations of individuals in capitalist societies. Both the first three episodes and the last three are accelerated, unbridled, unpredictable, consistent. That it swept the Emmys and the Golden Globes was an act of justice.
Malen (Itziar Ituño) could be the next mayor of her party in Bilbao but a private video of her threatens her career, even though the images were taken without her consent. Begoña (Patricia López Arnaiz) tries to do justice to her sister Ane (Verónica Echegui), who committed suicide after suffering mobbing in the company when her colleagues sent her a porn video of her. And Alicia (Ana Wagener) is at the police station trying to clarify the facts of both cases.
Verónica Fernández, also Netflix’s fiction director, and Laura Sarmiento, who later signed The Burning Body, wrote a work about consent, which exploits the two sides of Bilbao (the avant-garde, the working-class) and where Ituño, Arnaiz, Echegui , Wagener and Emma Suárez make up one of the most inspired female casts in Spanish television fiction.
Veena Sud, who had written the American version of The Killing, wrote another multifaceted crime: Brenton Butler, a black teenager, is run over by a police officer who receives the support of his colleagues to cover up the accident. From here, the camera follows the family’s suffering, the driver’s feeling of guilt, and the bad practices of the Jersey City police force.
It’s slow, social, realistic, and Regina King won the Emmy for her work as the devastated mother.
There were those who discovered The Housemaid in May of last year after it became a trend on TikTok, but in October 2021 it was already the queen of word-of-mouth, following in the wake of The Queen’s Gambit. It is the story of Alex, a young mother who abandons her abusive husband and has to settle for cleaning jobs that do not even allow her to have a proper roof over her head.
Margaret Qualley’s gaze, which conveys both sadness and hope, vulnerability and strength, grips the viewer in a story that is always on the verge of falling into the pornography of poverty and that denounces a reality: those who do not have a support network in a society like the American one, is truly screwed.
The Sackler family sold opiates through their pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma that, according to what they sold to doctors, were not addictive. This caused an epidemic whose consequences are still felt in the United States today, where the oxycontin marketed by the Sacklers has been replaced by fentanyl.
To understand the problem at its origin, Dopesick is a fantastic series: it shows the pressure of the Sacklers to market oxycontin, how representatives sold the product to doctors and how ordinary citizens could end up on the streets after becoming addicts advised by the doctors.
And, to close the list, a South Korean proposal. Yoon Se-ri (Son Ye-jin), the heiress to a cosmetics empire, falls into North Korean territory by accident when her parachute is blown away by the wind. There she meets Ri Jeong-hyeok (Hyun Bin), a captain who, instead of reporting her to the authorities, tries to help her return to her country. While Yoon Se-ri’s family believes she is dead, she falls in love with the serious soldier who takes her in at her home while she poses as his fiancée in her communist village.
For someone who has never seen a South Korean romantic comedy, the first episodes of Crash landing on you can seem Martian: the sense of humor is peculiar and silly, the direction is affected and, when you see the number of secondary characters, you quickly think that it has stuffed. But, when one enters into the proposal, one understands that it offers a charismatic happy place full of friendly characters who, when they set out to touch the heart, succeed.
If someone is left wanting more, they can always watch Romance is a bonus book, which is on the same level, or the lesser Love is like cha-cha-chá.
