The best of Netflix UK, as we write

The trouble with Netflix is not that there is nothing on. It is that there is everything on, arranged by a machine that thinks you would like more of whatever you watched last Tuesday. So here is a shelf arranged by people. Everything below is on Netflix in the UK as we write, everything has been reviewed on Fi1m, and each link takes you to the review, the score and the where-to-watch panel, which is checked regularly and is the last word if the service has quietly moved something on.

Series

Adolescence (2025). Four episodes, each a single unbroken take, about a thirteen-year-old boy arrested for the murder of a girl from his school, and about the parents, the police and the teachers who have to work out what happened and how. Stephen Graham co-wrote it and plays the father; Owen Cooper, who had never acted, plays the boy. It was the most talked-about British drama in years and for once the talk was right. It is not an easy watch. It is a necessary one.

Mo (2022). Mo Amer plays a version of himself, a Palestinian refugee in Houston selling knock-off handbags out of a car while his asylum case goes nowhere. It is a comedy, a very good one, and it is also the most humane thing on this list about living in a country that has not decided whether you are allowed to.

Squid Game (2021). The Korean series in which the indebted play children's games for a fortune and die if they lose. The first series is a genuinely great piece of popular television, brutal and precise about money. The later ones are what happens when a story that was finished is asked to keep going.

Toxic Town (2025). Jodie Whittaker in the true story of the Corby mothers who took their council to court over the poisoning of their children. Jack Thorne's script is angry in the useful way.

Dept. Q (2025). Matthew Goode as a detective too rude to be allowed near the public, put in a basement in Edinburgh with the cold cases. A Danish novel moved to Scotland, and it fits; the case is good and the company is better.

Nobody Wants This (2024). A rabbi and a sex podcaster fall in love, and both families object. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody have the kind of chemistry romantic comedy has been short of for a decade. Light, and not stupid.

Black Mirror (2011). Charlie Brooker's anthology has had thin years and it has had “San Junipero”. The beauty of an anthology is that you owe it nothing: pick an episode, and if it is not for you, the next one is a different programme.

Films

Anora (2024). Sean Baker's Palme d'Or and Best Picture winner, about a Brooklyn stripper who marries the son of a Russian oligarch and then has to find out what she has married into. Mikey Madison is extraordinary. It is funnier than you expect and sadder than you are ready for.

Dune: Part Two (2024). The big one. Denis Villeneuve finishes what he started, with sandworms, a black-and-white arena and a hero the film is not sure it approves of. Watch it on the largest screen in the house with the sound up and the neighbours warned.

The Boy and the Heron (2023). Hayao Miyazaki's late film, about a boy grieving for his mother who follows a talking heron into another world. It is strange even by his standards, and beautiful even by his standards.

Godzilla Minus One (2023). Post-war Japan, a kamikaze pilot who did not fly his mission, and a monster. Made for a fraction of what Hollywood spends on the same creature and better than all of it. It won the Oscar for visual effects and deserved it.

The Wild Robot (2024). A robot washes up on an island and becomes mother to a gosling. Chris Sanders's animation is painterly and the film is about parenting in a way that will catch adults out. For the whole sofa.

Small Things Like These (2024). Cillian Murphy as a coal merchant in 1980s Ireland who notices what is happening at the convent. From Claire Keegan's short novel, and as quiet and as unshakeable as its source.

Wake Up Dead Man (2025). Daniel Craig's third outing as Benoit Blanc, this time in a church, with Josh O'Connor as a priest. The best of the three, we think, and Rian Johnson is still the only person making whodunnits that are also about something.

Frankenstein (2025). Guillermo del Toro's version, with Oscar Isaac as the doctor and Jacob Elordi as the creature, and it is the creature's film. Long, lavish and sincere about the book in a way the cinema has rarely managed.

On the Waterfront (1954). Yes, on Netflix. Brando, Kazan, the docks and the contender speech. If you have never seen it, this is the easiest way there has ever been to put that right.

A note on the list

Netflix moves things without telling anyone. Every title above links to its page, and the where-to-watch panel there is the current position; if a film has gone, the page will say where it went. We will revise this piece as the shelf changes.

Features are written by AI in Fi1m’s voice, checked against our reviews before publication, and corrected in the open. How we use AI