10 Unexpectedly Awesome Netflix TV Shows That Need Binge Watching

Some TV shows come attached to a wave of hype for months prior to their appearance on the schedules, whether because of the people involved or due to the long-awaited adaptation of a precious book or property.

For those shows, the ‘event’ is that they’re appearing at all - realistically the only direction they can go afterwards is down, if they’re just not as good as everyone’s hoping they’ll be.

Then you get the shows which come out of left field to surprise everyone, the ones that no one expected to love as much as they did. Shows made from original material, or in formats no one expected great things from anymore: shows with unknown casts, or that had been purchased from foreign markets.

You may still be sleeping on some of the following brilliant, brilliant slices of television - but that’s okay, because the beauty of Netflix is that you can wake up to some of the best TV in the world, available in its entirety to binge to your heart’s content whenever you want.

And with gems like this lot, it’s amazing anyone ever leaves the house...

Appearing on the streaming service as if out of nowhere in July 2017, initially Ozark seemed to bear a lot of resemblance to another show about a family man thrown in out of his element with a criminal crowd. But where Walter White’s character arc only ever curved downward, Jason Bateman’s Marty Byrde is in over his head from the very first episode, just struggling to stay above water.

Byrde is a Chicago financial advisor whose firm launder drug money for the cartel. Caught skimming millions, his partners have just been murdered: at gunpoint, the innocent Marty improvises a scheme to avoid the same fate. He’ll replace the $8million and take it to Missouri and the Ozark resort community, promising to return it clean as a whistle in three months. If not, he and his family will die.

Bateman, best known for his comic chops, and the always amazing Laura Linney as his wife Wendy turn in career-best performances. It’s not as challenging as its New Mexico-set big brother, but Ozark is a darkly entertaining crime drama that fits perfectly in the same niche. The show is full of brutal surprises from day one, and it’s an utter pleasure watching the plot unfold and become more and more complex.

You see, dealing with the cartel and his own family is only the first step. Things go from bad to worse when the family actually arrive in their new home and have to break bad to deal with local (semi-)organised crime...