12 Must-Watch Drama Shows on Netflix Right Now (May 2025)

Three upper-middle-class couples have been married or partnered for years, and they’re so close they travel together when they go on vacation in the spring, summer, fall and winter. But their tight-knit group soon unravels when one of the couples decides to divorce. Will the other couples reconsider their own relationships? And what happens to the group once the divorced couple’s new lovers are introduced? 

The Four Seasons is a remake of the forgotten 1981 movie starring Alan Alda, and it balances drama and humor just as well as its predecessor did. The show deals with serious themes like love and infidelity, but with a light touch that never becomes too broad or cartoonish. Tina Fey, Steve Carell and Colman Domingo are all terrific as the lead characters, and the show’s glossy production values make it enjoyable as an escapist fantasy.

If you like your dramas set in the West and tinged with a bit of romance, then Ransom Canyon is for you. Josh Duhamel as Staten Kirkland, a lonely Texas rancher who is still grieving the death of his wife. That changes when Quinn O’Grady (Minka Kelly) returns to Staten’s small town, Ransom Canyon, to oversee the local dance hall. 

Why? Well, Staten and Quinn were once high school sweethearts, and Staten still has feelings for her. But first, he’ll have to deal with shady developers who want to build on his family land and destroy everything that makes Ransom Canyon so great to live in. Featuring charismatic lead performances by Duhamel and Kelly, an engrossing narrative and some stunning cinematography of the Lone Star State, Ransom Canyon is a drama series you can’t help but binge. 

Michael Desiato (Bryan Cranston) is a respected New Orleans judge who believes in the rule of law. His beliefs are tested when his teenage son, Adam (Wednesday’s Hunter Doohan), kills a mob kingpin’s son in a hit-and-run car accident. Michael will protect his son at all costs, and that may include his career, his reputation and maybe even his life.

Your Honor only ran for two seasons, and both seasons feel like two different shows. The first season is a terrific thriller that chronicles the moral dilemma of a law-abiding man driven to do terrible things for his son, while the second season is more of an action-drama about mob informants. Both are good for different reasons, yet they also contain some of Cranston’s best TV work ever as the corrupted titular character.

13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper) seems like an ordinary English teenager, but his angelic face conceals a dark secret: he’s angry at the world, and he has violent impulses that are hard to ignore. But when he’s accused of killing a fellow classmate, his family, friends, the cops who interrogate him and the psychologist who interviews him all have to answer hard questions to determine Jamie’s innocence. Adolescence is only four episodes long, but it packs a punch. The miniseries’ technical accomplishments (each episode is filmed in one continuous take) only accentuate the show’s involving story and impressive acting. The drama is less a mystery and more a meditation on youth-on-youth violence and incel culture, but it never feels preachy or overwrought. Adolescence is one of 2025’s breakout hits, and after you’re done watching it, you’ll understand why it’s so popular and disturbing.

In 2015, Joyce “Tilly” Mitchell (Patricia Arquette) was arrested for helping two convicts, Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano), escape from the Clinton Correctional facility in Dannemora, New York. What would possess Joyce, one of the prison’s trusted employees and a devoted wife, to help two murderers break out and potentially harm others?

Escape from Dannemora is a seven-part, eight-episode answer to that question and almost every minute of it is engrossing. The story alone is captivating, but what really elevates this miniseries, which originally aired on Showtime in 2018, are the performances by the leads. Arquette, del Toro and Dano pull off the tricky task of making you empathize with people who have done terrible things, and their work here deservedly received critical attention and awards. 

Following the critical and commercial success of his 1998 film Saving Private Ryan, director Steven Spielberg decided to revisit World War II. With Stephen Ambrose’s 1992 non-fiction book Band of Brothers, he found a collection of stories that resonated not only with him but fellow producer Tom Hanks. The result is a 10-episode miniseries that’s justifiably considered one of the great TV events of all time.

The series focuses on several American soldiers in the Easy Company and chronicles their journey from boot camp in Georgia to the war’s end in 1945. During their time as soldiers, they experienced landing in Normandy by parachute, the Siege of Bastogne and the liberation of the Kaufering concentration camp. 

Band of Brothers has an epic scope, but it doesn’t sacrifice characterization on its deliberately broad canvas. Among the stacked cast is Hanks, Friends star David Schwimmer, Homeland’s Damien Lewis, Ron Livingston, and a pre-fame James McAvoy, Andrew Scott, Dominic Cooper and Michael Fassbender. Band of Brothers could be released today, and nobody would criticize it for being dated — it’s held up well, and will continue to stand the test of time.

George Mullen (Robert De Niro) is an ex-president with a lot of time on his hands. Maybe that’s why he accepts the current president’s request to investigate a massive cyberattack that affected the whole world. But George’s memory isn’t what it once was, and he’ll have to use all of his remaining resources to find out who is behind the attack and why.Zero Day is the first series De Niro has starred in, and he leads a stacked ensemble cast that includes Angela Bassett, Dan Stevens, Lizzy Caplan, Joan Allen, Jesse Plemons and Connie Britton. The show blends elements of other, better shows like Homeland and Bodyguard, but the fun, conspiracy-thriller nonsense and performances, especially by De Niro and Plemons, can’t be beat.

Liza Miller (Sutton Foster) is a recent divorcee whose teenage daughter has just gone to college. Alone and without a purpose, Liza decides to get an entry-level job in the publishing industry to pick up where she left off before settling down. But her new career comes with a secret: she’s posing as a twentysomething to get hired by her ageist superiors. Her ongoing flirtation with 26-year-old tattoo artist Josh (Nico Tortorella) convinces her she can pull off the ruse, but will her new friends and coworkers discover her secret before she can move up the corporate ladder?Younger has an appealing premise and an even more irresistible cast. Foster is charming as the innocently duplicitous Liza, while Debi Mazar is enjoyably salty as her roommate and best friend Maggie. Hilary Duff is surprisingly good as Liza’s book editor friend Kelsey, and Miriam Shor does a good Miranda Priestly impersonation as an intimidating publishing executive. Younger ran for seven seasons from 2015 to 2021, and all 84 episodes are available to stream on Netflix.

What’s it like to get into the mind of a serial killer? That’s the central question the Netflix original series Mindhunter tries to answer across two great seasons. Jonathan Groff stars as Holden Ford, a special agent working in the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit. Along with his partner, Bill Tench (Holt McCallany), Holden interviews various famous serial killers — like Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton) and Richard Speck (Jack Erdie) — to understand the complex and peculiar psychology of serial killers.  Based on the true crime book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Killer Crime Unit, Mindhunter blends fact and fiction to produce an unsettling look at criminal compulsion and mass murder. The show was produced and directed by David Fincher, and the Zodiac director’s stylish flourishes are all over the series. (That’s a good thing.) Rumors of a third season have persisted for years, but the two that have been made are near-perfect.

Elizabeth “Beth” Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) is a rebellious girl with an unusual gift: she is a master at chess and can beat just about anyone. Although this gift is mostly overlooked due to her wild upbringing in 1950s Kentucky, she eventually finds an outlet for her genius and begins to win local chess tournaments. As Beth’s fame grows, so does her addiction to drugs and proclivity to indulge in behavior that could jeopardize her future. With a pivotal championship in Russia on the line, can she overcome her inner demons and win it all?Released in October 2020, The Queen’s Gambit was a COVID-era hit and made chess cool again. As Beth, Taylor-Joy showcases her impressive range as a dramatic actress with her nuanced portrayal of a genius traumatized by her past. The supporting cast is great, too, with Marielle Heller as Beth’s adopted mother Alma and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as Beth’s rival/lover standing out. The show’s seven episodes masterfully blend drama, comedy and genuine suspense throughout Beth’s unlikely journey from abused orphan to chess champion.

Before Peak TV, there was HBO, and the cable channel was the primary destination for adult dramas you couldn’t find anywhere else. One of the best ones was Six Feet Under, a drama with black comedy elements that chronicled the complicated lives of the Fisher family.

They run a funeral home in Los Angeles, and each episode opens with the death of their next customer. Older brother Nate (Peter Krause) is the irresponsible one, while younger brother David (Michael C. Hall) is mature, meticulous and crushed by the weight of his own expectations. Their mother Ruth (Frances Conroy) is still reeling from the unexpected death of her husband and Claire (Lauren Ambrose) just wants to survive high school.

Six Feet Under ran for five seasons and ended with one of the most moving series finales in the history of television. Not every season is great — season 4’s murder mystery plot is best skipped over — but the show is just as powerful now as it was nearly a quarter of a century ago, and Brenda (Rachel Griffiths) remains one of the most complex female TV characters ever created.

Writer Peter Morgan’s historical drama The Crown depicts the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II, from her time as a young princess thrust into leadership by the death of her father to a long-reigning monarch dealing with personal loss and public scandals. Each of the show’s six seasons features a different set of actors to portray the royals across various ages. Claire Foy portrayed the young Queen Elizabeth II in the first two seasons, while Olivia Colman took over the role for seasons 3 and 4 and Imelda Staunton in seasons 5 and 6.There’s a reason why the show has won multiple Emmys and a reputation as one of Netflix’s finest dramas. The Crown is arresting television, using Elizabeth — and by extension, the British Royal Family — as a way to chronicle England’s turbulent post-World War II history. Foy, Colman and Staunton all excel in the lead role, while Josh O’Connor, as a young Prince Charles, and Emma Corrin, as a doe-eyed Princess Diana, are superb. The third and fourth seasons are the best, but you can’t go wrong with any of them.