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- 1Stranger Things
Stranger Things premiered on Netflix in July 2016, created by the Duffer Brothers, and it became one of the platform's first true global cultural phenomena, built around a deliberately nostalgic homage to 1980s Steven Spielberg and Stephen King-style small-town supernatural storytelling. The show's young ensemble cast, including Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, and Gaten Matarazzo, became breakout stars almost overnight, and the series' soundtrack and synth-heavy score by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein helped drive a broader 1980s nostalgia wave across music, fashion, and other media throughout the show's run. The series became a genuine data point in the ongoing debate over Netflix's viewership measurement, with the streamer repeatedly citing Stranger Things among its most-watched original series ever by internal hours-viewed metrics, figures Netflix began disclosing more publicly starting in the 2020s as competition from other streaming services intensified. Stranger Things's combination of its deliberate 1980s nostalgia, its breakout young cast, and its role as one of Netflix's defining data points in the streaming-viewership era has made it one of the most culturally significant original series in the platform's entire history.
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0 - 2The Crown
The Crown premiered on Netflix in November 2016, created by Peter Morgan, and it dramatized the reign of Queen Elizabeth II across six seasons, employing a genuinely unusual production strategy of recasting its entire principal cast every two seasons to age the characters across multiple decades of British royal history. The series became one of Netflix's most expensive productions, with reported per-season budgets reaching well over $100 million at points, reflecting its lavish production design, location shooting, and costuming built to authentically recreate multiple distinct eras of 20th-century British royal life. The show drew both critical acclaim, including multiple Emmy and Golden Globe wins across its cast changes, and periodic public controversy over its blending of historical fact with dramatized speculation about the royal family's private lives, prompting Netflix to add an on-screen disclaimer describing the series as "inspired by" rather than strictly factual. The Crown's combination of its unusual recasting structure, its position as one of the most expensive scripted series ever produced, and its ongoing public debate over historical accuracy has made it one of the most significant and closely watched prestige dramas in Netflix's original programming history.
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0 - 3Ozark
Ozark premiered on Netflix in July 2017, created by Bill Dubuque and Mark Williams, starring Jason Bateman as a financial planner who relocates his family to Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks after a money-laundering scheme for a Mexican drug cartel goes wrong, forcing him into an escalating cycle of criminal entanglement. Bateman, previously known primarily for comedic roles, also directed numerous episodes across the series' four-season run, and his performance alongside Laura Linney as his increasingly ruthless wife drew significant critical acclaim and multiple Emmy nominations and wins across the show's run. The series became one of Netflix's most consistently high-performing original dramas by internal viewership metrics, and its Ozarks lake-region setting, though largely filmed in Georgia, helped drive a genuine tourism interest in the actual Lake of the Ozarks region in Missouri following the show's popularity. Ozark's combination of Jason Bateman's genre-shifting lead performance and directing work and its sustained multi-season viewership success has made it one of Netflix's most critically and commercially significant original crime dramas.
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0 - 4Bridgerton
Bridgerton premiered on Netflix in December 2020, developed by Chris Van Dusen under producer Shonda Rhimes's Shondaland production company, adapting Julia Quinn's series of Regency-era romance novels into a lavishly produced period drama with deliberately colorblind casting and a modern, string-quartet-covered pop soundtrack. The series became one of Netflix's most-watched original series ever within weeks of its release, and its success was widely credited with driving a broader surge of mainstream interest in the historical romance novel genre, with numerous authors and publishers reporting significant sales increases following the show's debut. Bridgerton's deliberate anachronisms — including its pop-song orchestral covers and racially diverse casting within a fictionalized version of Regency London high society — represented a genuinely different approach to historical drama than the strict period accuracy most competing shows in the genre had pursued. Bridgerton's combination of Shondaland's producing pedigree, its record-setting Netflix viewership, and its role in driving mainstream popular interest in historical romance fiction has made it one of the platform's most commercially significant original series.
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0 - 5Squid Game
Squid Game premiered on Netflix in September 2021, created by South Korean director Hwang Dong-hyuk, and it became the platform's most-watched series ever at the time of its release, a genuinely unprecedented global phenomenon for a non-English-language series on any streaming platform. The show's premise — financially desperate contestants competing in deadly versions of Korean children's games for a massive cash prize — combined sharp social commentary on economic inequality with high-stakes thriller storytelling, and its distinctive visual design, including the contestants' green tracksuits and the guards' pink jumpsuits, became instantly recognizable global pop-culture imagery. Hwang reportedly spent over a decade trying to get the project made before Netflix agreed to produce it, and the show's massive success became a significant case study in the value of Netflix's global content strategy, demonstrating that a Korean-language series could achieve genuinely unprecedented worldwide viewership without an English-language remake. Squid Game's combination of its recording-setting global viewership, its sharp economic-inequality social commentary, and its validation of Netflix's non-English-language content strategy has made it one of the most culturally and commercially significant series in the entire history of streaming television.
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0 - 6Wednesday
Wednesday premiered on Netflix in November 2022, developed by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar with Tim Burton directing multiple episodes, centered on Wednesday Addams, the character originally created by cartoonist Charles Addams, now attending a supernatural boarding school called Nevermore Academy. Jenna Ortega's lead performance, including a self-choreographed dance sequence to the song "Goo Goo Muck" that went viral independently of the show itself across social media platforms, became a defining cultural moment of the series' release and helped drive substantial additional viewership beyond the show's initial premiere window. The series became one of Netflix's most-watched English-language series ever, and Tim Burton's involvement brought his own long-established gothic visual sensibility to the Addams Family property, distinguishing it visually from previous film and television adaptations of the same characters. Wednesday's combination of Jenna Ortega's viral breakout performance and Tim Burton's distinctive gothic direction has made it one of Netflix's most commercially successful original series and one of the most significant recent examples of a single scene driving outsized cultural impact beyond a show's core viewership.
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