The temperature has dropped—and if the chill hasn’t reached you yet, trust me, it will. Pro tip: let yourself hunker down, make a warm drink, and binge a few strong shows on Netflix.
While Netflix experiments with party-game features like rivals to Jackbox and teases mobile tie-ins for titles such as Red Dead Redemption, it still hosts some of the streaming landscape’s most compelling series—alongside the occasional misfire. That makes picking the diamonds among the duds more satisfying. Here are three excellent choices to stream now:
Death By Lightning
Photo: Larry Horricks / NetflixIf Charles J. Guiteau is a name you only associate with Sondheim’s Assassins, Death By Lightning is a brisk primer. This four-part miniseries blends procedural clarity with spry dialogue to chart James A. Garfield’s sudden rise and the unraveling of Guiteau—the man who would change history. It’s remarkable storytelling grounded in real events.
Mike Makowsky, who drew acclaim for the sharp 2020 drama Bad Education, adapts Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic with both reverence for the past and a modern ear for character. Michael Shannon gives an unusually restrained, authoritative turn as Garfield, while Matthew Macfadyen renders Guiteau as a pitiable, combustible figure—an embodiment of thwarted ambition. The series’ color palette and measured pacing occasionally recall Spielberg’s Lincoln, and supporting performances from Shea Whigham and Nick Offerman add political grit and dark humor.
Concise and confident, Death By Lightning is a standout: substantial adult drama delivered in four episodes, with no manufactured cliffhangers—just focused storytelling.
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch
Image: NetflixWhether you grew up with the games or are discovering the universe now, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch delivers. Penned by Derek Kolstad (the creative force behind John Wick) and animated in a slick, cinematic style that recalls recent Netflix anime adaptations, the show returns Sam Fisher—voiced by Liev Schreiber—for a somber, globe-trotting mission. It pairs stealthy set pieces with urgent themes like climate disinformation and the fractured loyalties veterans sometimes face.
We liked it. For more, check our original review here. A sample:
This isn’t the first time Fisher has questioned his role or work in the franchise — he’s disobeyed direct orders before in the video games, and, spoiler alert, he does again in this series. But seeing that rebellion mirrored through McKenna, a much younger agent who still shares Fisher’s anger and disenchantment about the relationships and people they’ve lost throughout their years, is particularly poignant in conveying how their roles in the Fourth Echeleon don’t feel like heroic spy power fantasies. There are no heroes here, just broken people.
This lack of heroes ultimately seems to be what Kolstad and his team want audiences to take away from Deathwatch. While the finale is dynamic, with some truly fantastic animation, the ending is so bleak that I waited through the end credits to see if there was more.
The Haunting of Hill House
Halloween may be past, but spooky stories never go out of season. If you missed Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, carve out the time—this one is worth it.
Flanagan transforms Shirley Jackson’s novel into far more than jump scares: it’s an elegiac family drama masked as a ghost story. The Crain siblings’ childhood inside Hill House leaves them scarred in intimate and distinct ways. As adults, their attempts to bury those memories begin to crumble when supernatural visitations and repressed recollections force them back to the house. The result is a gorgeously shot, emotionally bruising series that uses hauntings as a metaphor for grief, addiction, and the long work of surviving trauma.
Despite its bleak moments, Flanagan ultimately offers a path toward acceptance—so dim the lights, settle in, and let The Haunting of Hill House guide you through its brand of darkness.
Source: Polygon
