This Netflix hit barely needs an introduction. The award-winning drama that’s a right regal experience: The Crown. Now in its fourth season, The Crown follows the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II and is a sumptuous retelling of the history of the British monarchy (with a silver-spoon portion of creative licence). Season four focuses on the late 1970s through to 1990, which sees the Queen (Olivia Colman) sparring with then-Prime Minister Thatcher (Gillian Anderson), and of course, the tragic love affair between Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Clutch your pearls and adjust your tiaras… we’re in for a bumpy ride (for another two seasons at least).

You’d be forgiven for thinking that chess doesn’t exactly sound like a topic that would garner mainstream interest, but The Queen's Gambit skilfully manages to make the game the thrilling centrepiece of a gripping coming-of-age story. Based on the novel of the same name, the series follows orphan chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) grappling with addiction and her own demons while on a rocky road to chess-playing supremacy. The Queen's Gambit is a visually-stunning character study, a fascinating delve down a psychological wormhole, and a must-watch for its world-class acting.

Marcella Backland (that’s Marcella pronounced with a “ch”). This atmospheric and gritty crime noir series follows the titular character (played masterfully by Anna Friel) as the former hot-shot detective’s marriage falls to pieces and she returns to work at the London Metropolitan Police Service. Haunted by blackouts and bouts of anger, a line-crossing, erratic and obsessive Marcella investigates serial killers and a paedophile ring. Come season 3, she's working undercover for a crime family in Northern Ireland and the proverbial really hits the fan. A taut and binge-worthy contemporary crime drama, Marcella doesn’t disappoint.

It’s not often that you encounter a story that is so richly layered and beautifully woven that you transcend beyond the walls of your living room. Four-part miniseries Unorthodox tells the harrowing and inspiring story of Esther “Esty” Shapiro (Shira Haas), a 19-year-old Hasidic Jew, who escapes the constrictions of an arranged marriage and the extreme conservatism of her ultra-Orthodox community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Esty flees to Berlin in the hopes of starting a new life and finding her estranged mother. Haas turns in a spellbinding performance that not only serves as a metaphor for personal liberation, endurance, empowerment and resilience, but also the tenacity of the human spirit.

It’s a brave move to attempt to unpack the backstory of one of cinema’s most villainous characters. You’ve met cruel asylum nurse Mildred Ratched before. She was first brought to life on screen in the acclaimed 1976 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Ratched, starring Sarah Paulson as the titular nurse, kicks off in 1947 as she wheedles her way to gainful employment at a psychiatric hospital. As the episodes unfold, Mildred’s projection of everything a diligent nurse should be gives way to a simmering darkness and a backstory that often presents itself with overwrought aesthetic affectation - this is a Ryan Murphy show after all, so expect a lavish production that looks like a million bucks.

Stick me in front of a decent British crime drama, and I’m in my happy place. The Stranger is an eight-part thriller than tells the story of suburban dad and lawyer Adam Price (Richard Armitage) whose life hits the skids when a mysterious stranger tells him his wife faked her pregnancy and miscarriage. The reveal catapults Adam into a tangled web of conspiracies, parallel plots, and a traffic jam of shifting subplots. His wife goes missing, there’s a murder, some teenage hijinks by a bonfire ends in a grisly end for an alpaca, and that’s when things take a turn from macabre to free-range weird…

How you doin’? If it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year (let’s be honest, we’d all like to speak to the manager about 2020)… Chandler, Monica, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe and Joey are all here for you. While beloved sitcom Friends un-friended Netflix in the US in early 2020, Kiwi fans can still get their fix of all ten seasons of the iconic 90s TV show. Friends — starring Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc and Lisa Kudrow — proffered more than just memorable one-liners and THAT haircut, it introduced the idea of constructing an alternate family from friendship.

The words “reality TV show” are invariably enough to make the most hardened of viewers break out in hives. We’ve been there, seen that, and developed amnesia to these formula-packed productions just as soon as the end credits roll. At first glance, Love on the Spectrum appears to be just another reality dating show, but it’s not. The five-part series goes beyond the genre cliches and offers a sensitive and insightful take on the dating lives of people on the autism spectrum. Funny (but never at the expense of the participants), heart-warming and packed with love - Love on the Spectrum celebrates just how different we all are.

Netflix is bloated with padding - a special pedigree of low budget and low-production-value televisual fodder that lurks within the streamer’s ubiquitous “more like this” feature. Step forward Australian TV series Instant Hotel. The show’s premise is simple: Teams of homeowners compete for the title of best Instant Hotel by staying overnight in each other's holiday rentals and rating their experience. And rate they do, tactically, as well as dispensing with a cannon of catty remarks, and the kind of acerbic vernacular befitting of an egregious pantomime villain. I mean, who wouldn’t be receptive to hearing their decor “looks like lipstick on a gorilla…”

New documentary We Are the Champions is like Netflix catnip - it doesn’t even pretend to provide you with any sustenance, but it knows how to hit the spot and dial up the feel-good factor. The light-hearted six-part series – humorously-narrated by actor Rainn Wilson – features humans partaking in competitions of a quirkier nature. There’s a detailed overview of downhill, bone-rattling cheese chasing, competitive yo-yoing, heat-seeking masochists intent on searing their tongues on the world’s hottest chilli peppers, fantasy hairstyling (the bigger the hair, the closer to winning), dog dancing (paws for thought on that one), and frog jumping. Of course.