It's crazy schedule-wise, but it's true: Each week, prolific streaming service Netflix drops a new, original series – sometimes two, and a few original movies to add to the content load -- on to the platform. This doesn't count the glut of titles, culled from theatrical runs or TV history, added each month. That's a lot to watch, and if you don't know where to look, a mind-fuck to manage.
Here's a little Netflix hack for you: While the star-studded sitcoms and hour-long dramas usually get the most buzz, there are a handful of documentary and nonfiction shows currently available to stream that are totally worth your time. Below are the ones we can't recommend enough. Get bingeing.
Abstract: Art of Design (2017)
A lot of artists deserve their own documentary, but few require feature-length treatment. This series is basically a program of eight short films, each profiling an important figure in design, including illustrator Christoph Niemann and typography legend Paula Scher. There’s not a uniform structure or style, as a handful of distinct filmmakers, including Oscar-winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) and Richard Press (Bill Cunningham New York), tackle one or two of the subjects each. That keeps the series fresh, yet also more like a set of volumes than something that must be watched in sequence or in one single binge.
Chef's Table (2015 - )
The first season of Chef's Table featured six distinct episodes, each profiling one of the world's most ambitious chefs, like Dan Barber, Massimo Bottura, and Niki Nakayama. The cinematography is gorgeous, the narration is tight, and it never loses the viewer's interest or focus, even when diving into mundane topics. It's helmed by the director behind Jiro Dreams of Sushi, so you can expect it to be pretty much perfect.
The Civil War (1994)
Ken Burns went from just being a prominent documentarian to a household name with this nine-part, 11-hour miniseries -- one of PBS’s most watched programs of all time. Still his most famous work, and arguably still his best, The Civil War chronicles the American conflict between the North and the South through Burns’s signature combination of archival photos, readings of contemporary texts by notable actors (including Sam Waterston and Morgan Freeman), and expert commentary from today’s historians. This series turned many viewers onto documentary and the “Ken Burns effect” in particular by offering an emotional as well as educational experience.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)
Neil deGrasse Tyson updated Carl Sagan's intergalactic classic with new science, new predictions, and new attitude, packaging physics for the Star Wars crowd. As Tyson guides us through the stars, historical locations, and the CG-enabled cosmic calendar, his lessons crescendo into a call to arms. Scientific discovery is a fight. Cosmos makes a case for Team Progress.
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The Best Documentaries of 2017
Five Came Back (2017)
Adapted from Mark Harris' comprehensive book of the same name, this film -- chopped into three episodes for maximum binge-iness -- explores the lives of five Hollywood directors who exited the emerging Hollywood scene to aid their country during World War II. Through filmmaking, John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, and George Stevens played pivotal roles in shaping the American understanding of WWII, and after the war subsided, they too were changed by the experience. With interviews from names like Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Guillermo del Toro, Five Came Back is a historical epic for every Netflix-subscribing movie-lover.
The Keepers (2017)
True-crime docs are a dime a dozen these days, but The Keepers takes the genre to another level by dealing in both micro and macro layers of a story involving sexual abuse, murder, police corruption, and the Catholic Church. At its center is the strange disappearance and death in 1969 of a schoolteacher nun named Sister Cathy Cesnik, a case that continues to be investigated by her former students, who the filmmakers follow. Numerous shocking twists are revealed over the course of the seven-episode series, as the haunting mystery turns disturbing exposé and then circles back around again.
Last Chance U (2016 - )
This award-winning, ongoing series makes up for all the feature-length sports docs that feel too compact in their confined, movie-length runtime. Last Chance U is still far from exhaustive, but its initial six episodes offer a fuller experience of a football season at East Mississippi Community College, where the Lions pursue their third national championship in three years. If not part of the team, you at least feel like an invested member of the EMCC family given how deep the vérité series places you into its world, intimately observing the drama alongside the players, their coach, and their academic advisor.
Making a Murderer (2016 - )
Netflix's true-crime hit was 10 years in the making, and it still didn't totally resolve the case of Steven Avery, who after spending 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole. It's a heartbreaking story, and whether or not you think Avery is guilty, the show exposes disturbing truths about crime, justice, and the way America processes both. As the case continues to develop, the second season promises to dive deeper into those disturbing truths.
The Mind of a Chef (2012 - )
Featuring narration by the esteemed and overly mentioned Anthony Bourdain, The Mind of a Chef is a thoughtful look at the world of top-class chef David Chang. It eschews the trappings of reality-competition cooking shows, by presenting food as an art form, and not sport. While Bourdain waxes poetic over footage of Chang pioneering recipes and discovering food culture around the country and globe, it delivers an experience unlike any other, as you actually get a nuanced look inside the mind of the iconoclastic chef, and what makes him tick. It also inspired one of our editors to stop being a vegetarian -- so that's something.
Planet Earth (2006)
It's difficult to convey the splash Planet Earth made when it arrived on American television screens in 2006. Like, holy shit, that great white shark captured in super-slow motion jumping completely out of the ocean as it snapped its jaws down on a seal? No one had seen anything like it before, and each episode felt like a new experience, bringing more attention to the environmental and conservation movements than anything since Silent Spring, no small feat. It's worth a rewatch, because it holds up even after 2017's Planet Earth 2 -- the follow-up features more advanced camera work, but it doesn't quite match the massive scale of the original, because nothing really can.
Planet Earth 2 (2017)
Catch the Solar System's most inhabitable planet in breathtaking high-definition before it's too late! The decade-in-the-making sequel features this insane footage of way too many snakes chasing a newborn lizard, which should be enough to convince you to watch.
Prohibition (2011)
Riveting history meets rousing subject matter with this Ken Burns and Lynn Novick series chronicling the years when America outlawed alcohol. Actually, the three-part documentary is broader, exploring the lead-up to and aftermath of Prohibition as well as that notorious dry period itself, while also coming across as surprisingly timely for today’s audience. Any misconceptions you have about the cause of the passing of the 18th Amendment and then the ratification of the 21st will be ironed out in your viewing of this relatively short program featuring another all-star cast of voice actors, including Tom Hanks and Samuel L. Jackson.
Rotten (2018)
The food world is a messy business, as this new Netflix docu-series demonstrates in unappetizing detail. From powerful garlic lobbyists to fraudulent fish to hormone-laden chicken, Rotten goes the extra mile to show that the reasons a wealthy nation like America has food security are often unpleasant and exploitative. It's not for the weak-stomached, but it will hopefully make you think before you head to the grocery store next.
The War (2007)
After The Civil War became a hit, Ken Burns could have immediately gone on to make similar documentaries about other significant conflicts in American history, but he took his time getting to another. This seven-part take on World War II was worth the wait, even if it doesn’t match all of the aesthetic charms of his breakout. Obviously this series’ archival material involves actual moving images and its more proximate period allows for interviews with real people who’d been through it. Still, The War is no generic lesson, offering instead a uniquely provincial perspective that makes it another people’s history.
The West (1996)
If any Ken Burns series feels like an attempt to spin-off from the success of The Civil War, this is the one. Yet it’s not technically a Ken Burns documentary, as he only presented the program, which is directed instead by one of his producers, Stephen Ives. Otherwise, the eight-part series looks and sounds like a continuation in its tackling of a broader treatment of 19th-century American history, focused on the westward expansion of the country. The West also features many celebrity voices, including narrator Peter Coyote, and utilizes the “Ken Burns effect” in its presentation of archival photographs.
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