Twin Peaks is possibly my favorite TV show of all time. It still breaks my heart that the original series was canceled in 1991 after just two seasons, with a shocking cliffhanger that wouldn’t be resolved until the return of the show in 2017.
Sadly, the cancellation of excellent shows midway through their stories is still all too common. Netflix, in particular, has a reputation for pulling the plug on brilliant shows before they reach their conclusion. Thankfully, there are several great shows on Netflix that manage to tell a complete story.
6
Ozark
|
Release Year |
2017 |
|---|---|
|
Seasons |
4 |
|
Episodes |
44 |
Jason Bateman may have started out as a child actor on shows such as Little House on the Prairie, but he’s grown up into a brilliant comic actor. He’s hilarious in the cult classic comedy series Arrested Development, and his cameo in the movie Dodgeball was so good it’s become a meme.
In Ozark, he shows that he can nail dramatic acting, too. He plays a financial advisor who gets caught up in a money-laundering scheme and is forced to move to the Ozarks with his family to run an even larger money laundering operation for a Mexican drug cartel. Over the course of the show, the family continues to fall deeper into the dangerous world.
The story takes place over four full seasons, and unlike many Netflix shows, it reaches the conclusion of its story. Don’t expect a simple ending, however; the finale may leave you shocked.
5
Cobra Kai
|
Release Year |
2018 |
|---|---|
|
Seasons |
6 |
|
Episodes |
65 |
If you grew up in the 80s, you’ll almost certainly have seen one or more of the Karate Kid movies. The original movie is a classic, telling the tale of a skinny kid who moves to a new town where he is immediately bullied. An old Japanese man teaches him karate to help him defend himself, and the movie ends with the bullied young boy taking on his tormentors in the Under-18 All-Valley Karate Championships.
Cobra Kai is a modern-day spin-off of those movies, starring several of the original cast members, including Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprising their roles as the young man and his bully, who are now grown men in their fifties. Both men set up rival karate dojos as their feud continues.
The show started life on YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium), but Netflix took it over after the second season and gave us four more seasons of cheesy but fun entertainment. Old characters from the movies return and cause chaos, but as you might expect, by the end of the final season, the story reaches a satisfying conclusion in which the good guys ultimately triumph. Karate Kid: Legends, that rare beast of a movie based on a TV show based on a movie, is due to be released on May 30.
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4
Dark
|
Release Year |
2017 |
|---|---|
|
Seasons |
3 |
|
Episodes |
26 |
Netflix is now a global brand and produces content in many different countries around the world. TV shows that are made for a specific country can often go on to be huge global hits; Squid Game is the most notable example, with the South Korean show becoming a massive hit around the world.
Another foreign-language show that has proven to be popular with a global audience is Dark. Dark was the first German-language original series on Netflix, and it ran for three seasons. It’s a disturbing science fiction drama, and it definitely lives up to its name.
The show begins with the disappearance of two children, but before long, it becomes a tangled web involving time travel and shadowy conspiracies. Thankfully, the show reached its conclusion on Netflix before the plug was pulled, so we do get an ending to the complex story. However, as you might expect with a show as mind-bending as this one, the ending leaves as many questions as it does answers.
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3
Narcos
|
Release Year |
2015 |
|---|---|
|
Seasons |
3 |
|
Episodes |
30 |
These days, you can’t turn on the TV without seeing Pedro Pascal. He’s currently starring in the second series of The Last of Us, plays Din Djarin in Star Wars spin-off showsThe Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, and is due to play Reed Richards in the upcoming Marvel movies The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and Avengers: Doomsday. He first came to prominence in Game of Thrones, suffering one of the most memorable deaths of the entire show, but his second major role was playing DEA agent Javier Peña in Narcos.
Narcos is an epic crime drama series based on the real-life events surrounding major Colombian drug cartels. The first two seasons focus on drug lord Pablo Escobar, with season three set after Escobar’s death as the DEA grapples with another Colombian cartel.
As the show is based on real life, it’s a story that doesn’t have a definitive ending, but season three wraps up the show with a satisfying conclusion that doesn’t leave you hanging.
2
The Umbrella Academy
|
Release Year |
2019 |
|---|---|
|
Seasons |
4 |
|
Episodes |
36 |
Some people have so much talent that it really isn’t fair. Not satisfied with being the lead vocalist of popular American rock band My Chemical Romance, Gerard Way then decided to co-create and write successful comics, including The Umbrella Academy. The comics tell the story of an adopted family of superhero siblings who must try to prevent a forthcoming apocalypse.
Netflix turned the excellent comic series into a live-action show of the same name, with four seasons that closely match the plots of the original comics. The show is a lot of fun, with Aidan Gallagher particularly impressive playing a cantankerous man in his fifties who is trapped in the body of a 13-year-old boy. The show sees the story through to the end, and while the final season is probably the weakest, it does have a satisfying conclusion.
1
Bojack Horseman
|
Release Year |
2014 |
|---|---|
|
Seasons |
6 |
|
Episodes |
77 |
Bojack Horseman is an incredible show. What appears at first to be a light-hearted animated comedy show turns out to have significant depth. The show may be based on the character of a horse who used to appear in a 90s sitcom, but it covers a huge range of incredibly serious topics, from depression and addiction to racism and suicide.
It’s one of those shows where sticking with it pays off. While the first few episodes aren’t the most ground-breaking TV ever made, the quality really picks up mid-way through season one, and it never looks back. As you might expect, the show’s final episode doesn’t leave us with a happy ending, but it has some beautiful moments and feels like an appropriate way to end the show.
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Watching shows on Netflix can be an incredibly frustrating experience. All too often, excellent shows have the plug pulled on them when they’re only partway through the story. We’re left with incomplete storylines that leave us wanting more of a show that will never return.
Brilliant shows such as The OA, Mindhunter, and Santa Clarita Diet all ended before their stories were complete, often with cliffhangers in their final episodes that never get resolved. Lesser-known shows such as Lockwood & Co. got canceled after one season, before they’d even had a chance to get going.
Thankfully, there are plenty of shows on Netflix that were allowed to reach a conclusion, even if the endings didn’t always provide all the answers. If you haven’t watched any of the shows listed above, they’re definitely worth checking out.
Netflix
When it comes to original shows and movies, no service comes close to Netflix. New original content is released weekly, so you’ll never run out of shows to watch.
