5 Netflix TV Shows You Can Binge-Watching In One Day

We've all been there: you're sitting on your couch, looking for something to watch. There are endless apps to scroll through, featuring endless pages of rectangles promising endless hours of entertainment. What even are these shows? Are you committing to the next several weeks of binge-watching, or are you able to dip in and out in an afternoon?

If Netflix is your streamer of choice, we've got some suggestions that you can view in their entirety in just one day. There's true-crime, comedy, drama, and those that land somewhere in between. Several have won awards; others got so-so critical reviews but are perfect for curling up on the couch with wine and popcorn.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos told The New York Times that his company wants to be all things to all people. "We want to be HBO and CBS and BBC and all those different networks around the world that entertain people," he explained. "We have to have a very broad variety of things that people watch and love." No matter what mood you're in, you can find something below to fill your time.

The Netflix show "Adolescence" is not a particularly easy watch, but it's an extremely-rewarding one that can be knocked out in an afternoon. The miniseries contains four episodes, each roughly an hour long, and revolves around the family of a young boy named Jamie (Owen Cooper). One morning, their peace is shattered when police swarm their home, carting Jamie off to the station under suspicion of murder. His parents can't believe it, but as the story unfurls, they realize that their little boy has been swept up in a burgeoning online culture of misogyny and violence.

Each episode of "Adolescence" looks like one single shot, meaning they play out in near-real time. The show includes an episode that's a police walk-and-talk around Jamie's school, while another takes the shape of a therapy session. Cooper is phenomenal; even though the subject matter gets quite dark, "Adolescence" is worth watching so you can see why his performance took him all the way to the Emmy Awards, making him one of the youngest winners of all time.

Cooper wasn't the only win the show picked up. Co-creator and star Stephen Graham, who played Jamie's father Eddie, also went home with a statue for best limited series lead actor. 

While speaking with The New York Times, Netflix head Ted Sarandos called out Richard Gadd's "Baby Reindeer" as an example of what the streamer does so well. "There was a time when something like 'Baby Reindeer' would not even be seen in the United States," he stated. "And if it did, it'd be on PBS once."

Now, though, audiences around the world have been bowled over by Gadd's series. The show is made up of seven short episodes, adding up to about four total hours of viewing time. Over the course of one afternoon, you'll meet Gadd's character Donny and an admirer named Martha (Jessica Gunning). The obsessive fan gets ahold of his number and sends possessive messages at all hours of the day and night. At first, the show is funny and weird; as its emotionally-complex story unfurls, "Baby Reindeer" becomes more of a dramedy, diving into some difficult subject matter.

After seeing how it all spirals out of control, you'll likely spend the rest of your day reading about its backstory. The true story behind "Baby Reindeer" makes the Netflix hit even scarier, but it's also inspiring that Gadd managed to turn such a traumatic situation into an effective work of art.

Director Joe Berlinger is the man behind the "Paradise Lost" trilogy, a landmark work of true-crime. He made his name with films about miscarriages of justice that peeled back the layers of prejudice, fear, anguish, and pain at the center of a child-murder case in West Memphis, Arkansas. In the decades since, Berlinger has become a streaming powerhouse, crafting many binge-worthy dark true-crime shows on Netflix.

In 2019, Berlinger and Netflix ran an interesting artistic experiment. He directed "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile," which starred Zac Efron as Ted Bundy. Through its casting of the former Disney Channel heartthrob, the film made visible, once again, the charismatic sway the serial killer had when he was captured.            

That same year, Berlinger also directed "Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes," a four-hour docuseries. The format has spun off into shows about other killers, but the Bundy installment is still the best. Nearly up until he died, Bundy proclaimed his innocence, and despite everything we know about the man, Berlinger uses Bundy's own words to further examine the "miscarriage of justice" subgenre. Over the course of one evening, you can go on a chilling descent into the madness that claimed so many lives. Of course he's not innocent; it's Ted Bundy!

The first three suggestions are all critically-acclaimed choices if you want to engage with some seriously-artistic stuff. These next two are going to be your best bet if you want something a little silly, soapy, and frothy that'll turn your brain off.

"The Perfect Couple" stars Nicole Kidman as the incredibly-named Greer Winbury, a woman who is as rich as her name suggests. She's an author who's made a name for herself writing the kind of mysteries about to unfold. As you might have guessed, Greer is not, in fact, part of a perfect couple; instead, this show is one of those beachy murder mysteries, one that starts with a dead body and then rewinds to show us how we got here.

By the end of "The Perfect Couple," you'll know who killed Merritt (Meghann Fahy), but that's not really the point. The enjoyment comes from things like Kidman's terrible wigs, and the entire cast doing a choreographed dance number to a Meghan Trainor song during the opening credits. That cast, by the way, includes everyone from Liev Schreiber and "Midsommar" star Jack Reynor to "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" alum Donna Lynne Champlin and not one, but two "White Lotus" stars. Running about five hours in total, it's the perfect way to spend an evening on the couch.

If "The Perfect Couple" is a solidly-soapy, still-gripping mystery, then "The Woman in the House Across the Street From The Girl In The Window" is a full-on spoof of everything "The Perfect Couple" is trying to be. The ridiculously-named sitcom features Kristen Bell as a woman drinking increasingly-massive glasses of wine while trying to figure out what happened in the house across the street. 

It's a brilliant bit of casting. Bell, after all, played the titular teen detective on "Veronica Mars," a genius character who sometimes made really dumb decisions; here, she skewers that persona as a woman who can't stop stumbling into ridiculous situations that might actually all be in her head. This show, which is only about four hours long, parodies films like "The Girl On The Train" and "The Woman In The Window." Everyone involved seems to be having a blast; the cast also includes "Teen Wolf" star Shelley Hennig, the always-hilarious Mary Holland, the hunky Michael Ealy, and "DaVinci's Demons" star Tom Riley. 

It even includes a surprise appearance from an uncredited A-Lister in the show's final moments, setting up a sequel series that has yet to materialize. We'd certainly watch another go-around. After all, there are worse ways to spend an evening than following one of TV's best detectives investigate a murder that might just be the result of her own nosiness.