The 8 Best And 8 Worst Netflix Original Series Of 2017

Netflix is a content powerhouse. No longer just the service that Orange is the New Black and House of Cards built, with over 40 new original series premiering in 2017 alone, the streaming giant continues to solidify its hold over the online viewing ecosystem it helped create. 

With that in mind, we're looking over the most notable shows Netflix had to offer in 2017— but instead of picking through every original series released over the past 12 months, we've narrowed our scope a bit to focus on the releases that fell closest to either end of the spectrum. Without further ado, here are the best—and worst—Netflix original series that premiered in 2017. 

With Santa Clarita Diet, the zombie genre makes its way into the humdrum world of everyday suburbia. Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant star as Sheila and Joel, a married couple in the real estate business doing their best to live the American dream. All goes awry, though, when Sheila contracts a virus—probably from her trendy green smoothie habit—and undergoes a transformation from soft-spoken housewife to loose cannon zombie.

Victor Fresco's series does a good job at introducing a unique take on an overdone subgenre. While it hardly cracks the surface on what this disease actually is, there's enough mystery to keep genre fans tuned in. Once you get past the shock value and gore, though, it relies a bit too much on the seemingly innocent married couple hiding a gruesome secret and growing body count.

"There are comedies that make a complicated tone or a wacky high concept seem effortless—and Santa Clarita Diet is not one of them," said The Hollywood Reporter. "The high exertion of getting mirth and metaphor from the morbid often leaves Fresco's cleverer dialogue buried and forces the stars to play the same strained beats over and over."

With Ozark, Jason Bateman steps out of Michael Bluth's comedic shadow. But while his tortured portrayal of Marty Byrde—a money launderer for a Mexican drug cartel—is unlike anything we've seen from the Arrested Development actor, critical reactions were mixed when the series premiered over the summer.

The Washington Post noted, "It's as if the creators raided television's medicine cabinet and made off with all the amphetamines meant for a year's worth of other crime shows." And that's the main issue with Ozark: we've seen this stuff done before, and done better. "It wants to unpack this intriguing rural community," pointed out The Atlantic, "but it also wants to be a drama about an unlikely criminal, like Breaking Bad, and a show about a boring marriage revived by a shared mission, like The Americans, and a fable about how everyone's trying to make a living the best way they know how, just like The Wire."

Strong performances from Laura Linney and Bateman—who steps as director for multiple episodes, as well—keep the series entertaining enough. So much so that Variety reports Netflix renewed Ozark for a second season just a month after its premiere.

"Was Girlboss Netflix's first truly terrible show?" asked Vanity Fair. It's possible. The comedy inspired by Nasty Gal creator Sophia Amoruso's life was, according to The Guardian, "a tone deaf rallying cry to millennial narcissists." Talk about a troubled demographic.

Girlboss followed the life of a young, rebellious Amoruso (Britt Robertson), who turns selling vintage clothing online into a career. As rebellious as she is in the series, Amoruso was portrayed without any sense of likability; when your lead character is an awful person, it's a lot harder for the audience to connect with their story—and that's even with the addition of RuPaul Charles as the sassy neighbor.

When Netflix canceled the series, Amoruso took posted her feelings on Instagram—which she has since deleted. According to Refinery29, she wrote, "So that Netflix series about my life got canceled. While I'm proud of the work we did, I'm looking forward to controlling my narrative from here on out. It was a good show, and I was privileged to work with incredible talent, but living my life as a caricature was hard even if only for two months."

Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig took a break from making music to bring his love of anime to Netflix. Neo Yokio is the series in question and, unfortunately for Koenig, it hit all the wrong notes when it premiered.

Jaden Smith stars as Kaz Kaan, a pink-haired demon slayer whose family once liberated the sprawling city—which feels like a cross between New York and Tokyo. It all gets confusing from there, as the point of the story becomes a weird mess. "Neo Yokio's emptiness goes far beyond its protagonist's melancholy nature," noted IGN. "it lacks needed in-between frames for smooth animation, it disregards dimension in its more grand scenes, and it feigns sincerity in any serious issue it tackles."

Aside from the poor animation quality, the subpar voice acting from each member of the cast—from Smith to Jude Law to even Susan Sarandon—feels completely phoned in. Most importantly, the anime lacks any semblance of satire that'd help tie the story together. Or, as IGN so succintly put it: "Neo Yokio is humorless."

Gypsy's story followed Jean Holloway (Naomi Watts), a therapist who grows bored of her suburban life and begins pursuing intimate relationships with the patients she was supposed to cure.

Marketed as a sexy psychological thriller, it felt as if Gypsy was trying to tap into the voyeuristic sensibility that made Fifty Shades of Grey a hit. Instead, the series barely mustered up a worthwhile simmer to keep audiences engaged. "Gypsy comes out a flavourless hodgepodge, with nothing about Watts's character's crisis even faintly convincing," sniffed The Daily Telegraph. Added Variety, "It strands a capable cast in a diffuse, predictable drama that seems less necessary with every minute that ticks by."

Gypsy was nixed almost as soon as it arrived. As reported by Deadline, the show was canceled in August after just one season.

Friends from College is an uncomfortable comedy that follows a group of forty-something friends who reunite to relive their glory days. With a cast that includes Colby Smulders, Keegan Michael Key, Fred Savage, and Billy Eichner, one would think the program would deliver its fair share of laughs; unfortunately, the cringe factor is the only thing that builds as the episodic story progresses.

The main issue with Friends from College is that each character—from Key's affair-having author Ethan to Savage's self-absorbed gay architect Max—is a horrible person lacking any redeemable qualities whatsoever. It's hard for an audience to connect with the heroes of the story when they all prove to be jerks.

"The show is, to be clear, awkward—it meanders through strange plotlines and spends an excruciating amount of time on ridiculous capers," said The Atlantic, "and its characters almost seem to be competing to out-awful each other." Still, it seems that Netflix will be keeping the show around for at least one more season: Deadline reports Friends from College was renewed in August.

Taking a brief look through Chuck Lorre's IMDb page, it's easy to see why he's looked at as a genius in the sitcom world. From Roseanne to The Big Bang Theory, the man has brought some classic comedies to the small screen. Unfortunately for Lorre, "classic" probably isn't a word that will be used to describe his newest series, Disjointed.

The three-camera sitcom stars Kathy Bates, which is reason enough to tune in. Here, Bates plays Ruth Whitefeather Feldman, the activist owner of a popular L.A. medical marijuana dispensary. But if you're expecting an edgy performance akin to anything she's done in recent years, be prepared to be disappointed in Disjointed. 

Vulture might have put it best by calling Disjointed "a CBS sitcom that smoked a little weed, wandered away from its home network, stumbled onto Netflix, then looked around and said, 'Cool, I'm on Netflix now.'" And much like The Ranch—Lorre's other Netflix sitcom—Disjointed takes advantage of the lack of censors and cusses to its heart's content.

Bates' presence can't save Disjointed from its one-dimensional characters, lowbrow humor, and odd in-show commercials. The New York Times called it "one buzzkill of a pot comedy." The series quickly cemented itself as the worst-reviewed series of the summer, and the season ended on a cliffhanger—but at this point, it's unclear whether Netflix will bring the show back for seconds.

Up until Iron Fist hit the small screen, Netflix was riding high on Marvel buzz. The first seasons of Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage gave audiences everything they'd been wanting from Marvel TV shows—and then Danny Rand entered the picture.

When Finn Jones was announced as the actor to play Rand in Marvel's Iron Fist, reactions were mixed. Aside from the claims of race appropriation—Danny Rand is a privileged white man in the comics, too—Jones' personality and on-screen charisma was underwhelming. He needed to bring the heat, yet his performance ended up coming off lukewarm at best.

Combine that with a slow pace and less than stellar fight scenes, and Iron Fist's 19 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes isn't surprising. The addition of Jessica Henwick's Colleen Wing and Rosario Dawson's Claire Temple does help to bring pep to the drowsy series, but it isn't enough to make the Marvel series a must-watch. As IGN put it, "Iron Fist is the worst part of Iron Fist." That's just unfortunate.