The long holiday weekend has arrived, and you will need things to entertain you and your family. As always, Netflix obliges. People around the world are happily binging Netflix series by the boatload over the holidays, with lots of options from every genre, from comedy to drama to documentary. These seven shows are among the most popular right now.
Man Vs Baby
On the lighter side
In 2022, Netflix released Man vs. Bee, a comedy series about a man named Trevor (Rowan Atkinson, a British comedy legend known for stuff like Blackadder and Mr. Bean) having trouble getting rid of a bee while house sitting for a wealthy couple. For the second season, Netflix has given the premise a Christmas makeover as Trevor finds himself taking care of a missing baby over the holidays; no one took home the baby who played little Jesus from the nativity at the school where he works, so what was he supposed to do?
Man vs. Baby is lightweight fun that goes down easy. It’s the perfect show to watch with the family while you’re all decompressing over the long weekend.
- Release Date
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2025 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Writers
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Rowan Atkinson
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Rowan Atkinson
Trevor Bingley
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Sean Combs: The Reckoning
On the darker side
And now for something extremely different. The trial of Sean Combs was one of the biggest news stories of 2025, and Netflix has fed our curiosity with a four-part documentary series that people have been inhaling ever since it was released in early December. The Reckoning traces Combs’ story from his early rise through the world of hip-hop in the 1990s through to the present, when he was put on trial for racketeering and sex trafficking. The show treats the subject with the nuance it deserves, with lots of interviews and archival footage to help us understand what happened.
Obviously this is a much heavier watch than Man vs. Baby, but what’s life without a little contrast? The Reckoning is one of those one of those documentaries that’s better than any crime show.
- Watch Sean Combs: The Reckoning on Netflix
The Beast in Me
The Beast, Me, and TV
The Beast in Me is a slow-burning mystery thriller about an author (Claire Danes) grieving the loss of her son. To distract herself, she starts writing about her suspicious new neighbor (Matthew Rhys), a real estate mogul who’s suspected of killing his first wife. That turns into a cat-and-mouse game of psychological one-upmanship that exposes the real truth behind her neighbor’s lies and helps Danes’ character find peace.
The Beast in Me is a limited series, so after you watch these eight episodes, the journey is over. When you’ve had all the holiday cheer you can handle, this is the perfect grisly, well-made mystery show to sink into.
- Release Date
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2025 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
Emily in Paris season 5
Now featuring Rome
We’re back to fluff with the fifth season of Emily in Paris, a frothy romantic comedy show about a young woman (Lily Collins) who moves to Paris to pursue her career in marketing. Obviously, she has all kinds of romantic misadventures in the meantime. In the newly released fifth season, she goes to Italy, and it’s teased that she may go to Greece for season 6. The series is becoming something of a travelogue of the most selfie-worthy places on Earth.
With its light-as-air tone and broad gags, it’s kind of easy to make fun of Emily in Paris, but the fact is that it’s very popular, easy to watch, and dresses up its characters in lots of eye-popping fashions. It should go over very well during the holidays, when a lot of us just want to sit back and relax with something silly and fun.
- Release Date
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October 2, 2020
- Network
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Netflix
- Showrunner
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Darren Star
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Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu
Sylvie Grateau
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Lily Collins
Emily Cooper
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Culinary Class Wars season 2
The most dramatic cooking show in the history of the world
We’ve been highlighting English-language shows so far, but Netflix also has a wide variety of great international series to enjoy. For instance, the second season of the South Korean cooking competition show Culinary Class Wars came out in December and is being enjoyed by people all over the globe.
The setup for Culinary Class Wars is pretty basic. One hundred elite chefs are divided into two groups: the white spoons, who are veterans of the industry; and the black spoons, who are relative newcomers. The lot of them compete for a grand cash prize. The contestants are extremely creative and industrious with their dishes and all the events are staged very dramatically. If you want some reality TV in your life this holiday, Culinary Class Wars is a great choice.
City of Shadows (Ciudad de Sombras)
Murder, Barcelona style
City of Shadows is a new crime drama that kicks off when a prominent businessman is found dead and hanging off a balcony on Casa Milà, an iconic building in Barcelona, Spain. A disgraced detective (Isak Ferriz) must team up with a straight-laced inspector (Verónica Echegui) to get to the bottom of things.
I’ve embedded the English-language trailer above, but you’re also free to watch City of Shadows in its original Spanish with whatever subtitles you want. It’s a moody drama that also doubles as a travelogue for Barcelona, as much of the plot revolves around iconic buildings in the city designed by Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí.
- Release Date
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2025 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Jorge Torregrossa
Cast
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Verónica Echegui
Rebeca Garrido
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Ana Wagener
Susana Cabrera
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Manolo Solo
Mauricio Navarro
Stranger Things
Obviously
Netflix released the first four episodes from the fifth and final season of Stranger Things late in November. It’s releasing three more on Christmas Day, and it knows you’re going to watch them. This sci-fi adventure drama has been slowly building momentum ever since the first season came out in 2016, and everyone wants to know how it ends. The Christmas episode drop will get us a bit closer, although we won’t get to watch the series finale until December 31.
Everyone you know is going to be watching this show over the holiday, so you might as well join in.
3 short Netflix miniseries you can actually finish this weekend
We’re trying to make sure you have a good time in a short time.
You can binge movies on Netflix too
So those are some of the biggest shows people are loving over the holiday, but if you don’t want to make quite that big of a commitment, there are plenty of movies and specials just waiting to entertain you. If you missed it, the fight between boxer Anthony Joshua and influencer Jake Pual is still burning up the algorithm, as is a new comedy special from Dave Chappelle. People are loving the new survival movie The Great Flood, and the latest Knives Out film is still getting lots of attention, even if Netflix still doesn’t know exactly how to treat this franchise.
And of course, there are plenty of undemanding Christmas-themed drama-comedy-romances to enjoy, like My Secret Santa, Christmas at the Chalet, and A Cowboy Christmas Romance. Whatever you want this holiday, Netflix has it.
- Release Date
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2016 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Showrunner
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Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer
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Millie Bobby Brown
Jane ‘Eleven’ Hopper
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Finn Wolfhard
Mike Wheeler
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Gaten Matarazzo
Dustin Henderson
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Caleb McLaughlin
Lucas Sinclair
