Five best limited series on Netflix to finish within a weekend
How often do you wonder about the stuff that happens in real life that is so mental you’d swear someone’s taking the piss, but it’s very rare that it receives the deserved credit? We often forget that it’s partly the reason why we love a good Netflix show or a movie, because even the made-up ones can leave you wondering how much of this nonsense could happen in real life or with you.
Mind you, the writers don’t always have to stretch their imaginations that far, considering the extraordinary things people have managed to get themselves into over the years.
But man, when a series gets that human side of things right… It just hits the right spot. You end up far more invested than you bargained for, sitting there passing judgement on people whose circumstances, God forbid, you’d never want to find yourself in.
And what’s better if you get to watch and finish that story within a weekend? Hence, here are five handpicked Netflix limited series that should make for some mind-boggling weekend viewing.
Five best limited series on Netflix to finish within a weekend
Adolescence (2025)
Parents are forever being told to keep an eye on what their kids are doing online, which sounds cautious enough until you remember how much teenage life happens behind a screen no adult ever gets to see. Adolescence took that idea and ran with it and won multiple Emmys and Golden Globe awards. The show tells the tale of a 13-year-old, Jamie Miller, who is arrested for murdering a girl from his school, leaving his dad, Eddie, trying to make sense of a lad he thought he knew.
And before you go in expecting the usual police procedural, the whole thing is filmed in four extraordinary continuous takes, so when a conversation gets uncomfortable, you are stuck in the room with everyone else. The investigation leads into Jamie’s online world and his conversations with a psychologist, while Stephen Graham is heartbreaking as Eddie. You’ll probably spend half of it wanting somebody to give the family a straight answer, but this isn’t your usual television.
The Decameron (2024)
Let’s now go to 1348, when the Black Death is wiping out half of Florence, and the city’s wealthiest residents have decided the best way to survive is to bugger off to a luxurious countryside villa while everyone else gets on with dying. That’s the premise of The Decameron, a dark comedy about a group of nobles who arrive at a grand estate with their servants, hoping to drink their way through the plague without a care in the world.
Trouble is, the man who invited them, Leonardo, is already dead, which is rather inconvenient for Pampinea, who’s turned up expecting to marry him and become mistress of the house. Meanwhile, a servant named Licisca decides to play the part of her wealthy employer, and with everyone busy scheming, lying, and looking out for themselves, the holiday turns into an absolute circus.
The Mess You Leave Behind (2020)
Starting a new job is stressful enough without having to worry about whether you’ll make it out alive, and most of us would’ve packed our bags if our first day went anything like Raquel’s in The Mess You Leave Behind. This Spanish thriller follows a literature teacher who moves to a small town in Galicia with her husband, hoping for a fresh start, only to discover she is replacing Viruca, a teacher who died under suspicious circumstances just weeks earlier.
And as if taking over a dead woman’s classroom wasn’t weird or uncomfortable enough, Raquel starts receiving death threats from her students, which is a bit much even for the worst-behaved class, and becomes convinced there is more to Viruca’s death than she’s been told. The eight-part series switches between both teachers’ stories as Raquel investigates what happened, putting herself in danger in the process.
The Unlikely Murder (2021)
Stig Engström must’ve been every journalist’s dream after Swedish prime minister Olof Palme was assassinated in Stockholm in 1986, because the bloke couldn’t seem to stop talking about what he’d witnessed that night. And considering he was supposed to be an ordinary graphic designer who happened to be near the crime scene, his enthusiasm for getting himself into the papers was a bit peculiar, to put it mildly.
Netflix’s five-part Swedish drama The Unlikely Murderer stars Robert Gustafsson as Engström and explores the theory that he wasn’t some innocent bystander after all but the murderer himself. As the police struggle to crack the case, Engström keeps popping up in the media, practically begging for attention while investigators pursue other leads. It’s enough to make you wonder what on earth everyone was playing at.
The Nurse (2023)
Working a night shift at a hospital is already stressful enough without having to figure out if one of your colleagues is up to some seriously dodgy shit. But that’s exactly what Pernille Kurzmann ends up dealing with when she starts working at a hospital in Denmark. There’s this nurse called Christina Aistrup Hansen, and everyone there treats her like she is some sort of bloody superhero. Every time a patient suddenly goes downhill, she is right there saving the day. At first, Pernille thinks she’s got herself a brilliant colleague to learn from.
But then the patients keep having these random medical emergencies, and somehow Christina always seems to be on shift when it happens. Bit weird, innit? Pernille starts suspecting things, and the worst part is nobody wants to bloody listen to her. She’s the new girl, while Christina’s basically everyone’s favourite. Based on a real case, The Nurse on Netflix follows Pernille as she tries to get someone, anyone, to take her seriously.