(Credit: Netflix)

Now that Stranger Things has officially ended, it feels like a part of our personality is paused. What are we even supposed to do now? Go outside? Make conversation? It’s been a whole cultural era, and now we are just sitting here like abandoned Netflix users trying to piece ourselves back together.

This clearly is a sign for you to move on, and you don’t have to dive headfirst into another five-season commitment right away. You can just… ease back in. Watch something short and complete. A story that knows how to wreck you and wrap it up within the weekend. No cliffhangers.

Limited series are made for such occasions. They let you wrap things up quickly while not robbing you of the fun of watching an entire story.

So here are five limited series on Netflix that are absolutely worth your weekend. Just play them and get transported to a different world.

Five limited series to binge on Netflix this weekend

The English Game

Before football became a billion-dollar obsession, it was brutal like a muddy brawl between classes. The English Game takes you straight to the roots of the sport, back in the 1870s, when upper-class men made the rules, and working-class players broke them. It’s not just about goals and uniforms. It is about rebellion and a fight to be taken seriously, all while the game itself is changing in real time.

Created by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes, this series is dramatic without ever feeling stiff. You get rivalries, forbidden love, and secret injuries. And it is not just a story about who wins but about who gets to play in the first place. And even if you have never watched a football match in your life, by the end of this, you will care like your life depends on it.

Midnight Mass

After that, maybe you are in the mood for something darker. Something that crawls under your skin. That’s where Midnight Mass comes into play, and this one doesn’t jump-scare you into submission. You land on a remote island where everyone knows everyone, and suddenly, this charming priest shows up. Next thing you know, people are walking again, seeing again, and feeling “blessed”. Midnight Mass makes you trust the miracles just long enough to make the horror hit harder.

Mike Flanagan doesn’t miss. With a cast that feels less like a horror ensemble and more like people you actually know, the series builds itself around monologues that are heavier than a death scene. It’s smart and sad at the same time, but totally worth a shot.

Dear Child

Switching gears again, but not too far this time. Dear Child is what happens when a survival story refuses to follow the same formula as it’s supposed to. It starts when a woman escapes from a locked house in the middle of the night but quickly becomes something else entirely. At first, it feels like a standard kidnapping escape thriller. But it doesn’t end where you think it will. The story keeps pulling you deeper, flipping perspectives until your loyalties are completely tested.

Something to think about in this series is the way it handles trauma, especially from a child’s point of view. You get six episodes, and every single one of them pushes you further into the fog. It looks like a tough commitment, but totally worth your time.

Black Butterflies

Black Butterflies follows a struggling writer who gets hired to ghostwrite an old man’s memoir, only to realise the man might have been a serial killer. And suddenly, he is no longer writing the story. He is living inside it. It starts with a lonely writer and becomes a whole new story inside a story.

The way the show peels back each layer guarantees goosebumps. At one point, you are not sure about the timeline and are left questioning what part of the story is even real. It is gorgeously shot, so it’s a treat for the eyes too. Not every limited series dares to touch such lunacy.

The Snow Girl

To wrap it up, The Snow Girl delivers the slow dread of a good crime thriller without ever feeling bloated. Based on the Javier Castillo novel, it starts with a missing girl during a parade and turns into something bigger and more terrifying. The story moves between timelines with such precision that you are bound to stick with it.

But the real element keeping everything together is the journalist at the centre who is unwilling to let things go quiet. She is haunted by her own past, and that’s what makes her push harder than the police. The deeper she goes, the more twisted it gets.