Five Netflix series to watch while you wait for ‘East of Eden’
Good day to you, dear reader, and welcome to the tiny little awkward stretch before East of Eden marches on Netflix next week, where patience is meant to be a virtue, but, frankly, Netflix has given us far too much television for that nonsense.
The series is based on John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel, which follows the Trask family across generations and shows how the past keeps interfering with the present. Cathy Ames, played by Florence Pugh, is a huge part of that story, and her arrival in the story is a major cause of the maelstrom.
So rather than stare at the calendar like a jilted Victorian waiting for a letter, you might as well get stuck into five Netflix dramas that give you more or less the same feeling before East of Eden captivates you.
They are not carbon copies of the plot, thank God, but each is full of family friction and literary heft to keep the East of Eden itch under control.
Five Netflix series to watch while you wait for East of Eden:
The Empress (2022–2026)
East of Eden might have you craving another family where love comes with T&Cs attached, and for that, The Empress should do the trick. Elisabeth von Wittelsbach falls for Emperor Franz, which sounds romantic until you remember she is not just marrying a man. No, she isn’t marrying multiple people, silly. What we mean is that Franz comes with loads of responsibilities from a dynasty and a court. Not to mention a thousand rules nobody bothered to explain beforehand.
Elisabeth walks into Vienna thinking with her heart, while everyone around her is thinking about duty and bloodlines. Poor woman barely has time to breathe before somebody is telling her how to dress, behave, smile, or produce an heir. Franz is not exactly free either, because he has an empire sitting on his shoulders now. So yes, there are gorgeous gowns and grand halls, but they all have complications.
All the Light We Cannot See (2023)
From imperial Vienna, we land in wartime France, and blimey, All the Light We Cannot See could’ve picked an easier page of history, but it went straight for one of the hardest. Marie-Laure, a blind French girl in occupied Saint-Malo, is broadcasting over the radio, while Werner, a young German soldier with a talent for radio technology, finds himself drawn towards her signal, figuratively and literally.
Just like East of Eden, neither of them gets to choose the world they are born into, yet both are expected to make decent choices inside it. Marie-Laure’s relationship with her father brings a little warmth to the story, while Werner is stuck wrestling with the price he pays for his obedience. And it’s only four episodes, so it can be binged in one sitting.
The Bonfire of Destiny (2019)
The Bonfire of Destiny takes us straight to Paris in 1897, where a charity bazaar goes up in flames, and the disaster exposes just how fragile all that respectability really is.
The series is about three women whose lives are knocked off course by the disaster because once that fire tears through Paris, it does more than destroy a building. It exposes everything people were trying very hard not to talk about. You start seeing the rotten marriages and, of course, the class snobbery. It’s not unusual for a marriage to crumble and the secrets not to spill. And the women? Well, they are not in the mood to go back to smiling politely and doing as they are told.
The more these women push against the lives chosen for them, the more everyone around them starts panicking. And yes, the series absolutely enjoys its melodrama, but honestly, look at what it is working with.
One Hundred Years of Solitude (2024–2026)
With One Hundred Years of Solitude, we get closest to East of Eden territory, because One Hundred Years of Solitude has so much more than one troubled family… it has generations of them. The Buendías helped found Macondo, hoping for a fresh start, which, as you can probably guess, does not stay fresh for long.
José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán begin the family story by leaving their home to found Macondo, hoping for a clean start, but the past does not stay put for long. From there, every possible emotion is involved in this story; we are talking love affairs, grudges, wars, ambitions, mistakes: literally everything. Sometimes you might feel that the family is not so much moving forward as walking around the same haunted room, and just know that is completely normal.
Alias Grace (2017)
Last stop on the list, Alias Grace brings a change to the temperature in a very dramatic fashion. No, you don’t get massive estates and family feuds here, but you meet Grace Marks, an Irish immigrant servant convicted of the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and Nancy Montgomery in Canada.
The story has her recounting her life to psychiatrist Simon Jordan, who is trying to work out what she remembers and whether he is hearing the truth or whether her account can be trusted.
You might wonder how it connects with East of Eden? Like Cathy Ames, Grace is around people desperate to decide what sort of woman she is before she gets to define herself. Sarah Gadon plays that uncertainty beautifully, we must say. There will be points where you will believe that you have finally got Grace figured out, but it’s all a massive mirage. Lace on top, poison underneath.