Some of Netflix‘s most acclaimed shows share the same underlying idea: Truth can be as compelling as fiction. The streamer’s catalog of fact-based dramas has impressive range, spanning the British Royal Family to a notorious Colombian kingpin. The best ones approach the work as a creative dance between staying true, at least in part, to real-life events and dramatic license.
This ranking considers not only how gripping the shows are but also how each handles the complex stories they adapted. “Delhi Crime” chronicles the outcome of a particularly terrible transgression with real sensitivity and care; “Mindhunter” revisits the early days of criminal profiling. “Toxic Town,” meanwhile, recounts the extreme challenges one English town faced in its pursuit of justice. All 10 of these belong on your carefully selected watchlist, although the climb to No. 1 takes into account shows that created something truly singular.
10. Narcos
The smartest decision “Narcos” ever made was refusing to simply become “The Pablo Escobar Show.” Showrunner Eric Newman told The Hollywood Reporter the title was deliberately chosen over “Pablo Escobar” because he wanted the show’s larger focus to be the cocaine trade. Still, Wagner Moura’s stellar performance as Escobar himself couldn’t be overlooked, and earned the actor a Golden Globe nomination, making his departure at the end of Season 2 bittersweet. The show’s third and final season moves on to the Cali Cartel, the operation that succeeded Escobar at the top of the trade. But the show’s changeover reinforces the apparently very messy reality of that shadowy world: Cocaine is an intricate supply chain where even the kingpins are replaceable.
Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal play the DEA agents hunting Escobar, and their storylines are arguably where “Narcos” takes the most liberties. While Javier Peña is based on an actual agent, for instance, the real agent wasn’t part of the Cali investigation, though Season 3 puts Pascal’s version at the center. “Narcos” proved to be a series without a single bad season (and remains Pascal’s best TV show to date), blurring the line between real life and dramatic invention, before Netflix launched its spin-off “Narcos: Mexico” in 2018. That looseness with the facts is partly why it opens our countdown rather than ranks higher. But as a look at Colombia’s drug war at its bloodiest, it remains one of the most propulsive history lessons on Netflix.
9. The Spy
Sacha Baron Cohen made his name with zesty comedic roles like Ali G, but “The Spy” asks something different of him: play it straight. In Netflix’s limited series, he plays Eli Cohen, the Mossad agent who spent part of the ’60s in Damascus masquerading as Kamel Amin Thaabet, a man whose parties and connections boosted him into the Syrian elite while he relayed what he learned home to Israel.
Baron Cohen’s turn in Netflix’s “The Spy” is so thoroughly earnest that TVLine named him Performer of the Week. His character faces an impossible challenge, and the longer he lives as Kamel, the harder it becomes to tell where the real man stops and the disguise begins. Syrian authorities eventually traced Eli’s radio transmissions, arrested him, and hanged him in May 1965. But 60 years later, the real-life story remains unfinished: Israel has yet to find Eli’s remains. Knowing that transforms “The Spy” from an espionage thriller into an elegy, of sorts.
8. Toxic Town
“Toxic Town” recounts the true story of Corby, an English steel town where a group of mothers took Corby Borough Council to court. After the town’s steelworks closed, the council spent more than a decade clearing the site, but its botched handling of the waste spread contaminated dust that families blamed for a number of children born with limb differences in the late ’80s and ’90s.
Creator Jack Thorne’s limited series takes the scandal and centers it on the mothers, led by Jodie Whittaker’s Susan and Aimee Lou Wood’s Tracey. Rory Kinnear, meanwhile, plays Des Collins, the solicitor who championed the families for over a decade. The show plays out much like the real-life events did: In 2009, the High Court found the council negligent in how the waste was handled. As a study of how ordinary people outlast institutions, and how long “eventually” can truly take, “Toxic Town” is the overlooked gem on this list worth a serious look.
7. Maid
Molly Smith Metzler’s adaptation of Stephanie Land’s bestselling memoir follows Margaret Qualley’s Alex, a young mother who leaves her boyfriend with her toddler in tow and discovers that escaping is actually the easy part. It’s building a new life that’s difficult. What follows is a gauntlet of challenges like custody hearings and government forms, each seemingly designed to send her back.
Qualley’s real-life mother Andie MacDowell plays Alex’s mother Paula, in an affecting depiction of mental illness. Qualley earned an Emmy nomination for her performance, but the show’s biggest achievement may be how it motivated real-life abuse victims to call the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “I’ve heard a lot of wonderful things about ‘Maid,’ but the thing I’ve heard that just blew me away was that the hotline in their 25 years of being a hotline, they got the most calls in their whole history in the month that ‘Maid’ premiered,” Metzler told Indiewire.
6. The Crown
As a disclaimer, “The Crown” is the most heavily fictionalized show on this list. The series is anchored by many of the British Royal Family’s public milestones over the last several decades, from Queen Elizabeth II’s marriage to Philip in 1947 all the way to Charles and Camilla’s wedding in 2005. It even showed us how Prince William and Kate Middleton’s love story began. And while creator Peter Morgan invents intimate conversations no one witnessed and carefully selects moments to highlight, the show offers a compelling look at what a rigid institution can do to those inside it.
Recasting characters can be a show’s death knell, but “The Crown” wasn’t afraid to swap out actors, sometimes more than once: Elizabeth II was played by Claire Foy, Olivia Colman, and Imelda Staunton, while Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki both portrayed Princess Diana. Still, the show became an awards juggernaut, winning 24 Emmys, including outstanding drama series in 2021. So while “The Crown” may not have always been the most rigorous with factual accuracy as TV historical dramas go, few can match its sheer ambition and scale, or its juiciness.
5. Delhi Crime
Creator Richie Mehta’s first season of “Delhi Crime” dramatizes the police investigation of the gang rape of Jyoti Singh in 2012 aboard a Delhi bus and the capture of its culprits days later. Shefali Shah’s Deputy Commissioner of Police Vartika Chaturvedi, who led the team working on the case, is inspired by the real-life officer, and Shah brings a weary and watchful authority to her performance. The show’s sensitive handling of the case, including its refusal to depict the assault itself and its examination of Delhi’s police system, arguably helped “Delhi Crime” become the first Indian series to win the International Emmy for best drama series.
The show’s additional two seasons revolve around other real cases, with the second season centering on the murders associated with the Kachcha Baniyan gang, while the third season sends Vartika after a human trafficking network inspired by the 2012 Baby Falak case.
4. Unorthodox
“Unorthodox” initially feels like an escape thriller before sweetening into a coming-of-age account, and that tonal highwire act is part of what makes this miniseries so extraordinary. Based on Deborah Feldman’s memoir about leaving her marriage and the Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the miniseries moves between moments from the marriage Esther (Shira Haas) fled and a look at the halting steps she takes towards a new life in Berlin.
The show does take at least one notable liberty, sending its heroine on a path to a Berlin music conservatory, which her real-life counterpart never pursued. But what’s undeniable throughout is Haas, who picked up Yiddish for the role. Her portrayal of Esther conveys every flicker of doubt, defiance, discovery, and hope. The miniseries earned eight Emmy nominations, including one for Haas, and won one for outstanding directing for a limited series, movie or dramatic special in 2020.
3. Mindhunter
Based on the bestselling book by former special agent John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker, “Mindhunter” offers a somber and riveting look at the early days of criminal profiling. Joe Penhall and David Fincher’s series follows FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) as they join psychologist Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) for a project within the Bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit in the ’70s. Together, they set out to create a data-backed method for figuring out the traits of an unknown attacker based on elements from the crime scene. The show draws some of its tension from sit-downs with convicted murderers, including Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton), whose calm menace becomes one of the show’s unsettling “special effects.”
Fittingly and cruelly, a series about premature endings got one itself. Fincher dashed hopes for a Season 3 of “Mindhunter,” telling French outlet Le Journal du Dimanche why the show didn’t move forward. “I’m very proud of the first two seasons. But it’s a very expensive show and, in the eyes of Netflix, we didn’t attract enough of an audience to justify such an investment [for Season 3],” he said. “I don’t blame them; they took risks to get the show off the ground… It’s a blessing to be able to work with people who are capable of boldness,” he said. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, for his part, explained “Mindhunter’s” cancellation during a panel held by The Indian Express, chalking up the issue to Fincher’s schedule. “We always anticipated there would be a third season, and he got very busy making a film,” Sarandos said. Still, the 19 episodes that do exist remain moody and immaculate for anyone seeking a binge-watch on the shorter side.
2. Unbelievable
Only one show here revolves around what happens when a victim’s story isn’t believed. Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica and Marshall Project investigation, “Unbelievable” shifts between dual timelines. In Lynnwood, Washington, when 18-year-old Marie (Kaitlyn Dever) reports being raped by an intruder in 2008, detectives pressure her into recanting, which leads to a charge of false reporting and a guilty plea. The 2011 plot follows detectives Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) and Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette), whose separate cases in Colorado lead them to the same attacker, and Marie. This time, however, Karen and Grace do what Marie’s detectives wouldn’t, by listening to the victims.
Watching “Unbelievable” is a startling reminder that “justice” can depend almost entirely on who handles a case. In real life, justice was eventually served: Marc O’Leary was sentenced to 327.5 years in Colorado for his attacks there, while the city of Lynnwood paid Marie a $150,000 settlement over mishandling her case.
1. When They See Us
Ava DuVernay’s miniseries, which she co-wrote and directed, retells a story New York got wrong for three decades: the 1989 rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park, and the five Harlem teenagers arrested for it. Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise offered false confessions after hours of intense interrogation and coercion and were ultimately convicted. After Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, the men were exonerated in 2002. New York City settled their civil suit for $41 million in 2014.
“When They See Us” earned 16 Emmy nominations, and won two, including one for Jharrel Jerome for outstanding lead actor in a limited series or movie. The men once notoriously branded the “Central Park Five” are now better known as the “Exonerated Five,” a name Central Park made permanent when it named an entrance the “Gate of the Exonerated” in 2022. Thanks in part to this show, the larger public finally saw the five as innocent men. Because of that, “When They See Us” claims the top spot on this list.
