Each month, loads of new films and TV shows are added to Netflix UK’s library. Critic Craig Mathieson presents his picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down.
Top Picks: TV
Q-Force: Season 1 (September 2)
An eclectic animated mix of Queer Eye, the James Bond franchise, and Archer, Q-Force puts the LGBTI into the CIA. Drawn with sharp angles and a muted palette to suggest both high stakes espionage and a stylish wardrobe, the series was created by writer Gabe Liedman, a Broad City and Pen15 graduate who wanted to capture the scale of the international spy thriller and add satirical diversity.
After years of being sidelined in West Hollywood due to his sexuality, gay American Intelligence Agency operative Steve Maryweather (Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes) gets to put together a rainbow flag team of agents to crack cases. The sticking point—HQ assigns disapproving straight operative Rick Buck (Stranger Things’ David Harbour) to ride shotgun.
Money Heist: Season 5 (September 3)
This audaciously tricky Spanish thriller has been a phenomenon for Netflix, becoming its top-ranking Spanish language series and building a hugely devoted following. It’s not hard to see why: creator Alex Pina put together a high concept page-turner, where an intricate plan to take over the Royal Mint of Spain and its printing presses is the starting point for accelerated plot twists, sudden swerves into melodrama, and flashbacks that burrow back into the central narrative and simultaneously set it rattling off into new directions.
Subsequent seasons have moved away from the siege-like opening, but the fifth and final season—with five episodes on September 3 and five more on December 3—returns to the kind of knotty stand-off the show flourishes with.
Sex Education: Season 3 (September 17)
Let us give praise for Gillian Anderson. Yes, the X-Files star made a show-stopping turn as Margaret Thatcher in the most recent season of The Crown, but she’s blazingly good in this British comedy-drama, playing a sex therapist whose virginal teenage son (Asa Butterfield) became a hero to his classmates by passing on her expert knowledge.
Set in a Welsh school that looks like a John Hughes 1980s dream, the tone moves between the farcical, the bittersweet, and the blithe, but it displays a huge affection and responsibility to what it values, such as the lively young ensemble cast and the notion that sex—across a wide spectrum of orientation and issues—is something to be valued and enjoyed.
Jaguar: Season 1 (September 22)
Netflix’s embrace of Spanish creators—spurred by Money Heist’s success—continues with this period thriller set in 1960s Madrid, where the fascist allegiance of the dictatorial Franco regime made Spain a refuge for Nazi leaders and war criminals who had fled Hitler’s Germany in the wake of World War II ending.
There’s a long tradition of Nazi hunter dramas, from 1970s movies such as The Odessa File and The Boys from Brazil to the recent Al Pacino Amazon series Hunters, and Jaguar attempts to further that lineage with Isabel Garrido as the young Holocaust survivor going undercover to track down her targets.
Top Picks: Movies + Specials
Kate (September 10)
There was a great deal going on in Birds of Prey, but Mary Elizabeth Winstead stole every scene she was in as Huntress, an angel of vengeance with impeccable comic timing. The American actor has been exceptional in everything from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to season three of Fargo (the best, by the way), and now she headlines this Tokyo-set action movie as a skilled assassin who has 24 hours to track down the antidote to the poison slowly killing her.
The director is Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, the digital effects supervisor who made his feature debut with The Huntsman: Winter’s War, with a stylised setting and choreographed fight scenes for Winstead alongside co-star Woody Harrelson.
Worth (September 3)
The 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is being marked with a slew of scripted and documentary releases, and based on the positive film festival reviews it initially received before Netflix purchased it, Sara Colangelo’s biographical drama may be one of the best. Michael Keaton plays Kenneth Feinberg, the leading U.S. attorney who was tasked with the unprecedented task of deciding how to compensate the families of those killed in the terrorist strikes.
The sheer human cost, and the staggering level of grief, had to be balanced with financial imperatives and government guidelines, putting Feinberg in a seemingly impossible position. It’s an ideal role for Keaton, whose internal unease is so expressive, and he has an exemplary supporting cast that includes Stanley Tucci and Amy Ryan to work with.
All titles arriving on Netflix UK in September
September 1
Cemetery Junction (2010)
Battlefield Behemoths: A History of the Tank – The World Wars (Season 1)
Brave Animated Series season 1)
Chicago Fire (Multiple Seasons)
Chicago Med (Multiple Seasons)
Clique (Seasons 1-2)
Exit Wounds (2001)
Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)
How to Be a Cowboy (Season 1)
HQ Barbers (Season 1)
In Time (2011)
Kid-E-Cats (Season 2)
Kuroko’s Basketball (Season 3)
Lego Marvel Avengers: Climate Conundrum (Limited Series)
Mrs. Wilson (Mini-series)
My Summer Prince (2016)
Old School (2003)
Rush Hour (1998)
Shameless (U.S.) (Season 10)
Shot Caller (2017) –
Something’s Gotta Give (2003)
S.W.A.T. (Season 3)
The Bang Bang Club (2010)
The Guns of Navarone (1961)
The Internship (2013)
The Iron Giant (1999)
Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (Season 1)
September 2
Afterlife of the Party (2021)
Q-Force (Season 1)
The Guardian
September 3
A Closed Book / Blind Revenge (2009)
Bundy and the Green River Killer (2019)
Containment (2015)
Dive Club (Season 1)
Money Heist (Season 5 – Part 1)
Night Wolf (2010)
Pentagram (2019)
Sharkdog (Season 1)
Soul Reaper (2019)
The School of the Damned (2019)
Worth (2021)
Wrong Turn (2021)
September 5
Malcolm X (1992)
Touch Your Heart (Season 1)
September 6
Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space (Season 1 – Episodes 1 & 2)
Shadow Parties (2021)
Tayo The Little Bus (Season 4)
Witch at Court (Season 1)
September 7
Kid Cosmic (Season 2)
Octonauts: Above and Beyond (Season 1)
On the Verge (Season 1)
Untold: Breaking Point (2021)
September 8
Into the Night (Season 2)
JJ+E / Vinterviken 2021 (2021)
September 9
Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali (2021)
The Women and the Murderer (2021)
September 10
1917 (2019)
Bananas!* (2009)
Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas (2017)
Here Are The Young Men (2020)
Kate (2021)
Kiri (Season 1)
L.A.’s Finest (Season 2)
Look Beyond
Lucifer (Season 6)
Maria And Her Shadow (2013)
Metal Shop Masters (Season 1)
Omo Ghetto: the Saga (2021)
Prey (2021)
Sharks
Titipo Titipo (Season 2)
Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
September 11
Mad Dog (Season 1)
Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father (Season 5)
Killing Dad (1989)
The World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals (Season 2)
September 15
Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space (Season 1 – Episodes 3 & 4)
Fall of the Krays (2016)
Nailed It! (Season 6)
Man on Fire (2004)
Nightbooks (2021)
Rise of the Krays (2015)
Rise of the Footsoldier 3: The Pat Tale Story (2017)
Robert the Bruce (2019)
Robot Overlords (2014)
Schumacher (2021)
Too Hot To Handle: Latino (Season 1 – First Three Episodes)
September 16
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (Season 1)
My Heroes Were Cowboys (2021)
The Smart Money Woman (Season 1)
September 17
Black and Blue (2019)
Chicago Party Aunt (Season 1)
Gemini Man (2019)
Justin Bieber: This is my World (2011)
Keeping Up with the Kardashians (Season 6)
Sex Education (Season 3)
Spandex Sapiens (2015)
Squid Game (Season 1)
Solar System: The Secrets of the Universe (2014)
Tayo and Little Wizards (Season 1)
The Father Who Moves Mountains (2021)
The Feminine Genius
The Stronghold (2020)
September 19
Papillon (2017)
September 20
National Treasure (Season 1)
The Accident (Season 1)
The Farewell (2019)
September 21
Love on the Spectrum (Season 2)
Toot-Toot Cory Carson: Chrissy Takes The Wheel (2021)
September 22
Confessions of an Invisible Girl (2021)
Crime Stories: India Detectives (Season 1)
Dear White People (Season 4)
Intrusion (2021)
Jaguar (Season 1)
Monster Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan (Season 1)
September 23
A StoryBots Space Adventure (2021)
Bangkok Breaking (Season 1)
Je Suis Karl (2021)
September 24
Blood & Water (Season 2)
Ganglands (Season 1)
Midnight Mass (Limited Series)
My Little Pony: A New Generation (2021)
The Starling (2021)
Vendetta: Truth, Lies and The Mafia (Season 1)
Waiting For Barcelona (2018)
September 28
Ada Twist, Scientist (Season 1)
September 29
Sounds Like Love (2021)
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