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Most Popular on Netflix: A Look at Today’s Top 10
The most popular movies and TV shows on Netflix today.

Netflix has been notoriously stingy with its data. Even directors and showrunners have had a hard time gauging if what they’d put out into the world was reaching its intended audience. With the advent of the Netflix Top 10, though, we can now get at least one little peek behind the curtain. The list of Netflix’s daily Top 10 Most Popular indicates an omnivorous appetite among the Netflix faithful, from reality shows to prestige TV, animated kids shows to docu-series of every stripe. Here are the entries for May 9, 2022, of the 10 most popular TV shows and movies on Netflix.

1. Ozark

Year: 2017-2022
Creator: Bill Dubuque, Mark Williams
Stars: Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Sofia Hublitz, Skylar Gaertner
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA

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When a white-collar, middle-class family gets involved with the dangerous drug cartel, the Breaking Bad and Weeds comparisons don’t just show up—they’re practically mailed a hand-lettered invitation. And it’s true that the premise of Netflix’s Ozark sets us up for yet another steeply angled slide; by now, we expect we’ll witness the awakening of a desperate man’s latent evil. But there are several critical elements at play to keep the drug-dealing anti-hero trope from feeling like a song we’ve heard one too many times. All these elements center on the prevailing ethics of Ozark’s main character, Martin Byrde (Jason Bateman). Here we see Bateman in a dramatic turn vaguely reminiscent of his most well-known role, as Arrested Development’s Michael Bluth. Martin is a man who wants to be honest, but is willing to lie when he believes his lie to be in the service of the greater good. (In this case, the greater good is his family’s survival). Marty, a financial planner, starts out in the right place at the right time when he stumbles into the opportunity to launder money for—as he endearingly insists on reminding everyone—the second most powerful group of Mexican drug runners. His devotion to “the numbers” and pragmatic, stoic resourcefulness are what make him stand out as a “special” candidate to the cartel’s charismatic (and convincingly terrifying) Chicago liaison, Del (Esai Morales). But Ozark is pinned up by a buoyant implication: that maybe the right person can go a little bit bad, without rotting all the way. Perhaps it is this perpetual game of keep-away that keeps Marty’s hands clean (and his head, for now, intact). The story, at least so far, is one of a man who combats what he’s up against in a way that he believes is right. Ozark takes the anti-hero territory we’ve seen before and elevates it by making its lead not a just a contrarian rule-breaker, but a truly good bad guy—one to root for. —Kate Watson


2. U.S. Marshals

Year: 1998
Director: Stuart Baird
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, Robert Downey Jr., Joe Pantoliano, Kate Nelligan, Irène Jacob
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rating: PG-13

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Tommy Lee Jones reprises his role as U.S. Deputy Marshal Sam Gerard in this spin-off of 1993’s The Fugitive, but the fugitive this time is played by Wesley Snipes, a former CIA operative wanted for homicide. When his plane goes down near the Ohio River, the marshal hunts him down with unwanted assistance from Secret Service Special Agent John Royce, played by Robert Downey Jr.


3. Welcome to Eden

Year: 2022
Creators: Joaquín Górriz, Guillermo López Sánchez
Stars: Amaia Aberasturi, Amaia Salamanca, Belinda Peregrín, Lola Rodríguez
Genre: Sci-fi, Thriller
Rating: TV-MA

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When teens are invited to an exclusive and mysterious festival on a remote island, the party turns out to be more of a cross between Fyre Fest, The Hunger Games and an episode of Lost in this new Spanish sci-fi series.


4. Meltdown: Three Mile Island

Year: 2022
Genre: Docuseries
Rating: TV-14

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In 1979, a malfunction at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania caused a radiation leak. This four-part documentary looks at the infamous Three Mile Island accident and the controversies surrounding it.


5. Grace and Frankie

Year: 2016-2021
Creators: Marta Kauffman, Howard J. Morris
Stars: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen, Sam Waterston, Brooklyn Decker, Ethan Embry, June Diane Raphael, Baron Vaughn
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA

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Sometimes the only thing worse than a flat-out bad show is a woefully mediocre one that thoroughly squanders its vast potential. Indeed, despite its luminous cast, respected creative team (Marta J. Kaufman co-created Friends) and timely subject matter, Grace and Frankie never quite shakes the impression that it’s a broadcast comedy masquerading under a thick layer of “prestige half-hour” make-up. The story centers on the titular characters (Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, respectively) who end up becoming roommates/reluctant friends after their husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) announce they’ve been engaging in a long-term affair with one another and wish to dissolve their marriages to be together. Feeling tossed out to sea in the twilight of their lives, the two women attempt to rediscover life as newly single gals. Cue gags fueled by elder dating, elder sex and the ever-reliable, “elders try to use technology.” It’s essentially How Stella Got Her Groove Back for the septuagenarian sect. These creative shortcomings are all the more disappointing given the unmistakable chemistry between Fonda and Tomlin, not to mention that, as actresses of a certain age, Hollywood is not exactly bowling them over with the roles they deserve. Grace and Frankie is far from a bad show, but it has enough going for it that one wishes it was so much better. —Mark Rozeman


6. Den of Thieves

Year: 2018
Director: Christian Gudegast
Stars: Gerard Butler, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Pablo Schreiber, Dawn Olivieri, Evan Jones, Mo McRae
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rating: R

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Den of Thieves is such a dumb misunderstanding of the genres in which it plays, such a loud, interminable shart of unmitigated machismo, such a heavy-handed rip-off of Heat and The Usual Suspects and even Ocean’s Eleven (and maybe even The Fast and the Furious, but for scumbags) that it feels anachronistic on arrival, the kind of melodramatic, pulpy studio action flick that doesn’t get made anymore because it shouldn’t. Director Christian Gudegast spends 30 of the film’s 130 miserably maundering minutes introducing us to the cavalcade of characters, providing title cards for our trio of main bros: Merrimen (Pablo Schreiber), the ersatz leader of a group of sophisticated bank thieves, an ex-con and perfectly sculpted Long Beach denizen who the movie insists is “smart”; Big Nick (Gerard Butler), stereotypical crooked, beaten-to-shit cop, like a chain-smoking Vic Mackey with bigger biceps and more hair; and Donnie (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), the unflappable link between the two sides of the law, a character who’d seem out of his element if you’d never seen a movie like this before. At no point are we invited to care about any of these people, to understand how we’re supposed to balance the deplorable nature of everything Big Nick does with the utilitarian sophistication of Merrimen and his team of supposed bad guys, who, Gustegand goes to great lengths to assert, don’t kill innocent civilians in their complicated heists (though the same couldn’t be said for the final showdown, in which many innocent civilians undoubtedly eat lead). Instead, we’re asked to choose a side. But there is no choice, and there is no side: Everyone should lose, and everything sucks. —Dom Sinacola


7. Selling Sunset

Year: 2019-2022
Creator: Adam DiVello
Stars: Chrishell Stause, Christine Quinn, Maya Vander, Mary Fitzgerald, Heather Young, Davina Potratz, Romain Bonnet, Amanza Smith, Jason Oppenheim, Brett Oppenheim
Genre: Reality TV

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The real-estate agents to the rich and famous are back for a fifth season of drama, and judging by the episode descriptions, the intra-office rivalries in the Oppenheim Group heat up.


8. The Takedown

Year: 2022
Director: Louis Leterrier
Stars: Omar Sy, Laurent Lafitte, Izïa Higelin
Genre: Action, Comedy
Rating: TV-MA

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How smart does an action movie have to be to be smarter than a Hollywood action movie? It doesn’t have to be inaccessible. It doesn’t have to be dull either. The quick-firing, quick-witted The Takedown stars Omar Sy and Laurent Lafitte (reprising their roles from 2012’s On the Other Side of the Tracks) and is directed by Louis Leterrier. It’s a buddy cop movie about two former partners reunited in Paris to solve a murder in the French country, discovering a white supremacist terrorist conspiracy along the way. It reminds me of Bad Boys, Rush Hour and Hobbes and Shaw, but it’s slightly more critical of police than the former two and far more grounded than the last one. The Takedown is a very good time: A solid action comedy and a window into how a French director with a lot of American projects can turn eclectic influences into an artistic sensibility with wide-ranging appeal, all while directing actors to beat up Nazis. If you’re familiar with the genre, you’ll recognize familiar components. Two leading men with complementary/contradictory personalities and skill sets, and a relatively no-nonsense leading lady that one or both guys are romantically interested in. Sy’s Chief Ousmane Diakité is a sharp investigator and a relentless, sometimes reckless, fighter, but he can be squeamish and isn’t smooth. Lafitte’s Lt. Francois Monge is a lonely but successful and self-assured narcissist, meticulous about protocol and folding his clothes, and an incorrigible womanizer. Izïa Higelin plays Alice, the local police officer guiding them around town and helping them with their investigation, with an apparent mutual attraction to Ousmane—while Francois imagines himself to be a magnet. The Takedown marks a fruitful continuing collaboration between Sy and Leterrier, who directed the first three episodes of Sy’s successful Netflix series Lupin and is set to replace Justin Lin as the director of Fast X. It isn’t a radical or revolutionary movie (it is still about good-guy cops), but it’s refreshing relative to its genre contemporaries. Oh, and watch it in French with English subtitles, which feels a lot more natural than the English dub. —Kevin Fox, Jr.


9. Along for the Ride

Year: 2022
Director: Sofia Alvarez
Stars: Emma Pasarow, Belmont Cameli, Kate Bosworth, Dermot Mulroney, Andie MacDowell, Laura Kariuki, Samia Finnerty, Ricardo Hurtado
Genre: Romance, Drama
Rating: TV-14

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For an uber-specific generation of suburban white girls, picking up a Sarah Dessen novel was once a veritable right of passage. Her effortlessly perfect, fundamentally misunderstood protagonists tended to echo the experiences of countless middle-class young women who identified as academic know-it-alls—but possessed a repressed yet insatiable urge to be romanced by an intriguing, rebellious “other.” This formula is implemented beat-for-beat in Along for the Ride, Dessen’s ninth novel and the most recent to be adapted for the screen. Written and directed by Sofia Alvarez (the screenwriter who adapted Jenny Han’s YA novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before for Netflix and co-wrote its sequel), Along for the Ride surely plays the part of a Dessen novel come to life. However, in her directorial debut, Alvarez falters on surface-level technical skill. Despite this, Along for the Ride is a warm cup of duck soup for the former awkward girl’s soul—right down to the mundane mechanics that make a Dessen novel so irresistibly consumable. Auden (Emma Pasarow) is an academic overachiever who has spent her entire high school career solely focused on university prospects. Now that she’s graduated, she has an entire summer ahead of her. Having grown up with her intellectual feminist mother (Andie MacDowell) after her parents’ porce, Auden decides to spend the summer with her father (Dermot Mulroney), his much younger wife Heidi (Kate Bosworth) and her infant half-sister in the seaside town of Colby. On her first night in Colby, Auden makes the mistake of hooking up with “hot tool” Jake (Ricardo Hurtado)—ex-boyfriend of her coworker Maggie (Laura Kariuki) and younger brother of reclusive bike shop employee Eli (Belmont Cameli). Coincidentally, Auden and Eli are fellow insomniacs. They keep running into each other after-hours in Colby—Auden reads on a pier, Eli zooms by on a BMX bike—and the two quickly develop a courtship while the rest of the town sleeps. Along for the Ride is perfectly cozy, in part due to its formulaic nature. It might not be the most visually stunning work—at times, and it lacks the edge that makes any good coming-of-age flick sizzle—from Juno to Clueless—a sin that’s permissible due to the film’s loving dedication to the source material. —Natalia Keogan


10. The Gentlemen

Year: 2020
Directors: Guy Ritchie
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Michelle Dockery, Colin Farrell, Henry Goldring, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan
Genre: Action, Comedy
Rating: R

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Fresh off of his Disney debut, director Guy Ritchie returned to fast-paced form, with action flick The Gentlemen evoking his earlier films like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The Gentlemen follows American expat Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), who has built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business forever, it triggers plots, schemes, bribery and blackmail in an attempt to steal his domain out from under him. The flick also stars Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, Eddie Marsan, Colin Farrell and Hugh Grant. —Rachita Vasandani