Best new movies and TV series on Netflix UK: December 2022

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

The Recruit: Season one (December 16)

They grow up so fast. For the last few years American actor Noah Centineo has been the dreamy hunk providing square-jawed gravity in Netflix’s romantic-comedy franchise, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. After three instalments of the hit teen movies, the 26-year-old is rewarded with his own drama franchise, where Centineo plays a newly hired lawyer for the CIA dealing with a vengeful agency asset.

The creator is Alexi Hawley (Castle), but it remains to be seen what form the CIA takes in the show, and what tasks Centineo’s Owen Hendricks will undertake. Didn’t Jack Ryan start as a desk-bound analyst?

Emily in Paris: Season three (December 21)

Be honest: can you remember how season two of Emily in Paris concluded? For the record, Lily Collins’ budding American fashionista had to make decisions at the office, where the French colleagues who’d slowly come around to her were launching their own company—and in her heart, where former boyfriend Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) was slipping away as current London beau Alfie (Lucien Laviscount) drew closer. But the plot in Darren Star’s daft romantic-comedy is always pliable and the outfits are ludicrously over the top. This show does nothing by half.

The Witcher: Blood Origin (December 25)

Four words: Michelle Yeoh, sword-elf. Set 1200 years prior to the events of Netflix’s fantasy hit—which has just changed leading men from Henry Cavill to Liam Hemsworth—the Blood Origin prequel is a four-part limited series that will explain how the first Witcher came to be. Witcher creator Lauren Schmidt Hissrich is in charge, and hopefully the show will make the most of its clean slate.

The supporting cast in a story of warriors, elves, and quests includes Lenny Henry and Dylan Moran, which is promising. But this is the Yeoh show—the star of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Everything Everywhere All at Once should dominate this story.

Top Picks: Movies + Specials

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (December 2)

Banned in numerous countries and then heavily edited for decades, often until landmark obscenity trials were fought, D.H. Lawrence’s 1932 novel about the affair between the upper-class wife of an aristocrat and their working-class gamekeeper was a 20th century media sensation.

There have been more than a dozen screen adaptations—Ken Russell for the BBC in 1993 with Sean Bean and Joely Richardson was notable—and now Netflix takes the plunge with French filmmaker Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre (The Mustang) directing Emma Corrin (The Crown) and Jack O’Connell (Unbroken). The usual caveat applies: how do you film sexually intimate scenes that were groundbreaking in print 70 years ago?

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (December 23)

Writer-director Rian Johnson and star Daniel Craig hit the absolute cinematic sweet spot with 2019’s Knives Out, a terrific update of the classic murder mystery complete with a brilliant but eccentric detective and a single shared location.

Netflix have paid roughly $700 million for two sequels, the first of which is set on a Greek island owned by Edward Norton’s billionaire, who invites Craig’s Benoit Blanc and a group of friends for a murder mystery game where the murder part proves a little too authentic. The supporting cast is juicily good: Kate Hudson, Janelle Monae, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr, and Dave Bautista as a men’s rights activist. Done right, this should sing.

White Noise (December 30)

What did you do during pandemic lockdown? Filmmaker Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) adapted Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel, an inscrutably precise evocation of existential dread and inexplicable malaise that overcome a college professor, his wife, and their children, following a chemical spill. The book is a modern masterpiece, masterfully off-kilter, and deeply prescient: it wryly foresaw everything from academic boundary pushing to consumer crises and disaster anxiety.

Baumbach has frequent collaborator Adam Driver as his leading man, Jack Gladney, with Baumbach’s wife, Greta Gerwig, as Jack’s wife Babette. White Noise has long been considered an unfilmable book. We’ll soon know whether that’s true.

All titles arriving on Netflix UK in December

December 1

Archer: Season 13
Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper
Blippi Wonders: Season 2
A Christmas Miracle for Daisy
A Kindhearted Christmas
Angel Falls Christmas
Christmas Time Is Here
Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas
Split Gravy on Rice
Stuart Little
The Masked Scammer
The Raven

December 2

Firefly Lane: Season 2 Part 1
Hot Skull: Season 1
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
My Unorthodox Life: Season 2
Scrooge: A Christmas Carol
“Sr.”
Supermodel Me: Revolution: Season 1

December 5

Mighty Express: Mighty Trains Race: Season 1

December 6

Boss Baby: Christmas Bonus
Delivery by Christmas
Sebastian Maniscalco: Is It Me?

December 7

Burning Patience
I Hate Christmas: Season 1
Smiley: Season 1
The Marriage App
The Most Beautiful Flower: Season 1
Too Hot To Handle: Season 4

December 8

In Broad Daylight: The Narvarte Case
The Elephant Whisperers

December 9

CAT: Season 1
Dragon Age: Absolution: Season 1
Dream Home Makeover: Season 4
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

December 13

Gudetama: An Eggcellent Adventure: Season 1
Last Chance U: Basketball: Season 2

December 14

Glitter: Season 1
Kangaroo Valley

December 15

Sonic Prime: Season 1
The Big 4

December 16

A Storm for Christmas
BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Cook at all Costs: Season 1
Dance Monsters: Season 1
Far From Home: Season 1
How to Ruin Christmas: Season 3
Paradise PD: Season 4
Summer Job: Season 1
The Recruit: Season 1