Best new movies and TV series on Netflix UK: October 2021

Each month, loads of new films and TV shows are added to Netflix Australia‘s library. Critic Craig Mathieson presents his picks for titles worth watching. For the full list of everything arriving on the platform, scroll down. Also check out our top 50 movies on Netflix list.

Top Picks: TV

Maid (October 1)

By effortlessly holding the screen opposite Brad Pitt in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, Margaret Qualley announced herself as a breakthrough Hollywood talent. Now the 26-year-old pivots from Manson Family disciple to struggling young mother in this dramatic adaptation of Stephanie Land’s 2019 memoir of the same name.

Qualley plays Alex, a young mother who flees her increasingly threatening partner with their young daughter, finding herself below the poverty line and relying on menial jobs and government programs to put together a new life. The creator of the limited series, Molly Smith Metzler, counts Shameless and Orange is the New Black among her previous gigs, suggesting an understanding of the realities for working-class women in America today.

Seinfeld season one to nine (October 1)

The show about nothing sure is worth a lot these days. Netflix reportedly paid approximately $690 million to get five years of the global streaming rights of the iconic 1990s sitcom. With their sizeable seasons—there are altogether 180 episodes of Seinfeld—and reassuring humour, classic sitcoms have become a major asset class for streaming platforms.

But the show itself, created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, remains an absolute classic of the 22 minute American comedy genre—the best episodes are finely honed, with Seinfeld surrounded by the masterful comic performances of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Michael Richards. The best episode of all? The Contest (4.11)

You season three (October 15)

A psychological thriller so seductively lodged in the perspective of its nightmarish protagonist that some fans stopped seeing the monstrousness of his actions, You has become a surprise hit on Netflix. Penn Badgley (Gossip Girl) plays Joe Goldberg, a book store manager whose romantic obsessiveness makes him into a sociopathic murderer.

It’s a bracing performance—charismatic, creepy, and immersive, with Joe’s persuasive inner monologue as a narration rife with justification and mordant contradictions. The first season was set in New York, the second in Los Angeles—a struggle for the misanthropic Joe—and now the third ups the stakes by giving him a family life in the suburbs.

Colin in Black & White (October 29)

Since May 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the sight of athletes taking a knee during a national anthem to acknowledge racial injustice has become widespread. But for one of the original American sports stars who pioneered the protest in 2016, Colin Kaepernick, it ended his career. Then the San Francisco 49ers quarterback in the NFL, no team has been willing to offer him a contract since 2017.

Kaepernick has carried on his activism, and this dramatic limited series—created by Kaepernick and director Ava DuVernay (Selma, When They See Us)—uses his teenage upbringing, the adopted Black son of white parents played by Mary-Louise Parker and Nick Offerman, as a lens to explain why he later took such a controversial and costly stand.

Top Picks: Movies + Specials

The Guilty (October 1)

More than a few of the glowing reviews for The Guilty, Danish filmmaker Gustav Moller’s intimate 2018 thriller about a tarnished police officer who takes an emergency phone call from a young woman at risk, noted that the film’s sparse structure and technical innovation made it a candidate for an English language remake.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s production company subsequently secured the rights, and the Nightcrawler star now takes the lead role, with Riley Keough (The Girlfriend Experience) on the other end of the line, while the adaptation is by Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) and Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) directs. That is a considerable amount of talent, with the film’s biggest risk being that accommodating all of them detracts from the concept that made the original so gripping.

Army of Thieves (October 29)

Could something worthwhile yet come from Army of the Dead? Zack Snyder’s overblown and unsatisfying zombie heist epic was a disappointment on Netflix in May, but it’s followed by this prequel based on Army’s skittish German safecracker, Ludwig Dieter (Matthias Schweighofer).

The actor, who is also a filmmaker in his own right, directs this European crime adventure, which is set in the early days of the original’s undead uprising. Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones) co-stars, with Dieter an even more jumpy and joyous underworld participant. If it works, I’d like a spin-off Army of the Dead romantic comedy.

All titles arriving on Netflix UK in October

October 1

27 Steps of May (2018)
Anatomy (2000)
A Sinister Sect: Colonia Dignidad (Season 1)
Addams Family Values
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Body of Lies (2008)
Carlito’s Way (1993)
Clueless
Creeped Out (Season 2)
Contagion (2011)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Diana: The Musical (2021)
Effie Gray (2014)
Fight Club (1999)
Forever Rich (2021)
Halloween (1978)
Halloween II (1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989)
Heat (1995)
Inside Job (2010)
Jumper (2008)
Killer Women with Piers Morgan (Season 1)
Knight and Day (2010)
Love & Other Drugs (2010)
Love You To Death (2019)
Maid (Limited Series)
Marley & Me (2008)
Oats Studio (Volume 1)
Paik’s Spirit (Season 1)
Pavlova – A Woman for all Time (1983)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Scaredy Cats (Season 1)
Seinfeld (Seasons 1-9)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Shutter Island (2010)
Spider-man (2002)
Swallow (2021)
The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)
The Crowned Clown (Season 1)
The Green Mile (1999)
The Guilty (2021)
The Haunting (1999)
The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
The Rite (2011)
The Seven Deadly Sins: Cursed by Light (2021)
The Terminal (2004)
The Town (2010)
Till Death (2021)
V for Vendetta (2005)

October 3

Scissor Seven (Season 3)
Simply Raymond Blanc (Season 1)

October 4

On My Block (Season 4)

October 5

Adult Material (Limited Series)

October 6

Bad Sport (Volume 1)
Baking Impossible (Season 1 – First 6 Episodes)
Love is Blind: Brazil (Season 1)
The Five Juanas (Season 1)
There’s Someone Inside Your House (2021)

October 7

The Billion Dollar Code (Limited Series)
The Ingenuity of the Househusband (Season 1)
The Way of the Househusband (Part 2)

October 8

A Tale of Dark & Grimm (Season 1)
Angeliena (2021)
Family Business (Season 3)
House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths (Limited Series)
My Brother, My Sister (2021)
Pokemon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle (2021)
Pretty Smart (Season 1)
The Lighthouse (2019)

October 9

Blue Period (Season 1 – New Episodes)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

October 10

Behind the Players
Lee & Cindy C. (2015)
The Atom: A Love Affair (2019)
The Magic of the Diary of Anne Frank

October 11

Little Things (Season 4)
Shazam! (2019)
The Baby-Sitters Club (Season 2)

October 12

Bright: Samurai Soul (2021)
Convergence: Courage in a Crisis (2021)
Making Malinche: A Documentary by Nacho Cano (2021)
The Movies That Made Us (Season 3)

October 13

Fever Dream (2021)
Violet Evergarden: The Movie (2020)

October 14

A World Without (2021)
Another Life (Season 2)
One Night in Paris (2021)
Slashers (2001)

October 15

CoComelon (Season 4)
Karma’s World (Season 1)
Little Things (Season 4)
Monk Comes Down the Mountain (2015)
My Name (Season 1)
Sharkdog’s Fintastic Halloween (2021)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
The Forgotten Battle (2021)
The Four of Us (2021)
The Trip (2021)
Unfaithful (2002)
You (Season 3)

October 16

Last Christmas (2019)
Luce (2019)
Misfit: The Series (Season 1)

October 17

Margaret Thatcher: The Iron Lady (2012)

October 19

Gabby’s Dollhouse (Season 3)
In for a Murder (2021)

October 20

Found (2021)
Night Teeth (2021)

October 21

Insiders (Season 1)
Komi Can’t Communicate (Season 1 – New Episodes Weekly)
Life’s a Glitch with Julien Bam (Season 1)
Sex, Love & goop (Season 1)

October 22

Adventure Beast (Season 1)
Inside Job (Season 1)
Locke & Key (Season 2)
More than Blue: The Series (Season 1)
Panihida (2012)
The Raincoat Killer: Chasing a Predator in Korea (Season 1)