In life and cinema, drama is everywhere. You’ll find it in thrillers, animations, romances, you name it. For entertainment that explores the human experience with sensitivity and sincerity, here’s a mixed bag of the best dramas to stream now.
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller, War
Actor: Amir Ranjbar, Aram Ghasemy, Arash Marandi, Avin Manshadi, Babak Anvari, Behi Djanati Atai, Bijan Daneshmand, Bobby Naderi, Hamid Djavadan, Hamidreza Djavdan, Houshang Ranjbar, Nabil Koni, Narges Rashidi, Ray Haratian, Sajjad Delafrooz, Soussan Farrokhnia
Director: Babak Anvari
2005 was a banner year for British period dramas, apparently: first, there was Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (still arguably the genre’s crowning achievement), and then came Under the Greenwood Tree, a delightful made-for-Christmas-TV romance loosely based on the eponymous Thomas Hardy novel. Anyone familiar with the author’s typically tragedy-tinged stories — think Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Far From the Madding Crowd — will find themselves surprised by the light, pleasant tone of this one, in which the closest anyone gets to violent revenge is sabotaging a church organ by pouring a flagon of cider into it.
The romance here is threefold: when Keeley Hawes’ spinster schoolteacher Fancy Day (genuinely her name) arrives in an English village, she ignites a rivalry between wealthy farmer Shiner (Steve Pemberton), haughty clergyman Parson Maybold (Ben Miles), and James Murray’s die-hard romantic Dick Dewy (again: the names in this are a choice). The trio’s simultaneous attempted courting of Fancy doubles as both the entertaining will-she-won’t-she stuff of romantic dramas and a conduit through which the movie explores the class dynamics in England during the 19th century. It’s this deft intertwining of satisfying romantic period drama tropes with genuine reflection on the historical period itself — all while remaining lighthearted — that makes this underseen adaptation worth watching.
Genre: Drama, Romance, TV Movie
Actor: Ben Miles, James Murray, Keeley Hawes, Richard Leaf, Steve Pemberton, Terry Mortimer, Tom Georgeson, Tony Haygarth
Director: Nicholas Laughland
Genre: Drama, Romance
Actor: Alex Felix, Anne Joyce, Bianca Giancoli, Bob Ari, Brian Hopson, Carmen M. Herlihy, Craig Walker, David Cale, David Ross, Don Hewitt Jr., Elias Koteas, Elliot Villar, Franco Bulaon, Geronimo Frias, Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Isabella Rossellini, Jeanine Serralles, Joaquin Phoenix, John Ortiz, Julie Budd, Mari Koda, Marion McCorry, Mark Vincent, Moni Moshonov, Nick Gillie, Renee Fishman, RJ Konner, Saidah Arrika Ekulona, Samantha Ivers, Shiran Nicholson, Uzimann, Vinessa Shaw
Director: James Gray
Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Actor: André Øvredal, Anton Yelchin, Eirik Bech, Glenn Erland Tosterud, Hans Morten Hansen, Inge Erik Henjesand, Johanna Mørck, Johanna Mørck, Kelsey Grammer, Knut Nærum, Knut Nærum, Lexi Medrano, Otto Jespersen, Robert Stoltenberg, Tomas Alf Larsen, TomTom Jorgensen, Torunn Lødemel Stokkeland, Urmila Berg-Domaas
Director: André Øvredal, André Øvredal
Among the sea of class satires released in the last year, Triangle of Sadness is one of the better ones. Directed by Ruben Östlund (The Square, Force Majeure), the film follows an ultra-rich group of people who get stranded on an island after their luxury cruise ship sinks. The social pyramid that has long favored them suddenly turns upside down when a crew member (a glowing Dolly de Leon) effectively runs the group of sheltered castaways.
Triangle of Sadness may not be as sharp as Östlund’s previous work, and it may not add anything particularly new to the saturated discussions of social class, but it remains a darkly humorous and engaging watch, masterfully helmed by a strong script and ensemble.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Alex Schulman, Alicia Eriksson, Amanda Schulman, Amanda Walker, Arvin Kananian, Beata Borelius, Camilla Läckberg, Carolina Gynning, Charlbi Dean, Christina Saliba, Dolly de Leon, Emma Warg, Fredrik Quinones, Fredrik Wikingsson, Hanna Oldenburg, Harris Dickinson, Hedda Rehnberg, Henrik Dorsin, Iris Berben, Jean-Christophe Folly, Karin Myrenberg, Linda Anborg, Malte Gårdinger, Nana Manu, Oliver Ford Davies, Ralph Schicha, Shaniaz Hama Ali, Stefan Godicke, Sunnyi Melles, Vicki Berlin, Woody Harrelson, Zlatko Burić
Director: Ruben Östlund
Every episode of Totally Completely Fine begins with a trigger warning, and rightly so—the show's entire premise is about mental health, grief, and self-harm. Vivian, the lead (a captivating Thomasin McKenzie), is an orphan who goes on benders and ideates about killing herself. Things escalate when she inherits a cliffside house that doubles as a popular suicide spot and gains a prying (albeit good-natured) psychiatrist as a neighbor. All these elements, and a couple more, force her to confront her repressed trauma once and for all.
It sounds bleak, and it should be difficult to watch, but the show is a successful dark comedy. It strikes that rare deft balance between tragedy and comedy, highlighting painful truths with cutting humor and delivering jokes tinged with poignant insight. Vivian and her siblings are not entirely likable, but their brokenness and vulnerability make them all the more relatable, the perfect guides to hold your hand through this totally messy, completely enthralling, and finely compassionate show.
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Actor: Devon Terrell, Rowan Witt, Thomasin McKenzie
In this documentary by Bianca Stigter, a three-minute home video of a nondescript Jewish town in Poland is examined in great detail to reveal the history and humanity behind it. Taken just before the Holocaust, it’s one of the few remaining proofs of life the town has before its population was decimated in the war. And so the footage is repeated and stretched in this documentary, because as the narrator puts it, “as long as we are watching, history is not over yet,” and the people have yet to be gone.
Glenn Kurtz, the grandson of the person who shot the home video, takes it upon himself to investigate the history of the town and its citizens: what they were and what became of them. The results are often grim and unsettling, and the eerie editing matches them with great effect. But when it's not haunting, the film is oddly hopeful—for a future that remembers its past and preserves it in meaningful ways. Couple this sentiment with the narrator’s own poetic observations, and you get a powerfully moving elegy about loss and memory.
Genre: Documentary, Drama, History
Actor: Helena Bonham Carter
Director: Bianca Stigter
A relatively straightforward story of a village of Sotho people building the courage to resist unwanted development on their land and the erasure of their culture, the rousingly titled This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection wastes no time on the oppressors' point of view. For director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, there is no debate: these people are more important than any markers of progress hoping to displace them. Their struggle is rendered in some of the most crisp and colorful cinematography you could hope to see, with a powerful performance by the late, great Mary Twala front and center, channeling so much sadness into fury and determination.
Genre: Drama
Actor: Jerry Mofokeng, Jerry Mofokeng Wa, Makhaola Ndebele, Mary Twala, Siphiwe Nzima-Ntskhe, Tseko Monaheng
Director: Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Genre: Crime, Drama
Actor: Andrew Ellis, Andrew Shim, Chanel Cresswell, Danielle Watson, Frank Harper, George Newton, Hannah Walters, Jack O'Connell, Jack O'Connell, Jo Hartley, Joseph Gilgun, Kieran Hardcastle, Kriss Dosanjh, Michael Socha, Perry Benson, Rosamund Hanson, Stephen Graham, Terry Haywood, Thomas Turgoose, Vicky McClure
Director: Shane Meadows
It’s bold to make a film about a legendary icon of cinema, but it’s even bolder to make one about Orson Welles. Best known for making Citizen Kane (universally agreed upon as one of the best movies ever made), Orson Welles is the renegade filmmaker whose works and techniques form the foundation of modern narrative filmmaking today. In his eyes, he asserts that the best films are made by accident. However, armed with archival footage and interviews with those closest to Welles, director Morgan Neville dares to question one of cinema’s biggest geniuses by examining the production of his last unfinished film, the Hollywood satire The Other Side of the Wind. While Welles was undeniably genius - able to inscrutably visualize a film without scripts - it’s easy to see how his tendency to stoke conflict for art could be so self-destructive. This film presents Welles as he is - both a cinema maverick and also an overly demanding artistic tyrant.
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Actor: Alan Cumming, Andrés Vicente Gómez, Cameron Mitchell, Cybill Shepherd, Danny Huston, Dennis Hopper, Frank Marshall, Gary Graver, George Stevens Jr., Henry Jaglom, Jeanne Moreau, John Huston, Joseph Cotten, Joseph McBride, Keith Baxter, Michael Fitzgerald, Neil Canton, Norman Foster, Oja Kodar, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Peter Jason, Rich Little, Robert Random, Simon Callow
Director: Morgan Neville
An eccentric billionaire. A freakishly strong character who is ashamed of his strength. A Captain America-esque leader. An old mentor in the form of a wise talking monkey. You guessed it; The Umbrella Academy is about superheroes.
One fateful day in 1989 many women across the globe give birth at the same time, but at the start of that day, none of them were pregnant. The eccentric billionaire adopts a number of these children to form The Umbrella Academy, a collective similar to X-Men or The Avengers. Except, because they are all kind of related, this show is about their family dynamic as much as it is about their superpowers.
The Umbrella Academy is an entertaining story of superheroes that is rarely original but always enjoyable. Ellen Page plays one of the kids (the black sheep of the family who has no superpowers), and she’s a joy to watch.
And substantial bonus: Mary J. Blige (!) plays a hitman.
Genre: Action, Action & Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Actor: Adam Godley, Aidan Gallagher, Cameron Britton, Cameron Brodeur, Colm Feore, David Castañeda, David Castañeda, Eden Cupid, Ellen Page, Elliot Page, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Génesis Rodríguez, Justin H. Min, Mary J. Blige, Ritu Arya, Robert Sheehan, Tom Hopper
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Actor: Annie St-Pierre, Brent Skagford, Catherine St-Laurent, Charlotte Legault, Dan Beirne, Emmanuel Schwartz, Gordon Masten, Guillaume Lambert, Jadyn Malone, Kee Chan, Louis Negin, Marie Brassard, Martin Dubreuil, Mikhaïl Ahooja, Richard Jutras, Sarianne Cormier, Seán Cullen, Simon Lacroix
Director: Matthew Rankin
By imagining a plausible world in which World War II is avoided when an American populist president cozies up to Hitler, The Plot Against America becomes an effective allegory for all the ways well-meaning citizens gradually allow fascists to take power. Every perspective espoused by the Levins—a Jewish family grappling with the new president's endorsement of anti-Semitism—is treated as just one partially correct response that's ultimately just too little, too late. These ideological discussions that make up the heart of the miniseries are nevertheless filmed on a grand scale, and played with real fervor by an ensemble cast that includes Morgan Spector, Zoe Kazan, Winona Ryder, and John Turturro.
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, War & Politics
Actor: Anthony Boyle, Azhy Robertson, John Turturro, Morgan Spector, Winona Ryder, Zoe Kazan
The Painter and the Thief opens with a great hook: an artist tracks down and confronts the man who stole her painting. In a surprising turn, the two become close and develop an intimacy that deepens when she begins to paint the troubled man.
Yet, director Benjamin Ree pushes past where other documentarians would have been content to stop, and instead begins to deconstruct the very narrative we’ve followed up till now. At its core, this is a film about the way we tell stories about ourselves and others, and how often people don’t fit into the neat categories we set out for them.
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Actor: Bjørn Inge Nordland, Karl-Bertil Nordland
Director: Benjamin Ree
This creepy miniseries stars Jason Bateman, Bill Camp, and Ben Mendelsohn. Based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, it follows an investigation into the horrific murder of a child where all evidence leads to the local baseball coach, Terry Maitland (Bateman). However, Terry's demeanor and his shock when the police come to arrest him raise questions about whether he actually committed the crime. It's a grim and slow-burning story with immaculate acting although it suffers from the thing it aspires the most to: the (not entirely satisfying) book. Created by The Wire writer Richard Price.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Horror, Mystery
Actor: Ben Mendelsohn, Bill Camp, Cynthia Erivo, Jason Bateman, Jeremy Bobb, Julianne Nicholson, Marc Menchaca, Mare Winningham, Paddy Considine, Yul Vazquez