15 new Netflix originals to keep you busy this May

Bethany Lewis

Photo Credit: Netflix

Spring is here and Netflix has a new slate of exciting original series to binge!

Netflix is releasing so many new original series this month that it might be difficult to know which is worth your time and which to make a priority. Even after sorting through over 50 titles coming this May, you’re left with 15 of the best to make it easier to prioritize and schedule your bingeing schedule.

Dead to Me – May 3

This series, written by Liz Feldman (2 Broke Girls) and produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (Anchorman), is billing itself as a dark comedy but early reviews can’t quite pin down the show’s uneven tone. Part heartwarming buddy comedy, part crime thriller, Christina Applegate stars as Jen, a woman who recently lost her husband in a hit and run accident. She meets the quirky and mysterious Judy (Linda Cardellini) at a grief support group and the two form an unlikely friendship.

While the trailer is full of frolicking and fun between the two women, there seems to be a dark mystery afoot, not just about Jen’s husband’s death but about the possibly unstable Jen. James Marsden’s character claims that “wherever Judy goes, chaos tends to follow.” My totally uninformed guess is that it was Judy who killed Jen’s husband and then intentionally befriended her at the support group. Let me know if I’m right.

Photo Credit: Netflix

Tucca & Bertie – May 3

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As you can probably tell from the animation style of this series about the friendship between two bird women, the show was created by BoJack Horseman illustrator Lisa Hanawalt. The series is like BoJack Horseman in the sense that the anthropomorphic animal characters experience deeply human concerns and face relatable life situations. The series stars Tiffany Haddish as the outgoing Tuca the toucan and Ali Wong as the shy and anxious Bertie the songbird. As Amanda Hess of the New York Times points out, “Cartoons are typically made for children, and adult cartoons are typically made for man-children.” This is the rare cartoon that is written from the perspective of and aimed at adult women.

And as a cartoon about women, it might be off-putting for some who don’t like to admit to the gross, bodily, sexual – in short, human – side of women, but for Hanawalt, that is very much the point. “It was very important to me to show that women are gross,” she explains. There are so many unrealistic and lofty standards that women are held to that ultimately dehumanize them, and one of those standards are not being “gross.” Being human is sometimes gross, therefore Tuca & Bertie will sometimes be gross. And despite the fact that they are birds, they will be very human indeed.

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Undercover – May 3

Based on the trailer for this quirky Dutch/Belgian co-production, Undercover looks like an intense crime thriller with dark comedy aspects. The plot is inspired by real events as the Dutch and Belgian police join forces in order to take down an elusive drug lord. The police services team up their best undercover agents to pose as a married couple and befriend the drug lord. The mission is to gain the drug lord’s trust and infiltrate his criminal network in order to take it down. There are obviously a few cultural and personal clashes along the way between the two undercover agents, but they seem to be mostly light-hearted and humorous interactions.

As with any forced fake marriage storyline, there are bound to be some comical aspects to their relationship and interactions. But any undercover storyline also evokes the constant tension from the fear of being found out. It is, after all, high stakes, life-or-death situation if their cover should be blown. Despite the underlying dread, Undercover looks like a lot of fun.

The series stars Tom Waes (The Memory of a Killer), Anna Drijver (Loft), Frank Lammers (Admiral), Elise Schaap (Familie Kruys), and Raymond Thiry (The Paradise Suite).

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – NOVEMBER 06: Actress Park Bo-Young arrives at the 46th Daejong Film Awards at Olympic Hall on November 6, 2009 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

Abyss – May 6

Abyss is a weird looking, whimsical, science fiction/fantasy Korean series about two people who are resurrected into new bodies after their death. While Cha Min (Hyo-Seop Ahn) is respawned into a sexier, more handsome body, Ko Se-Yeon (Bo-Young Park) finds herself in a body that “lacks sexiness but seems amiable.” She’s cute, but not the bombshell she was before her tragic accident. Its a simple lesson in vanity. It looks fun and romantic but there also seems to be some kind of mystery involved regarding the cause of their deaths. A killer is out there and they team up to track him or her down. There’s action, comedy, romance, and some kind of supernatural force at work. It’s so Korean.

Lucifer Season 4 – May 8

Lucifer, the urban fantasy drama based on Neil Gaiman’s character from The Sandman comics, actually spent its first three seasons on FOX. As usually happens in genre television with small fandoms, the ratings didn’t quite meet standards and FOX canceled the struggling show. Enter Netflix, as it often does, to help those special genre shows finish telling their story. The show is about the Devil, Lucifer Morningstar (Tom Ellis), who abandons hell to become a night club owner and consultant for the LAPD. The series fourth season will consist of 10 episodes. If you want to watch but don’t have time to catch up on the previous three seasons before the premiere, Netflix just released this delightful recap of pretty much everything you need to know. Just based on that, I’d totally watch it.

Photo Credit: Netflix

The Society – May 10

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The Society is sort of a mysterious, modern take on William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. A group of affluent teens wakes up in a replica of their town without any trace of their parents. How they discover it’s a replica is a mystery to be revealed in itself, but that’s another plot point. Things play out about as you would think as the teenagers start with partying to celebrate their newfound independence and degenerate quickly into looting, property destruction, assault, and murder.

It’s a story about how civilization breaks down once the structure of society and law is removed. Since these teens have been removed from their own town to a replica, one assumes that they have perhaps become a part of some kind of government experiment. If we want to go even further into the realm of science fiction and fantasy, they could even be part of an alien experiment, but I think the sinister undercurrents of the experiment point more to human government interference.

The Netflix original also nabbed star-on-the-rise Kathryn Newton. She’ll also be seen this May on the big screen as the female lead of Detective Pikachu and on HBO’s Big Little Lies.

The Rain Season Two – May 17

The Rain is a Danish horror series about a deadly virus that is transmitted through the rain and has killed off most of the world’s population. Six years after the initial outbreak, siblings Rasmus and Simone come out of hiding to track down their father and find a cure for the virus. Sinister secrets were revealed at the end of season one, putting the siblings and what remains of the world in danger.

The trailer for season two looks super intense, with Rasmus having been infected with a mutated strain of the virus and leadership trying to capture him for experimentation and weaponization. His sister is desperate to save him and will do pretty much anything to ensure his survival. Meanwhile, life in post-apocalyptic Denmark looks a lot like the Hunger Games. Despite, or maybe because of, Danes’ general happiness and life satisfaction, they are capable of creating some of the darkest and most disturbing television series out there. Denmark excels at crime thrillers and atmospheric fairy tales, and apparently post-apocalyptic science fiction horror as well.

The series stars Alba August (Becoming Astrid), Lucas Lyngaard Tønnesen (Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes), and Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (A Royal Affair).

Photo Credit: Netflix

White Gold Season Two – May 17

White Gold is a very British comedy about double-glazed window salesmen in Essex during the 1980s. Combine The Office’s everyday comedic mundanity and awkwardness with Anchorman’s anachronistic social attitudes with a hint of American Psycho, White Gold is all this and more. Created by Damon Beesley, who is also known for The Inbetweeners and his work on Flight of the Conchords, the series stars Ed Westwick as Vincent Swan, who presents the double-glazed window business to the audience like he’s Ray Liotta living the high life in Goodfellas. This is in stark contrast to the reality of his life, working out of a drab office selling plastic window frames in a rural/industrial English county. That being said, the series is slick, stylish, fast-paced, smart, and fantastically funny.

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Slasher: Solstice – May 23

Slasher is a Canadian horror anthology series created by Aaron Martin (Degrassi: The Next Generation) and originally aired on Chiller. The series was picked up by Netflix in its second season when Chiller went defunct. The first season, subtitled “The Executioner,” focused on a mysterious figure that terrorizes a small Canadian town. Season two, subtitled “Guilty Party,” followed a group of former camp counselors as they are killed off by an unknown assassin. Slasher’s ten-episode third season is subtitled “Solstice” and follows a killer out to avenge the death of a young man when his neighbors in the apartment building did nothing to prevent his murder. Sounds a lot like the plot of an episode of The Good Cop, but I’m sure it will be longer and less funny, but scary!

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Alta Mar – May 24

This is Netflix’s fourth Spanish original series and information about it is as mysterious as its plot. Described as a “mystery with melodrama,” Alta Mar – or “High Seas” – follows a murder investigation aboard a luxury liner bound for Brazil from Spain in the 1940s. “A murder is committed – of a woman passenger not on the passenger list and whom no one remembers. Only one thing seems certain: The murderer cannot leave the ship.” Given the high drama tone and the lavish period setting, it sounds like a Spanish Agatha Christie novel.

While the series is meant to appeal to all ages and demographics, the Agatha Christie-style plot will certainly delight older viewers while the melodrama aspect is meant to attract female soap opera fans. Despite the lavish period set design, the series as a whole is shot with handheld viewing in mind, preferring close-ups and medium shots that play best on phone screens over the wide frame takes that would show off production design. While it does sound like the producers are making the series more with popularity in mind than anything else, I must say that whatever they’re doing is working. Generic and consumable as it sounds, it also sounds absolutely delightful and fun.

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She’s Gotta Have It Season Two – May 24

She’s Gotta Have It is Spike Lee’s series adaptation of his own 1986 film of the same name. The film was revolutionary for its time, depicting the story of an independent single woman who is seeing three men at once. At its heart, it is a commentary on the sexual freedom that men enjoy without consequence or judgment that women are denied and shamed for. When her suitors find out about each other, turmoil ensues as they each attempt to force her into choosing one of them.

She comes to the conclusion that compromising her independence to be with one man is a moment of weakness, that submitting to the place in which society has put her is sacrificing her freedom. The fact that this storyline is still relevant enough to make into a modern television series says a lot about the social constrictions still placed on women and the double standards to which they are held. Spike Lee directs all episodes himself and executive produces alongside his wife Tonya Lewis Lee.

The series stars DeWanda Wise who recently appeared on CBS’ The Twilight Zone and co-starred in the Netflix film Someone Great.

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WHAT / IF – May 24

This looks like a lavish, high budget, trashy soap opera – and it looks like so much fun. Renee Zellweger stars in this anthology thriller about “what happens when acceptable people start doing unacceptable things.” The series examines the ripple effect on the lives of people caught up in the current of one person’s fateful decision. Each season will focus on a different morality tale related to a choice and the characters affected as collateral damage.

It’s almost like a Black Mirror focused around impulse control, self-policing, and self-awareness. The first season is about a pair of cash-strapped newlyweds who get coerced into committing terrible acts with the promise of financial gain. Zellweger stars as the sketchy benefactor who entices them into sin, while Jane Levy (Castle Rock) and Blake Jenner (Glee) play the newlyweds. The trailer features an elegantly dressed Zellweger walking through a room full of sexy people behaving scandalously, with plenty betrayal and double-crossing implied. Zellweger asks, “What would you risk for a chance to have it all?” Juicy!

This is also Zellweger’s major return to television. She hasn’t been on the silver screen since the television movie Shake, Rattle, and Rock! in 1994. While she did voice a character on King of the Hill in 2001, this is definitely her first major role for TV.

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Bad Blood Season Two – May 31

Bad Blood is a Canadian crime drama about the real-life Montreal based mafia organization led by the Rizzuto family. While the first season is based on true events pulled from the 2015 book Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War by Antonio Nicaso and Peter Edwards, the second season will be mostly fictionalized. Season one featured Anthony LaPaglia as crime boss Vito Rizzuto himself, who was killed off at the end of the season.

Season two takes place five years after Rizzuto’s death and betrayal at the hands of new boss Declan Gardiner (Kim Coates). The series is filled with Shakespearean level crosses and double-crosses, twisted plots, and secret betrayals. As with many mafia stories, its all about the struggle for power, and everyone is either trying to keep it or get it, by any means possible. Bad Blood is a smart, well-paced, tightly plotted crime thriller, all set in the unassuming location of Canada.

The second season has a huge main cast with Kim Coates, Ryan McDonald, Sharon Taylor, Anna Hopkins, Gianni Falcone, Louis Ferreira, Daniel Kash, Franco Lo Presti, Dylan Taylor, Melanie Scrofano, and Lisa Berry with Pedro Miguel Arce credited as recurring.

When They See Us – May 31

This is an intense, racially charged, controversial true story about the Central Park Five – five black teenagers who were wrongly profiled and subsequently convicted for the brutal rape of a woman in New York City’s Central Park. Ava DuVernay is the multi-talented and trailblazing director, writer, and producer behind the four-episode series which stars Michael K. Williams (The Wire), Vera Farmiga (Bates Motel), and John Leguizamo (Bloodline) and is executive produced by Oprah. So it’s kind of a big deal. DuVernay has set a lot of firsts for black women in the entertainment industry and often produces important works related to social justice and racial issues.

While she recently directed the live-action adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time, she also became the first black female director to have a film nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture with Selma (2014). While the convictions of the five teens in the case were later vacated in 2002, it does nothing to excuse the first class witchhunt which prompted their arrest and conviction in the first place. The series is bound to be full of drama and important social commentary, which is not less relevant today than when the events took place in 1989. This is important, required viewing.

The Mechanism Season Two – TBD

While Netflix hasn’t announced the release date yet, season two of this Brazilian political drama is set to premiere sometime this month. Created by José Padilha (Narcos) and Elena Soarez (House of Sand), the series centers around an active money laundering case in Brazil called Operation Car Wash. The series caught some flak for dramatizing what is essentially an active criminal investigation, only thinly veiling identities and individual businesses implicated in the scandal in this loosely fictionalized dramatization.

The politicians involved or implicated are especially unhappy about their depiction in the series, going so far as to complain about the inaccuracy of what is essentially a fictionalized version of themselves in a scripted docu-drama. If they had nothing to hide, surely they shouldn’t be upset about what most people understand is a fictionalized entertainment. Too cool for school, José Padilha says he appreciates their help with the marketing of the series.

Selton Mello, Caroline Abras, Enrique Díaz, Leonardo Medeiros, Jonathan Haagensen, and Alessandra Colassanti round out the large ensemble cast of The Mechanism.

Which Netflix shows will you be watching this May? Are you interested in any of these 15 originals? Be sure to tell us in the comment section below!

Bethany Lewis

Traveler, reader, fan of many things. Graduated Boston University with an MFA in Film Studies, current day job working at a dude ranch in Arizona.