Labor Day weekend marks the unofficial end of summer, a long weekend made for the last dips in the pool. But it’s also a holiday with “labor” right there in the name, which makes it the perfect excuse to do the opposite: kick back, forget about responsibilities, and lose yourself in a great binge. Those Pokémon Go challenges will be there later.
Grab a burger, grab a lemonade, grab whatever, because it’s time to savor a few hours of guilt-free laziness. Here are the best picks we could find on Netflix to watch right now. Soak up that long weekend.
Band of Brothers
Episodes: 10
No, it wasn’t TV, it was HBO… but Band of Brothers set a new bar for the medium when it premiered in 2001. Riding the vérité success of Saving Private Ryan, the 10-part miniseries from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks chronicled Easy Company’s journey through World War II with blockbuster battle sequences and character-forward drama that captured the cost of war. Oh, and the cast was stacked — Damian Lewis, James McAvoy, David Schwimmer, Tom Hardy, and Michael Fassbender all show up.
There really is no Game of Thrones or The Crown or The Last of Us without Band of Brothers. The creators vied for historical accuracy and cinematic production values, but really in the end knew they couldn’t sum up an entire five-year war in even 10 hours. They had to focus on people and the milestones: Glimpses of basic training. A siege on the Kehlsteinhaus. The erosive power of PTSD. It’s all threaded into Band of Brothers, which sadly, leaves Netflix on Sept. 15 — so catch up now.
Lost in Space
Episodes: 30
If you watched The White Lotus earlier this year and thought “Hey, why hasn’t this chic mom who’s negging everyone and abusing lorazepam been the villain of a big-budget science fiction television show?” Well, great news: Parker Posey did just that seven years ago!
Netflix’s Lost in Space re-imagining isn’t as gleefully weird as the 1960s original, but across its three-season run. it quietly carved out its own corner of sci-fi TV. Created by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (the underrated The Last Witch Hunter), and with a pilot from director Neil Marshall (The Descent), the show once again finds the Robinson family on an intergalactic colony mission gone awry that leaves them stranded in spaaaaaace. A slew of good performances — plus one spiffy robot helper — make this all-ages fun.
Taylor Russell (who later starred in Waves and featured opposite Timothée Chalamet in Bones and All) leads a cast of youngsters who miraculously aren’t grating as they encounter the worst of alien planets. Molly Parker’s mom Maureen is both brilliant and vulnerable, while Posey’s scene-stealing Dr. Smith keeps things unpredictable for three seasons. And for this Star Trek nerd, it was a nice blast of hopeful family dynamics and episodic problem-solving.
Long Story Short
Episodes: 10
Bojack Horseman‘s creator is back with a brand new acerbic animated show, and frankly, it feels like no one is talking about it! The series follows one family, the Schwoopers, over a number of decades, jumping back and forth through time to discover how all their quirks came to be. There are high highs and low lows, as is the Raphael Bob-Waksberg way. The Bojack creator told Polygon earlier this month that he can’t not chase the big emotions of life. Long Story Short is a show for those of us who love to laugh-cry. But it’s still an animated family sitcom, part of The Flintstones’ and The Simpsons’ long lineage.
“Grief is interesting and scary, and I’m interested in writing about the things that scare me personally,” Bob-Waksberg said. “It takes away some of the power of those fears, but I also think it’s a healthy, cathartic way for me to explore those fears.”
