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Meet the Triptych cast: who's who in the new mystery thriller

Meet the Triptych cast, a new Mexican Netflix Original mystery thriller based on a true story.

The hero image showing the Triptych cast

One of the new TV shows on Netflix right now is Triptych , an 8-part Netflix Original from Mexico which is based on a true story.

Triptych is about a forensic investigator who's called into a murder investigation in which the body looks suspiciously like her. Not only that, but the human had the same birthday and many other aspects, enough so that the investigator realizes something much more is at play.

So it's a mystery series, with the fact it's based on real events giving it a thrilling twist. If you've watched the show, you might be interested in knowing who all the actors are, so here's a guide to the main cast of Triptych and what you might recognize them from.

Maite Perroni as Rebecca

Rebecca is a forensic agent, who works on crime scenes, however she's surprised to find one such body that looks identical to hers. The similarities only get deeper as Rebecca works through a web of secrets.

As the plot synopsis suggests, Maite Perroni plays several roles. To say any more, though, would be a spoiler.

Maite Perroni is a prolific Mexican actress within the country, and she's had recurring roles in many TV shows. She's acted in over 100 episodes each of Burden of Guilt, Rebelde, The Stray Cat and Triunfo del amor.

David Chocarro as Humberto

Rebecca's captain helps guide her through the case, showing some compassion and aiding her as she uncovers all the many secrets, partly because of their history together. However he can't be there all the time, with his own family to protect.

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Argentine David Chocarro is a former baseball star who found his way into TV. Like Perroni he's prolific on the screen with countless episodes of La Doña, El Rostro de la Venganza, Behind Closed Doors, Alguien Te Mira and En otra piel .

Ofelia Medina as the mother

As Rebecca investigates her doppelganger, and her past, her mother is naturally the first person she needs to turn to. However, the mother is keen to let some secrets remain in the past.

Ofelia Medina is a prolific Mexican actress who has been working for many years. Her biggest roles include playing Frida Kahlo in biopic Frida and acting in Colombiana and Innocent Voices .

Tom is the streaming and ecommerce writer at What to Watch, covering streaming services in the US and UK. His goal is to help you navigate the busy and confusing online video market, to help you find the TV, movies and sports that you're looking for without having to spend too much money.

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Watch Triptych with a subscription on Netflix.

Cast & Crew

Leticia Lopez Margalli

Maite Perroni

Aleida Trujano

David Chocarro

Flavio Medina

Nuria Bages

Ofelia Medina

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Triptych ending explained: how the experiment went

Triptych is a TV series that landed on Netflix in February 2023. Starring Maite Perroni in the triple role of Aleida, Rebecca, and Tamara, the show follows the story of a set of triplets who discover in adult age the existence of their sisters and, through long investigation, they find out they were the subjects of an experiment started with their birth. The series is inspired by a true story and represents an evil follow-up to the actual events that occurred some years ago. Let’s have the plot and ending explained.

Triptych plot and ending explained: how the experiment went

You can watch the official trailer for Triptych here on Youtube .

Let’s explain the whole sequence of events that led to the triplets’ lives in Triptych chronologically. The origin of the plot, in Triptych , starts with the true story we explained in this article : in the 60s, a prominent psychologist created a controversial experiment aimed to monitor the connections between twins and triplets genetically identical but growing up in entirely different social classes. A set of triplets found out the truth in 1980: they were David Kellman, Bobby Shafran, and Eddy Galland, and their case is actually mentioned in Episode 6 of the series, in the newspaper handed over by Tamara to Rebecca and the others. This really happened, and it represents the trigger for the new story told in the Netflix show.

From here, the fictional part of Triptych starts. When the media revealed the truth, the psychologist shut down the project, fearing legal consequences. But his assistant, Dr. Julia Batiz, doesn’t want to give up. She moves to Mexico, where she finds a more permissive working environment, the Humanis Vita hospital. And there, she created her most ambitious experiment: she used in vitro fertilization to create three identical twins and offered her own egg, meaning that Dr. Julia Batiz is the triplets’ biological mother. And her original mission, to which she has dedicated her whole life, is to study how humans define their characters, if it depends on genetics (nature) or experiences (nurture).

Some weeks after the triplets were born, Dr. Batiz separated them and studied them in different contexts: a poor, a rich, and a middle-class family. Precisely as it happened to the triplets in the true story , Aleida, Rebecca, and Tamara were constantly monitored by observers working for Julia Batiz. They needed to live in similar conditions; only the social context had to differ. The parents that raised them were paid by the experiment, and the psychologists they dated at some point in their life were part of the monitoring plan. For Rebecca, the person on duty to monitor her was Detective Solana, who also became her lover. At some point, Aleida’s father starts discovering the truth, and Dr. Batiz has to kill him. Then, “to match the variables,” also Rebecca’s father and Tamara’s mother were killed so that all triplets could experience the same kind of grief.

Triptych: the true story of the triplets that inspired the series

When Aleida discovers the truth, she has a breakdown. She wants to expose Dr. Batiz and reveal the truth to the media. This is why the doctor diagnoses her with mental illness and has she closed in a psychiatric institute for some months. She was trying to protect the experiment. But some months later, something happens that she didn’t expect: Aleida’s husband, Eugenio, who loves her and is unaware of the whole story, signs her release from the psychiatric institute. This leads to the events we see at the beginning of Triptych , explained only in the last episode: Aleida, in terrible mental condition, breaks into the hospital where Dr. Batiz works and threatens to kill her. On the building’s roof, Aleida is shot by the cops, but she’s not dead. With the help of Detective Solana, her body is stolen from the hospital, and they simulate her death and funeral, cremating another corpse. Unaware of all this, Aleida’s husband and mother truly believe Aleida is dead.

At that point, Rebecca and Tamara start investigating. Solana tries to stop Rebecca, without success. Meanwhile, Aleida’s husband conceives a tricky plan, paying Tamara to impersonate Aleida for long enough to simulate the handover of her shares to him so that the multinational company Aleida manages is in control of her husband and mother. Solana constantly follows Rebecca’s investigations, and also Dr. Batiz starts seeing her regularly. All the people who seemed to threaten Rebecca and Tamara were paid to scare them and make them stop investigating.

But they just don’t stop. Rebecca even discovers the involvement of Dr. Batiz. Still, she doesn’t suspect Solana: she asks him to protect her, and he brings Rebecca and Tamara to the mansion where Dr. Batiz started the experiment. While the doctor explains the whole truth to Rebecca and Tamara, Aleida’s husband, Eugenio, contacts Solana and forces him to go together to find Rebecca. When Eugenio understands that Solana is not in good faith, he forces the car off the road, and Solana dies.

Meanwhile, Dr. Batiz explains the whole story to Rebecca and Tamara in her home, revealing that Aleida is alive and ready for “the last stage of the experiment.” We only get to know that this next phase is about “turning their lives and will to a superior power,” meaning probably to accept the existence of their Creator. But Aleida, Rebecca, and Tamara are individuals with free will and fight for their life: Aleida shuts down the electricity, Rebecca and Tamara escape and find Dr. Batiz and Aleida.

Triptych ending closes the events and seals how they are explained: Aleida, Rebecca, and Tamara manage to escape the mansion, finding Eugenio (who was driving Solana’s car, trying to save them). Solana is dead, and the other assistants of Dr. Batiz are arrested. Only Julia Batiz is missing: as we see in the last scene, the triplets left her in the mansion’s basement, where nobody could ever find her. She’s supposed to die, unless the writers come up with a different idea for a Season 2, of course.

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The Best Travel Shows On Netflix Right Now, Ranked

Last Updated: November 12th

There’s rarely been a time in recent history in which travel has been more out of reach. That means we all have to live out our travel dreams vicariously for now. Enter the travel TV genre — our most straightforward path to inspirational and aspirational escapism .

No network has changed the game more in recent years than Netflix when it comes to providing a great list of travel shows that’ll motivate you to hit the road one day while scratching that wanderlust itch between trips. But this being Netflix, there’s a dearth of content to sort through. Knowing where to start and which shows are worth your binging time is tough.

We’re here to help. The fifteen travel series below are the best Netflix has to offer right now. We’ve gone ahead and ranked them, though we have to point out that these rankings represent minor quibbles at most. We also tried to cover multiple types of travel shows from the standard food+travel series to nature shows to reality TV travel escapism.

Let’s dive in!

15. Restaurants On The Edge

1 season, 6 episodes | IMDb: 6.8/10

The “fixer-up” aspect of reality TV is a tried and true concept. Gordon Ramsay has umpteen shows doing just that. Where Restaurants on the Edge stands out is the travel and cultural aspect of the show. Restaurateur Nick Liberato, chef Dennis Prescott, and designer Karin Bohn travel the world and find restaurants with amazing views that are on the edge of shutting down (something that’s become even more heightened given recent global events). They team up with the restaurant’s chefs and owners to turn the place around. The ripple here is that the hosts guide the local owners to delve more deeply into the local culture and have their establishments better represent that scene.

14. Stay Here

1 season, 8 episodes | IMDb: 7.5/10

Designer Genevieve Gorder and real estate expert Peter Lorimer join forces in Stay Here to help homeowners turn their spaces into short-term vacation rentals. This is all about Airbnb’ing your digs even though “ Airbnb ” is never mentioned. This is a fun and breezy travel show that goes deep enough to show you how much works goes into the sharing-economy to make it actually work for you. In the end, you’ll have a whole new appreciation for that perfect Airbnb you stayed in.

13. The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes

2 seasons, 12 episodes | IMDb: 7.6/10

This show is addictive. Let’s get this out of the way. This is luxury and lifestyle porn first and foremost. It’s a traveling show, we guess, by proxy. However, it’s intoxicating.

The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes takes us inside architectural wonders around the world. These range from the homes of the elites in places like Greece, Los Angeles, and New Zealand to the homes of a fisherman in Japan and writers in Holland. Hosts Piers Taylor (an architect) and Caroline Quentin (a British actor) offer a great entry point. Taylor offers professional insight, while Quentin is the audience’s awed surrogate.

12. Tales By Light

3 seasons, 18 episodes | IMDb: 8.3/10

Tales By Light isn’t your average travel show per se. The focus here is on great travel photographers and how they operate around the world.

The photographers the show follows just happen to be some of the best in the world who have devoted their life to globetrotting to find the absolute best shot. Every corner of the world is covered over three seasons of breathtaking episodes and crazy escapades.

Seriously, one episode is about swimming with anacondas in the Amazon.

11. Night On Earth

1 season, 6 episodes | IMDb: 8.2/10

Shows like Night On Earth offer a glimpse into the world that beckons you out into the wider world. These are the shows that lay a foundation of wanderlust in our young souls. On top of all of that, this show is visually mesmerizing. It’s a trippy, unique, and captivating look at our world, and it’ll make you want to be someone who seeks these places out.

10. High On The Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

1 Season, 4 Episodes | IMDb: 7.7/10

High on the Hog is based on the seminal work of Dr. Jessica Harris and her breaking down of how African food cultures mingled with Indigenous American foods and European techniques to help define what American food is today. The show is a sort of short-hand for Dr. Harris’ work and book, with chef and writer Stephen Satterfield trekking around America and West Africa looking back at the origins of African American cuisines, where those foods are today, and profiling the people keeping those traditions alive. This is the sort of travel show that will stick with you while teaching crucial history about Black Americans’ impact on the food we eat today.

9. Our Planet

1 season, 8 episodes | IMDb: 9.3/10

Our Planet is Netflix’s very own Planet Earth . They even got Sir David Attenborough to narrate this beautiful series. Again, yes, this is a nature series. But, we argue that a series this intriguing and beguiling will stoke your wanderlust fires and get you out there enjoying everything nature has to offer. If this series doesn’t get you itching to see new places on our planet, nothing will.

8. Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

1 season, 4 episodes | IMDb: 6.8/10

David Chang’s second Netflix travel and food show is a little broader than Ugly Delicious . This four-part series finds Chang hanging out with big-name celebrities and diving into local food scenes around the world. Seth Rogan shows Chang around Vancouver while getting very stoned. Internet star and model Chrissy Teigen wanders around Marrakesh with the chef. Writer and actor Lena Waithe takes Chang through her Los Angeles. Finally, the show’s final ( and best ) episode finds Chang hanging out with SNL superstar Kate McKinnon in Cambodia. Overall, this is an easy, fun watch to breeze through on a shut-in Sunday.

7. Ugly Delicious

2 seasons, 12 episodes | IMDb: 7.8/10

Chef David Chang’s food show, Ugly Delicious , is a travel show at its heart. Chang travels the world eating food and talking to people about culture, life, and what they do while experiencing it all for himself — that’s all travel really is. The beauty of the show lies in the lack of pretension — a child-like curiosity really — that Chang carries with him as he travels, talks, and eats. The way Chang travels becomes aspirational with a crazy good dose of food porn along for the ride.

6. Larry Charles’ Dangerous World Of Comedy

1 season, 4 episodes | IMDb: 7.3/10

Larry Charles’ Dangerous World Of Comedy is a travel show at its heart. Acclaimed TV and film comedy director, Larry Charles, travels the world seeking out how comedy is done in war zones, on Indian reservations, in theocracies, in slums, and beyond.

This is the sort of show that takes you deep inside the harder side of life around the world. It’s a part behind-the-scenes look at TV comedy around and a part subversive travelogue with a keen eye on finding the grey areas of life and comedy in places few dare to travel. Plus, it’s only four one-hour episodes, making this one a very easy binge.

5. Dark Tourist

1 season, 8 episodes | IMDb: 7.6/10

David Farrier’s Dark Tourist isn’t what you think it is . This isn’t about the western gaze, looking down upon the weird or “other.” Farrier’s nuanced approach to travel and diversity shines through as he parses some of the lesser-known parts of varying cultures.

The show shines in its ability to hook you in from the first frames. Episodes about vampires in New Orleans, Pablo Escobar’s hitmen, and haunted forests offer a glimpse into the unknown in our world without judgment.

4. Somebody Feed Phil

4 seasons, 22 episodes | IMDb: 8.2/10

Phil Rosenthal has cut out a pretty great second act after his days running Everybody Loves Raymond . Rosenthal is traveling around the world eating great food, meeting people, and seeing new places he thought he’d never see.

Rosenthal is on a trip of discovery. There’s a clear food focus to the show. But, really, the series ends up being just as much about the journey as a great meal with new friends.

3. Street Food

2 season, 15 episodes | IMDb: 8/10

This series from the creators of Chef’s Table leans more heavily into the travel aspect of great cooking. The series highlights street food vendors across East Asia, Mexico, and Central and South America through two seasons. The series revels in letting those vendors tell their stories and highlighting the food they make with that now iconic Chef’s Table aesthetic . The bonus is that each episode clocks in at around 30 minutes, making this a very easy and enjoyable binge any time.

2. MeatEater

3 seasons, 29 episodes | IMDb: 7.8/10

This is probably the most interesting and unique travel (and food) show on this list. Steve Rinella’s MeatEater might be the best nature-meets-travel-meets-food show, full stop. Rinella and his crew travel around the U.S., Mexico, and even parts of South America to embrace nature in the most visceral way, through hunting and fishing for their own food and then cooking that food, providing us with wild recipes to boot. We’re not kidding when we say that the wild places this show goes are the places you almost never see on the average travel show, which is usually obsessed with hitting the same old spots over and over again (looking at you Rosenthal and Chang).

Yes, hunting or fishing for food is the core of each trip. Still, with sourcing your own wild food being one of the fastest-growing food movements in America (far outpacing veganism with people under 40), MeatEater offers real-world advice as an entry-point to the wild spaces of the world and the food available therein. It’s also about the people around the world who live their lives in harmony with nature. Add in the beautiful cinematography (from the same crew as Bourdain’s shows) and you have a great watch.

1. Down to Earth with Zac Efron

1 season, 8 episodes | IMDb: 8.1/10

This show was the sleeper hit of the travel TV world in 2020. Yes, it premiered during a pandemic when we can’t travel, making it an easy hit. But the show really has some serious heart and insight. Viewing the world through Zac Efron’s always wide-eyes proved really refreshing. His excitement to be seeing the world and trying on new ideas while also making an effort to step out of the most well-worn paths made for solid TV.

There’s a real soul to this show that gets to what’s beautiful about travel. It captures the spirit of wanderlust — learning about the world while learning about yourself.

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Cast & crew
User reviews

Aksel Hennie and Noomi Rapace in The Trip (2021)

A dysfunctional couple head to a remote cabin to reconnect, but each has intentions to kill the other. Before they can carry out their plans, unexpected visitors arrive and they face a great... Read all A dysfunctional couple head to a remote cabin to reconnect, but each has intentions to kill the other. Before they can carry out their plans, unexpected visitors arrive and they face a greater danger. A dysfunctional couple head to a remote cabin to reconnect, but each has intentions to kill the other. Before they can carry out their plans, unexpected visitors arrive and they face a greater danger.

Tommy Wirkola
Noomi Rapace
Aksel Hennie
Atle Antonsen
196 User reviews
67 Critic reviews
1 win & 2 nominations

Liksom - Lars

Liksom - Petter

Liksom - Roy

Liksom - Dave

Self - Programleder
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia Roy has a dead snow tattoo
Goofs When Viktor is killed, you see 2 perfect fingers on the hand that was completely shot off before.
Soundtracks Har det på Tunga Performed by Dum Dum Boys Written by Kjartan Kristiansen

User reviews 196

Oct 17, 2021
How long is The Trip? Powered by Alexa
October 15, 2021 (United States)
Cặp Đôi Sát Ý
Harestua, Norway (location)
74 Entertainment
See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

Runtime 1 hour 53 minutes

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Trip’ on Netflix, a Bleak Comedy That Elevates Marital Discord to a Bloody New Level

Where to stream:.

The Trip (2021)

noomi rapace

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Netflix’s The Trip is — well, I was going to give the usual spiel about it being a Norwegian black comedy-slash-thriller starring Noomi Rapace ( The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo , Prometheus ) and directed by Tommy Wirkola of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters fame, but I’m just gonna cut to the chase and say it’s some sick shit. And as most sick shit goes, its smooth-as-guts-in-a-blender-set-on-puree mix of yucks and yuks is very much a take-it-or-leave-it affair.

THE TRIP : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: For some reason, The Trip doesn’t open with a crazy scene that’s on the precarious lip of a suspenseful cliff before flashing back to the beginning — it just opens at the beginning. How very novel! So, a husband and wife sit in bed arguing and the conversation gets pretty nutty and out there and, as we suspected, they’re just actors on the set of a soap opera. Lars (Aksel Hennie) is the director. He chitchats with a co-worker about how he and his wife are going up to the cabin this weekend and he stresses repeatedly how she wants to go on a long hike into the mountains, and isn’t that dangerous? On his way home, he stops to visit his dad at the nursing home so the old man can question his manhood. Then he goes to the hardware emporium for a hammer, a hacksaw, some rope and duct tape — you know, the Serial Killer Special, $49.95.

He picks up Lisa (Rapace), and the bickering starts immediately. Needling. Irritation. Teensy little digs. Death by 1,000 cuts on both sides. Their professional lives are lousy and the poison’s bled into their personal lives. They get to the cabin and as he unloads his collection of suspicious tools, the camera lingers on a cabinet full of shotguns, and as she mills about the kitchen, the camera gets a lensful of butcher and bread knives. Why? No reason. Just the usual stuff you’d find in a cabin in the Norwegian forest where you might go hunting and then need to cut up the animal you killed.

Lars and Lisa drive each other nuts cooking and eating dinner, and before bed they play a game of Scrabble that only further sledgehammers the wedge between them. The next day, we follow Lars as he fetches the hammer from the basement and heads to the kitchen for two belts of booze, and the camera angle for this shot is canted, oh so very canted. He sneaks up behind Lisa and before he can ballpeen a hole in her skull she quickly turns around and tases him. It’s probably safe to say that marital counseling would be pointless at this stage of their relationship.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The War of the Røsens ! (Yeah, I know, Røsen is Swedish, not Norwegian. Just give me this one!)

Performance Worth Watching: Rapace and Hennie are equally excellent at playing shitty people, pairing nicely like fava beans with a nice Chianti.

Memorable Dialogue: Lars gets in the nastiest dig ever (decontextualized to avoid a spoiler): “Maybe you’ll be satisfied now.”

Sex and Skin: None, but be warned, there are disturbing scenes of sexual assault.

Our Take: …Then again, Lars and Lisa do seem to finally be on the same page, homicidal though it may be, so loll that sweet and sticky caramel-flavored irony around in your mouth for a minute there. The revelation that they want to kill each other in the most literal fashion comes at the 21-minute mark of a 114-minute movie, so it’s not a spoiler to say things escalate from there, via a game of one-upspersonship that goes from cold to violent to utterly ruthless to extremely violent to repulsive to even more extremely violent to thoroughly complicated to flat-out gory as hell. And yes, other characters get involved, lest it get too repetitive. If you can hang with it through its demented twists and turns — no guarantees, love it or hate it, no deposit no return, mileage may vary, etc. — it’ll be to see what resolution Wirkola and co-screenwriters Nick Ball and John Niven came up with, and not because you root for any of these people, who are, at best, poor examples of the human species.

So I guess that means The Trip exists in the satire realm, where marital discord is depicted with immense exaggeration and grotesque homicidal impulses are rendered in rich, bloody reds. One wonders if Lars and Lisa find this elevation of confrontation therapeutic, going from passive-aggressive to insanely aggressive, dropping the sniper rifles for a knife fight, sometimes not at all in a metaphorical fashion. Wirkola occasionally crosses the line between bad taste (which is good; think John Waters) and tastelessness (which is bad; think R-rated Adam Sandler vehicles), spending the majority of the budget on burst blood vessels in eyes and viscous strings of various bodily fluids drooling from mouths and hamburgered knees and innards turned into out-ards — total gorebuckets, more splatter than two or three of those wussy middling slasher movies they make for eight-year-olds these days, he said, nudge wink grain of salt.

Anyway, the movie adheres to the cliche that all is fair in love and war. It’s amusing and irreverent, bleak and repulsive — and therefore an exercise in cognitive dissonance, I guess. It’s definitely conceived more in sickness than in health. For better or worse. ’Til death by disembowelment or shotgun do we part. I’m gonna stop there.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Trip is far from great, and at its best, it’s barely good. But it inspires a few choking laughs, it’s challenging in its unpleasantness, and it’s likely to satisfy any iron stomachs who are up to the task.

Will you stream or skip the Noomi Rapace black comedy/thriller #TheTrip on @netflix ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) October 16, 2021

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream The Trip on Netflix

Stream It Or Skip It

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Netflix true crime documentary may have used AI-generated images of a real person

The move raises questions about the ethical use of manipulated imagery..

Netflix has been accused of using AI-manipulated imagery in the true crime documentary What Jennifer Did , Futurism has reported. Several photos show typical signs of AI trickery, including mangled hands, strange artifacts and more. If accurate, the report raises serious questions about the use of such images in documentaries, particularly since the person depicted is currently in prison awaiting retrial .

In one egregious image, the left hand of the documentary's subject Jennifer Pan is particularly mangled, while another image shows a strange gap in her cheek. Netflix has yet to acknowledge the report, but the images show clear signs of manipulation and were never labeled as AI-generated.

The AI may be generating the imagery based on real photos of Pan, as PetaPixel suggested. However, the resulting output may be interpreted as being prejudicial instead of presenting the facts of the case without bias.

A Canadian court of appeal ordered Pan's retrial because the trial judge didn't present the jury with enough options, the CBC reported.

One critic, journalist Karen K. HO, said that the Netflix documentary is an example of the "true crime industrial complex" catering to an "all-consuming and endless" appetite for violent content. Netflix's potential use of AI manipulated imagery as a storytelling tool may reinforce that argument.

Regulators in the US , Europe and elsewhere have enacted laws on the use of AI, but so far there appears to be no specific laws governing the use of AI images or video in documentaries or other content.

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Love and Road

The 20 Best Travel Shows on Netflix to Watch in 2024

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Whether you’ve been missing the thrill of traveling or are currently feeling inspired to pick the destination for your next adventure, travel shows can help. Netflix has no shortage of cool travel documentaries and shows, but we’ve decided to pick 20 of the best travel shows on Netflix.

Woman choosing a travel show on Netflix to watch at home.

If you’re traveling right now, or if some of these shows are not available in your country, use a VPN to access them without any restrictions. To play the shows, open up your VPN app and select a server located in a different state. If the show is available in your country, but you’re currently traveling internationally, choose the server of your home country to enjoy the show.

Now let me tell you why these Netflix travel shows are worth watching and don’t blame me if you get hooked on some (or all) of them.

The best travel shows on Netflix

Before we start, let me tell you that this list is in no particular order. It’s up to you to choose the one you want to watch first, but we recommend watching them all. At home, traveling for a holiday, or at a new destination, these Netflix travel shows and documentaries will set you in the mood for discovering new places, tasting exotic food, maybe even cycling, driving, or just staying at home until you finish all the seasons. Lol

The list is divided into travel shows or documentaries focused on nature, food, dark tourism, cycling and cars, photography, family travels, and specific destinations. Enjoy it!

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The best travel and nature Netflix shows

Arguably one of the most famous travel documentaries on Netflix, Our Planet takes you on a world tour of earth’s fascinating creatures. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough and filmed in Ultra High Definition, this show takes you to over 50 countries and perfectly captures the wonders of the earth.

Our Planet is the perfect Netflix travel show to give you some new ideas for your bucket list. Trust us!

Untamed Romania

While most seasoned travelers deeply appreciate Romania’s natural beauty, it is still overlooked in the mainstream media. Untamed Romania is a feature-length film celebrating the country’s immaculate wildlife.

Untamed Romania is one of the best Netflix travel documentaries for those who love nature and want to discover a new destination to travel to.

The best travel and food Netflix shows

Down to Earth

Down to Earth documentary follows Zac Efron, the actor, and wellness expert Darin Olien as they explore healthy and sustainable practices across different cultures. This documentary showcases the diversity and creativity seen across the globe to make the most of one’s resources.

It’s intriguing and can be inspiring, not only about travel but how we think of sustainability and health.

Street Food Asia

Sometimes the most accessible way to connect to a different culture is food. Asian food holds a special place in the world regarding street food and is probably one of the most universally beloved cuisines today. Street Food Asia takes you on a food journey across Asia and Southeast Asia’s best food cities, including Bangkok, Delhi, Osaka, and Singapore.

Street Food Asia is one of our fave travel shows on Netflix. We love Asia and Asian delights you can only find from street vendors. If you have never visited this part of the world, watch this show, and it will open your mind to a new world of flavors, aromas, and ways of life. If you are craving an Asia trip, watch it and plan international travel soon.

Also, read our guides and articles about Asian destinations as they have many travel and food recommendations. Read our guides about Thailand , Vietnam , Indonesia , Malaysia , The Philippines , China , Taiwan, India , and Cambodia .

Ugly Delicious

Ugly Delicious is another food travel show where a star chef David Chang is looking for the world’s most satisfying grub with his buddies. Despite being a professional chef, Chang isn’t pretentious with his picks and takes us on a cross-cultural food trip filled with laughter.

Another great travel and food show on Netflix about food culture.

Somebody Feed Phil

In this series, we follow the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, Phil Rosenthal, as he explores world cuisines and meets the locals. Phil’s upbeat attitude is probably one of the best parts of the Somebody Feed Phil travel show together with a lot of food scenes that will help your plan your future trip to incredible destinations including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

On this Netflix travel show, you will visit cities like Bangkok , spend days in Mexico City , see Lisbon , and many more. Well-known travel destinations are pictured with flavors and a local touch.

High on The Hog: Culinary Journey From Africa to America

This show explores African American soul food and its long journey from Africa to North America. It has been dubbed the most engaging history of African American cuisine. It traces the process of cultivating, harvesting, cooking, and serving the food that enslaved Africans brought with them to the States.

This Netflix cultural travel and food show will take you on a true gastronomic journey.

Restaurants on the Edge

As you might be able to guess from the name of the show, these hour-long episodes take us to restaurants that are located in some of the most stunning locations in the world but are struggling with their menus and dishes. They are located on the edge of the world but are also on the edge of closing down.

This travel show on Netflix pictures unique locations and a bit of drama, as you can expect.

Netflix shows about travel, cycling and cars

Biking Borders

This one is for lovers of slow traveling and less-known countries. Two friends go on a 15,000 km bicycle journey worldwide, including the Balkans, Central Asia, and other countries, to build a school in Guatemala.

Rob and I love cycling, so this Netflix travel documentary series is tremendously appealing to us. Biking Borders is also an excellent travel inspiration for those who dream of traveling by bike or going on a cycling holiday. And if this is you, read our article about cycling on Taiwan’s East Coast and cycling in Spain .

Pedal the World

This is another Netflix travel documentary that portrays a world tour on wheels, but this time our protagonist visits 22 countries during his year-long journey, searching for the meaning in life and discovering something new in each country.

Pedal the World is an inspiring and realistic epic road trip that might give you ideas of how you want to spend your life and what really matters.

Paul Hollywood’s Big Continental Road Trip

Paul Hollywood studies the ties between popular cars in Europe and their local culture and identity as an actor and a baker. In this short but educational Netflix documentary , Hollywood will visit France, Germany, and Italy.

This isn’t your Netflix show if you are looking for food and baking goods. But if you like cars, speed, a bit of history and traveling in Europe, you will enjoy the ride.

Netflix travel shows about a specific destination

Katla

This travel series focuses on Iceland, specifically the volcano Katla , which began constantly erupting just recently. The show has eight episodes and does a wonderful job portraying Iceland’s breathtaking beauty . Katla serves as a great reminder of all that we still don’t know about the earth.

This Netflix travel show is a powerful trigger for wanderlust, and it will make you want to book a trip to Iceland as soon as possible.

Magic Andes

A documentary following five characters from the Andes, South America’s breathtaking mountains. It is a fascinating series that highlights real people living in communities located under the mountains and paints a nuanced picture of the region of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia .

After watching Magic Andes read our Peru travel guides , and for sure, you will want to visit South América. If you are worried about safety, then read our guide to the safest countries in South America , and you will be surprised.

Banner for a Netflix travel documentary focused on Guatemala's rich landscape and culture.

Guatemala: Heart of the Mayan World

This documentary focuses on Guatemala’s rich landscape and culture, the territory where 2000 years ago, the fascinating Mayan civilization collapsed. The Mayan influence is still all over Guatemala and Central America, and this documentary does an amazing job of connecting the dots between the past and the present.

Guatemala: Heart of the Mayan World is an inspiring Netflix travel documentary that will add interesting facts to your travel knowledge, and it might make you want to explore more of Latin America.

Zulu Man in Japan

Starring South African rapper Nasty C, this Netflix travel documentary focuses on Japanese culture. The film takes place in Tokyo, where Nasty C explores the city’s go-to places, culture, sounds, and much more.

Zulu Man in Japan was released in 2019. It’s a 44-minute episode, perfect for those days that you want to have just a little dose of wanderlust knowing that you won’t be addicted to long travel series.

The best Netflix travel show for unusual tourists

Dark Tourist

Filmed by journalist David Farrier, the author of the 2016 hit documentary Tickled, Dark Tourist takes a different approach to tourism. Farrier travels to places associated with death or tragedies that have turned these destinations into tourist attractions. You can expect anything from haunted places, nuclear lakes, and unusual and weird destinations. Those spots might not be on your travel bucket list, but it is interesting to know that they exist so you can avoid them on your next holiday.

It’s one of the most-watched travel shows on Netflix, so it’s worth trying.

Netflix show for photography and travel lovers

Tales by Light

Created by Abraham Joffe, this show embraces the art of travel photography and film and the people behind them. This is an Australian documentary/reality travel series on Netflix that follows photographers around the globe as they chase that perfect shot.

This Netflix travel documentary is a good match for those who love photography and travel. It’s perfect for inspiring you to travel and photograph more.

The best Netflix show about traveling with family

Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father

A comedian Jack Whitehall and his uptight father, Michael Whitehall, travel across the world together. The show starts with Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, with the second season focusing on Eastern Europe. The third season explores the American West, the fourth features Australia, and the fifth is all about the United Kingdom, their homeland. On this last season expect everything from dining with Gordon Ramsay to searching for the Loch Ness monster.

A great Netflix travel show for those thinking of traveling with family. It also sparkes a reflection of our relationships with parents and how travel can be a good way to get together or break apart.

Netflix show that combines travel and design

Cabins in the Wild

This show takes place in Wales and follows engineer Dick Strawbridge and craftsman Will Hardie as they inspect eight unique cabins built for a pop-up hotel in Wales. Their final goal is to construct a cabin of their own.

If you like the British Tv series, chances are you will love Cabins in the Wild as well. If you like architecture and construction shows too. This type of Netflix show combines different elements, from traveling to design, making you want to have a cabin in the wild just for you.

We end our list of the 20 best Netflix travel shows here. Drop us a comment if you have watched any of them or if you have any other good travel series to recommend.

Love these Netflix travel shows and documentary ideas? Pin it for later!

The best travel shows on Netflix streaming now! An inspiring list of travel documentaries and series on Netflix that will make you want to pack your bags and book a holiday. The list is in no particular order and it has travel and food shows, Netflix travel documentaries, dark tourism, wildlife, family travel, design and more. These travelers' Netflix series are perfect for those who want to be inspired, prepare for the next trip, or are already in a destination and want to know more about it.

4 thoughts on “The 20 Best Travel Shows on Netflix to Watch in 2024”

I’m so glad you mentioned The Latchkees! I’ve been obsessed with their adventures since I saw their episode on Netflix. It’s amazing how they make travel look so effortless and fun. I’m definitely adding some of the other shows on your list to my queue 😍

Such a great show!

I can’t believe I never knew about some of these shows! The Travel Diaries is definitely going on my watchlist. 😍

Glad you enjoyed it!

Netflix’s Have a Good Trip Celebrates Psychedelics

A smiling gaptoothed man very close to the camera with a swirly psychedelic situation behind him

Carrie Fisher had a psychedelic-induced encounter with a talking acorn. Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann recalls the time he dropped too much acid and his cymbals began melting mid-set, forcing him to leave the stage. Ben Stiller admits he only dropped acid once and had such a bad trip that he called his parents, Jerry Stiller (who died just this week ) and the late Anne Meara. These are just a few of the celebrity psychedelic experiences recounted in the entertaining new documentary film, Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics , now streaming on Netflix.

(Mild spoilers below.)

Psychedelics get their name from the Greek root words for "mind revealing," since they can alter cognition and perception. LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) is perhaps the best known, along with its popular siblings psilocybin (the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms); 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine ( MDMA ), aka ecstasy (or molly); peyote , made from the ground-up tops of cacti that contain mescaline; and ayahuasca , a bitter tea made from a Brazilian vine with the active ingredient dimethyltryptamine (DMT). Most are classified as Schedule 1 substances by the US Drug Enforcement Agency, meaning they are not deemed to have any potential medical benefits. But this is largely a remnant of the "culture wars" that raged in the 1960s, '70s, and beyond.

The Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered LSD while working with chemical compounds derived from ergot, a type of fungus that grows on rye, because he was interested in potential drug therapies. The fact that LSD's molecular structure is similar to serotonin means that it can bind to serotonin receptors in the brain. A pharmaceutical firm called Sandoz launched an LSD-based drug called Delysid in 1947 for the treatment of psychiatric disorders, and from 1950 to 1965 some 40,000 people were treated with LSD—including Hollywood luminaries such as Cary Grant .

The CIA also notoriously experimented—unsuccessfully—with LSD as a possible mind-control drug during the Cold War with the MKUltra project . And over time, fears began to grow about the unpredictability and safety of psychedelics. Stories of bad trips, temporary psychosis, and traumatic flashbacks began to proliferate, and the drugs became negatively associated with the counterculture Beat movement of the 1950s. Harvard psychology professor Timothy Leary was dismissed from his position in 1963 for conducting experiments on students by giving them LSD and magic mushrooms. He set up his own private research program and drew the attention of the FBI, culminating in his arrest and imprisonment. Then-president Richard Nixon declared Leary "the most dangerous man in America." And ultimately LSD and its fellow psychedelics were classified as Schedule 1 under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act .

It's within this historical context that Have a Good Trip Director Donick Cary decided, some 11 years ago, that he wanted to film a documentary of famous people telling stories about their experiences with psychedelics. "I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to have a long dinner party where you go around a giant table with all your favorite people and they share a story about hallucinogens?" he told Ars.

Cary was just a little ahead of the curve, since this was a period where many people were still pretending that they never experimented with such substances. "That's where pop culture was for the 1980s and 1990s, unless you were at a [Grateful] Dead show or something," he said. Nonetheless, he started filming celebrities telling stories in his spare time—which was limited, given his work on The Simpsons , Parks and Recreation , and Silicon Valley , among other projects—fitting them in whenever everyone's schedules lined up. And because the project took so long, public attitudes toward psychedelics began to shift, and the stigma associated with those drugs started to lift, as word about the potential therapeutic benefits began to spread beyond academic circles.

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The stark honesty and deeply personal nature of these celebrity stories of being under the influence of psychedelics provide a big part of the film's appeal. "They're sober when they're telling their stories, so it's real reflection," said Cary. "They're very intimate, because this is a taboo subject, but they're also doubly intimate because they're revealing what their brain reveals on this powerful substance. It's like their subconscious is being revealed."

Full disclosure: Like Stiller, I have dropped acid exactly once, as research for a chapter in my 2014 book, Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self . (I am hardly the first writer to do so, nor am I the last. Michael Pollan wrote an entire book, How to Change Your Mind , about his exploration of psychedelics and the ongoing research renaissance into their properties.) I experienced many of the same things related by the subjects in Cary's film.

Boulders seemed to breathe. When I laid down on an Oriental rug, the patterns laced up my arms like a fluid tattoo. Closing my eyes and listening to music produced an explosion of vibrant colors and patterns. At one point my spouse morphed into a giant purple dinosaur. I tried to take notes, but my hand kept melting into the paper, and what little I did manage to scrawl was embarrassingly inane, because things only seem to be more profound when you're tripping. The real insight comes later.

And as we discovered when my spouse tried to capture part of the trip on video, it's incredibly boring to watch someone on acid, because you can't see what they are experiencing. I literally spent 10 minutes staring fixedly at a wooden slat in a deck chair, before sagely pronouncing to the camera, "You have to go into the wood, down to the molecules."

That was also a challenge for Cary. Since he didn't want to just have a bunch of talking heads in his film, Cary opted for an eclectic mix of reenactments and animated sequences to illustrate the various stories. "I wanted to bring each story to life in different ways, giving each person their own little short film with their own style and tone," he explained. "I also wanted to play with the transition between this reality, and the reality that your brain reveals on psychedelics. Animation was a really good way to morph between those."

Nick Offerman appears, clad in a white lab coat, to offer occasional science-y tidbits. There's also a recurring skit featuring a deadpan Adam Scott playing devil's advocate as the host of a 1980s-style antidrug after-school special, in which strait-laced teens accidentally ingest psychedelics at a party, freak out, and repeatedly jump through windows. (Spoiler alert: They get kicked out of the party after breaking one too many.) It's an amusing send-up of a classic antidrug film, Desperate Lives (1982). "That was my impression as a kid growing up: If you take psychedelics, it's 50-50 you're going to jump out a window," Cary said.

It might sound like Have a Good Trip is just a random collection of celebrity psychedelic stories, but Cary is too skilled a professional for that. He sifted through more than 70 interviews, looking for recurring themes and potential through lines to connect the various segments and set up new ideas, whittling it all down to just 10 or 15 interviews. "The good side of having 11 years is that we could try different things, see if they worked, what was entertaining, what kept you interested," he added.

That meant cutting out a lot of amazing footage to keep the documentary to a reasonable 90-minute running time. "I talked to Carrie Fisher for two and a half hours," said Cary. "She shared incredible stories, and it was hard to let those breathe, because we weren't doing an hourlong special about Carrie." The vast majority of those interviewed didn't make it into the film at all. (One could envision many of those being turned into a spinoff half-hour animated series on Adult Swim or similar outlet.)

The overall scientific content of the film is relatively light, mostly provided by UCLA psychiatrist Charles Grob , who has been involved with FDA-approved research into potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics (MDMA and ayahuasca). For instance, a compound found in ayahuasca called banisterine shows potential for treating Parkinson's disease, since it latches onto dopamine receptors in the brain—the same receptors that Parkinson's destroys. LSD and psilocybin can also be used to treat cluster headaches and severe migraines. Peyote has shown promise as a treatment for alcoholism. MDMA has been used to treat PTSD and terminal cancer patients; the latter subjects reported feeling less fear and anxiety about their approaching death as a result.

Only a fraction of this is mentioned in passing in Have a Good Trip. But that's OK, it's not that kind of documentary. With its breezy conversational tone, perhaps the film is best viewed as a gateway drug for learning more about these complicated substances. Not that Cary is suggesting everyone should be dropping acid or other psychedelics. He is a fan of Grob's vision of licensed professionals walking people through the experience, determining the correct dosage in a carefully controlled setting. "It's powerful stuff, so don't just blindly take one, because it could lead to some really bad things," Cary said. "Go cautiously and do your work. But I hope, in a weird way, that we came away with a very practical user's guide for anyone even considering this stuff.

"I think the real message for me was, let's not live in a world where there's just scare tactics [surrounding psychedelics], where we dismiss them just because they make us uncomfortable," Cary concluded. "Let's talk about them and figure out what the good is we can take from them as a society, and remind people that these are powerful tools that can be used in positive ways."

Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics is now streaming on Netflix.

This story originally appeared on Ars Technica .

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Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service bows out as its red-and-white envelopes make their final trip

File - Mei Michelson prepares to watch a Netflix DVD at her home in Palo Alto, Calif., on Oct. 22, 2007. The Netflix DVD-by-service will mail out its final discs Friday from its five remaining distribution centers, ending its 25-year history. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

File - Netflix’s first CEO, Marc Randolph, poses outside the Santa Cruz, California, post office in May, 2022, where he had mailed a Patsy Cline CD to the company’s co-founder Reed Hastings, to test whether a disc could make it through the mail. The Netflix DVD-by-service will mail out its final discs Friday from its five remaining distribution centers, ending its 25-year history. (AP Photo/Mike Liedtke, File)

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The curtain is finally coming down on Netflix’s once-iconic DVD-by-mail service, a quarter century after two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs came up with a concept that obliterated Blockbuster video stores while providing a springboard into video streaming that has transformed entertainment.

The DVD service that has been steadily shrinking in the shadow of Netflix’s video streaming service will shut down after its five remaining distribution centers in California, Texas, Georgia and New Jersey mail out their final discs Friday.

The fewer than 1 million recipients who still subscribe to the DVD service will be able to keep the final discs that land in their mailboxes.

“It’s sad,” longtime Netflix DVD subscriber Amanda Konkle said Thursday as she waited the arrival for her final disc, “The Nightcomers,” a 1971 British horror film featuring Marlon Brando. “It’s makes me feel nostalgic. Getting these DVDs has been part of my routine for decades.”

Some of the remaining DVD diehards will get up to 10 discs as a going away present to loyal customers such as Konkle, 41, who has watched more than 900 titles since signing up for the service in 2006. In hopes of being picked for the 10 DVD giveaway, Konkle set up her queue to highlight for more movies starring Brando and older films that are difficult to find on streaming.

FILE -- A sign is shown on a Google building at their campus in Mountain View, Calif., on Sept. 24, 2019. On Friday, April 12, 2024, Google announced it was testing removing links to California news websites from some people's search results. The search giant said it was preparing in case the Legislature passed a bill requiring it to pay media companies a fee for linking to its content. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

At its peak, the DVD boasted more than 20 million subscribers who could choose from more than 100,000 titles stocked in the Netflix library. But in 2011, Netflix made the pivotal decision to separate the DVD side business from a streaming business that now boasts 238 million worldwide subscribers and generated $31.5 billion in revenue year.

The DVD service, in contrast, brought in just $146 million in revenue last year, making its eventual closure inevitable against a backdrop of stiffening competition in video streaming that has forced Netflix to whittle expenses to boost its profits.

“It is very bittersweet,” said Marc Randolph, Netflix’s CEO when the company shipped its first DVD, “Beetlejuice,” in April 1998. “We knew this day was coming, but the miraculous thing is that it didn’t come 15 years ago.”

Although he hasn’t been involved in Netflix’s day-to-day operations for 20 years, Randolph came up with the idea for a DVD-by-service in 1997 with his friend and fellow entrepreneur, Reed Hastings, who eventually succeeded him as CEO — a job Hastings held until stepping aside earlier this year.

Back when Randolph and Hastings were mulling the concept, the DVD format was such a nascent technology that there were only about 300 titles available at the time.

In 1997, DVDs were so hard to find that when they decided to test whether a disc could make it thorough the U.S. Postal Service that Randolph wound up slipping a CD containing Patsy Cline’s greatest hits into a pink envelope and dropping it in the mail to Hastings from the Santa Cruz, California, post office.

Randolph paid just 32 cents for the stamp to mail that CD, less than half the current cost of 66 cents for a first-class stamp.

Netflix quickly built a base of loyal movie fans while relying on a then-novel monthly subscription model that allowed customers to keep discs for as long as they wanted without facing the late fees that Blockbuster imposed for tardy returns. Renting DVDs through the mail became so popular that Netflix once ranked as the U.S. Postal Service’s fifth largest customer while mailing millions of discs each week from nearly 60 U.S. distribution centers at its peak.

Along the way, the red-and-white envelopes that delivered the DVDs to subscribers’ homes became an eagerly anticipated piece of mail that turned enjoying a “Netflix night” into a cultural phenomenon. The DVD service also spelled the end of Blockbuster, which went bankrupt in 2010 after its management turned down an opportunity to buy Netflix instead of trying to compete against it.

Even as video streaming boomed, movie lovers like Michael Fusco stuck with the DVD service because it still offered films that were no longer shown in theaters and couldn’t easily be found in stores. When Netflix announced its intention to close the DVD service five months ago, Fusco expanded his subscription plan so he could rent as many as eight discs at a time at a cost of $56 a month.

Fusco, 36, got his money’s worth, especially in August when he watched 32 DVDs sent to him by Netflix.

“I was very strategic,” said Fusco, who also thought carefully about what films to pick as his final selections after watching more than 2,400 titles during his 18 years as subscriber. The Southern California resident is now awaiting a Spanish comedy, “Solo Con Tu Pareja,” as his final disc and also set up his queue to highlight films by Harrison Ford (“Mosquito Coast”), Tom Hanks (“Joe Versus The Volcano”) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (“Twins”) should he be among those picked for the final 10-disc giveaway.

Randolph and Hastings always planned on video streaming rendering the DVD-by-mail service obsolescent once technology advanced to the point that watching movies and TV shows through internet connections became viable. That expectation is one of the reasons they settled on Netflix as the service’s name instead of other monikers that were considered, such as CinemaCenter, Fastforward, NowShowing and DirectPix (the DVD service was dubbed “Kibble,” during a six-month testing period)

“From Day One, we knew that DVDs would go away, that this was transitory step,” Randolph said. “And the DVD service did that job miraculously well. It was like an unsung booster rocket that got Netflix into orbit and then dropped back to earth after 25 years. That’s pretty impressive.”

This story has been corrected to reflect that Netflix’s DVD service had more than 20 million subscribers at its peak, not 16 million.

Sorry Netflix, a true crime documentary is not the place for AI imagery

(Even if it's not quite what people think).

Screenshot from Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did

AI imagery is cropping up everywhere. In some cases it works, it some cases it's just ugly (see the world's first AI-generated romance movie ), and it some cases it's just wildly inappropriate. Recent accusations against Netflix fall into that latter camp.

With one of the big concerns around AI image generation being the question of authenticity and fake news, a true crime documentary is really isn't the place to showcase the new technology. Yet viewers of Netflix's What Jennifer Did suspect they have spotted some fairly blatant examples of exactly that.

A screenshot from Netflix documentary What Jennifer Did

What Jennifer Did is a Netflix documentary about Jennifer Pan, who was convicted of hiring someone to kill her parents (her father was killed while her mother was injured but survived). At around 30 minutes in the programme, a description of Jennifer from a high school friend is accompanied by a series of images that we would assume to be photos from the time.

But looking more closely at the images, viewers have spotted what appear to be tell-tale signs of image manipulation that look suspiciously like the results of AI image generation. One photo showed Pan making the V for victory gesture, but she appears to have missing fingers and her thumb looks strangely long. In another suspect image Pan seems to have an elongated tooth, a deformed ear and a gap in her right cheek.

So did Netflix really just fabricate the images using AI? Some publications have suggested that the images may be AI-generated variations spawned from one original image of Pan. If that were the case, it would he hugely inappropriate, but I'm not convinced that's what happened.

At the time of writing, Netflix has not yet responded to the controversy, but I suspect documentary makers may have attempted to enhance old low-resolution images using AI-powered upscaling or photo restoration software to try to make them look clearer on a TV screen. The problem is that even the best AI software can only take a poor quality images so far, and such programs tend to over sharpen certain lines, resulting in strange artifacts.

Even if that's the case, I still think Netflix should have steered clear of it given the context and the controversy around AI imagery. It should at the very least have used a clarification saying that images had been AI upscaled or sharpened or denoised or whatever to avoid this kind of backlash. Any kind of manipulation of photos in a documentary is controversial because the whole point is to present things as they were. Sure, artists' representations have long been used in crime reporting, for example to show court proceedings when cameras are prohibited, but it's clear that that they're representations, and they should be labelled as such.

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The Kate Middleton Photoshop debacle has demonstrated just how closely images in the media are liable to be picked apart, and we've also seen that audiences are on the alert and ready to call out AI imagery wherever it may appear: from dodgy scientific papers to Uber Eats and a Lego quiz . Faced with conspiracy theories galore as it is, Netflix really has to work to show it has standards.

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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.

How to use an iPad as a drawing tablet with a PC

How Netflix has changed the global entertainment industry

Netflix continues to rewrite the playbook for global entertainment.
It's solidified its position as the dominant streamer.
It now faces new challenges as it enters the advertising and gaming markets.

Since Netflix began its worldwide expansion in 2016, the streaming service has rewritten the playbook for global entertainment — from TV to film, and, more recently, video games.

Hollywood used to export most global hit series and movies. Now, thanks to Netflix's investments in international TV and film, programs like South Korea's "Squid Game" and France's "Lupin" have found massive audiences around the world. And Netflix's English-language originals, such as Shonda Rhimes' "Bridgerton," Ryan Murphy's "Dahmer," and Tim Burton's "Wednesday," have broken the streamer's internal streaming viewership records.

Netflix has been riding high after the 2023 writers' and actors' strikes shut down Hollywood production and other streamers retrenched to stem losses . After a dip in 2022, its stock soared in 2023 and it's making headway with its crackdown on password sharing and its ad-supported subscription tier . Cash-hungry rivals have returned to licensing their shows back to Netflix, which could help make the streamer even more dominant.

Netflix's impact on the global TV industry remains undeniable, even as it now faces fresh questions about its audience growth potential, ability to compete for ad dollars, and opportunity to capture younger viewers.

How Netflix disrupted the global TV industry

To thrive on an international stage, Netflix sought both US mass-market programming like "Stranger Things" as well as local content that could win over viewers in specific markets (and produce breakout hits).

The strategy helped the streaming service grow its customer base to more than 260 million global subscribers. Its momentum also reinvigorated production in places like Germany, Mexico, and India.

More recently, it along with other streamers has sought broadcast network-type shows that will grab broad viewership, plus fewer, lower-budget movies under new film chief Dan Lin. It's also dipped into live programming like sports and comedy.

More on Netflix's changing content direction:

Netflix is shifting strategy away from big-budget action flicks and big-name stars. Here's its new plan.
Netflix helped bring original films to streaming — now it's pulling back, and Hollywood is feeling the pinch
Leaked documents reveal what Netflix wants in new shows, from more 'Dahmer'-style true crime to its own version of 'The Bear'
Netflix's 'Squid Game' is part of a robust international TV strategy that's far ahead of rivals
International TV producers describe how streaming competition is changing their markets

Netflix shook up its leadership to reflect a changing business

After breaking all of Hollywood's rules and disrupting everything about the entertainment industry, Netflix — since its first-ever subscriber loss — has been breaking its own rules, reversing its stances on password sharing and advertising.

It also shook up its leadership in 2023, elevating Greg Peters to co-CEO, reflecting its shift to new revenue streams, alongside Ted Sarandos as cofounder Reed Hastings moved to executive chair.

Meanwhile, TV head Bela Bajaria was named chief content officer, with film reporting to her.

An elite team of interdisciplinary execs helps make Netflix's biggest decisions. Known internally as the "Lstaff" — the "L" stands for leadership — the 22-member group sits between the company's officers and its larger executive corps of vice presidents and above, who are called the "Estaff."

Netflix continues to grow, despite layoffs

Netflix's restructuring hasn't been without obstacles. It's laid off hundreds of staffers over the past couple of years as the broader media and entertainment space grapples with a bear market .

Still, the company's growth has generally made it a desirable place to work in recent years, despite some tests its corporate culture has faced. While hiring has slowed, it's still adding employees to maintain its lead over other paid streamers and fuel its global expansion.

More on Netflix's business model and company culture:

Netflix insiders describe a culture shift to 'fear-based' decision making, execs stretched thin, and belt tightening amid layoffs and subscriber losses
Netflix spending cuts fuel fears that its golden creative age is over
Netflix exec reveals sports ambitions and what's next for live sports as golf series 'Full Swing' debuts
Netflix is still hiring for hundreds of roles across its games studio, engineering teams, and more. Salary data shows how much the company has offered for 180 different jobs.

Netflix is moving into advertising and gaming

Netflix faces more competition from TV viewers than ever from traditional media companies like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery and tech players Apple , Amazon, and YouTube, most of which are further along in selling ads and offering live sports programming.

The competition is pushing the streaming giant to continue evolving. Netflix introduced a cheaper, ad-supported tier to combat slowing subscriber growth. It's also building video games and selling merchandise and experiences tied to series like "Squid Game" and "Bridgerton."

Some creators worried that Netflix would take fewer risks on programming to please advertisers, while the service has been slow to meet the scale demanded by advertisers.

As it did with movies and TV shows, Netflix is ramping up advertising and games slowly. It's commissioning and licensing mobile games, some of which are based on existing franchises like "Stranger Things" and acquired companies to kickstart the business.

More on Netflix's advertising and gaming ambitions:

Netflix has launched its ad-supported tier — here's everything we know about how the streaming giant is pitching advertisers
Netflix's stock surged after the company's first TV upfront presentation. Meet the 19 execs driving its advertising push
Why Netflix is placing cars like the Chevy Bolt in its shows, and what the streamer's deal with GM means for its growing advertising business
How Netflix leaders, including its new co-CEO, are thinking about a FAST streaming service that could supercharge its ads business
Netflix is doubling down on gaming, with dozens of new hires and a dedicated studio, as it chases younger audiences and battles to turn back subscriber losses

Elaine Low contributed to an earlier version of this post.

Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Business Insider's parent company, Axel Springer, is a Netflix board member.

Watch: Why MassMutual is all in on the Boston Red Sox, according to CMO Jennifer Halloran

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Stock rebound falters as netflix set to kick off big tech earnings.

US stocks were mxed on Thursday as investors braced for Netflix ( NFLX ) to kick earnings season into high gear.

The S&P 500 ( ^GSPC ) fell about 0.1%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ( ^DJI ) hovered just above the flat line after closing lower in the prior session . The Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC ) slipped 0.3%, extending tech's recent slump.

Stocks have struggled amid concerns inflation is no longer cooling and the Federal Reserve could ease back on interest rate cuts. Fed officials fueled those worries on Thursday with Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, reiterating that he doesn’t expect to lower rates until the end of the year.

That has put corporate earnings center stage as investors watch closely how well reports match up with high expectations . TSMC's ( TSM ) latest quarterly results were a mixed bag: The Taiwanese chip giant cautioned on its growth outlook this year outside of its memory chips business, sending the stock over 5% lower. The company, however, flagged "insatiable" appetite for AI as it posted a quarterly profit beat.

The earnings spotlight now shifts to Netflix, the first of the megacap tech companies to report. The streaming leader's financial update later Thursday is seen by some as the first real test for stocks this earnings season, given the megacaps are still playing a big part in pushing markets higher.

US bond yields, a recent headwind for stocks, picked up again on Thursday. The 10-year Treasury yield ( ^TNX ) was up six basis points, trading near 4.64%.

Here comes Netflix earnings...

Netflix ( NFLX ) is set to report its fiscal first quarter earnings on Thursday after market close — but the streamer will have a high bar to overcome as expectations remain elevated while the stock's valuation has surged in recent months.

"We believe the [increase] in Netflix's stock price over the past 18 months makes for a tricky set up into Thursday's earnings report," Deutsche Bank wrote in a note on Monday. Shares are up more than 155% over the past year and a half, with the stock currently trading near the high end of its 52-week range.

"We believe that in order for the stock to appreciate further, consensus estimates for 2024 to 2025 will need to be revised higher, as we believe a lot is already priced in at these valuation levels," the bank said.

Investors will continue to assess the company's revenue initiatives, like its crackdown on password sharing and ad-supported tier , in addition to last year's price hikes on certain subscription plans.

Those initiatives should help boost metrics like free cash flow, operating margins, and average revenue per member, or ARM.

Here's what Wall Street expects, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates:

Revenue: $9.27 billion (Netflix's guidance: $9.24 billion) vs. $8.16 billion in Q1 2023

Earnings per share (EPS): $4.52 (Netflix's guidance: $4.49) vs. $2.88 in Q1 2023

Net subscriber additions: 4.8 million vs. 1.7 million in Q1 2023

Trending tickers on Thursday afternoon

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company ( TSM ) led the Yahoo Finance trending tickers page on Thursday afternoon as shares fell about 5%. The Taiwanese chip giant cautioned on its growth outlook this year outside of its memory chips business, sending the stock over 5% lower.

Meanwhile, Tesla ( TSLA ) shares slipped more than 3% after the company was downgraded by Deutsche Bank to Hold from Buy amid fears the automaker's expected low-cost vehicle option will launch later than hoped.

One chart shows why higher for longer has been bad for small caps

Many stock strategists began the year harping for a rebound in small-cap performance as consensus believed the Federal Reserve would begin reducing interest rates in the first half of 2024. Now, with the market scaling back its hopes for interest rate cuts this year , the small-cap Russell 2000 Index ( ^RUT ) is down nearly 3% year to date, underperforming the S&P 500's more than 5% gain this year.

"We think the Russell 2000 could be a bit challenged in the near term until we get to kind of greater confirmation of inflation slowing and greater confirmation that, OK, the Fed is going to be able to start cutting rates," Bank of America head of US small- and mid-cap strategy Jill Carey Hall told Yahoo Finance.

After recent conversations with investors, Hall said the main catalyst for small caps to move higher is more clarity on the Federal Reserve's interest rate path.

Market consensus has shifted to projecting two rate cuts this year from seven rate cuts in early January, per Bloomberg data. The move has put a significant damper on the rally in small caps to close 2023, while large-cap stocks have clung to gains this year despite the shifting Fed narrative.

The key difference is the companies' debt structures. Small caps have more than 40% of their debt exposed to higher rates either in the form of floating-rate loans or short-term debt that may need to be refinanced amid the higher rate environment. This compares to the roughly 75% of S&P 500 companies, which have long-term fixed-rate debt, per Bank of America's research team.

Add in that large-cap companies often have more cash that could benefit from higher rates and that the Fed not cutting rates is simply more costly for smaller companies than larger companies.

"The [Russell 2000] index is very sensitive to credit and rates," Hall said. "Refinancing risk is a key risk for these companies given that large caps were able to lock in a lot of long-dated fixed-rate debt ...the longer rates stay high, that becomes a bigger and bigger risk to earnings for these [smaller cap] companies."

Stocks turn lower in afternoon trade

For the fourth straight day, the S&P 500 traded in the green to start the day and then reversed lower.

The moves came as several Fed officials noted they don't see any "urgency" to cut interest rates. US bond yields, a recent headwind for stocks, rose after the comments The 10-year Treasury yield ( ^TNX ) was up 6 basis points, trading near 4.64%

Gas prices: Why one US region will see 'stiff increases' this week

Gasoline prices have been on the rise nationally, with the West Coast seeing the largest increases over the past month. Now, drivers in New England states are likely to see an outsized spike at the pump.

This week, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and other Northeastern states switched to a more expensive summer blend of gasoline, sending wholesale prices $0.30 to $0.32 per gallon higher, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at OPIS.

"These increases will make their way to the street in the remainder of the week," Kloza told Yahoo Finance. "This region will see lots of stiff increases that take consumers by surprise."

On Thursday, the national average for gasoline sat at $3.67 per gallon, roughly a penny less than a year ago, according to AAA data.

Meanwhile, oil prices slipped on Thursday, adding to three straight sessions of declines. West Texas Intermediate ( CL=F ) futures traded below $83 per barrel, while Brent ( BZ=F ), the international benchmark price, hovered around $87 per barrel.

Fed's Williams doesn't see any 'urgency' to cut rates

Yahoo Finance's Jen Schonberger reports:

New York Fed president John Williams said Thursday he doesn’t see any "urgency" to cut interest rates, becoming the latest central bank official to dial back the timing of any easing in monetary policy.

Rates will need to come down at some point, he added, but that will be driven by the economy.

"I think we've got interest rates in a place that is moving us gradually to our goals," Williams said during a Semafor conference in Washington, D.C.

Investors have increasingly pushed back their rate cut expectations, pricing in the first cut in September with dwindling odds of a second rate cut this year.

S&P 500, Nasdaq rebound led by gains in Meta and Nvidia

The S&P 500 ( ^GSPC ) and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC ) rose roughly 0.6% and 0.4%, respectively, as they looked to recover from four straight days of declines.

Shares of Meta ( META ) gained more than 3%, while Nvidia ( NVDA ) rose more than 1%, following the chipmaker's 4% slide in the prior session.

The Nasdaq Composite seesawed earlier on Thursday but gained its footing during late morning trading.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ( ^DJI ) rose 0.8%, led by gains in industrials and financials.

Tesla shares slide to 52-week low

Tesla ( TSLA ) dropped more than 3% in early trading on Thursday as shares of the EV giant continued their downward trend. Tesla stock is down roughly 40% year to date, hitting its lowest intraday level since January 2023.

The stock weighed on the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC ), which struggled to stay in green territory after sliding more than 1% in the prior session.

S&P 500 tries to snap four-day losing streak

Stocks rose on Thursday morning, led by gains on all three major averages.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ( ^DJI ) rose 0.3%, while the S&P 500 ( ^GSPC ) rose roughly 0.2%. The Nasdaq Composite ( ^IXIC ) added 0.1% after tech stocks ended over 1% lower on Wednesday.

In each of the prior sessions this week, the S&P 500 opened higher but was not able to sustain those gains throughout the day. The broader benchmark has closed lower for the past four sessions.

All eyes will be on Netflix ( NFLX ) this afternoon when the streaming giant reports its quarterly results after the closing bell.

Netflix shares are up more than 25% year to date.

The debate over Tesla carries on

One of the fun things in a business newsroom: the banter on a battleground stock when it gets put through the wringer.

That battleground stock today is none other than Tesla ( TSLA ), which has had an awful 2024 for numerous reasons. The stock is down 11% in the past five trading sessions despite the company's new round of cost-cutting. Shares are nearing a 40% year-to-date decline.

The banter today from the Yahoo Finance newsroom premarket has been how slow most on the Street have been in reversing course on the stock. Some analysts have moved their ratings, but the holdouts are holding out.

Director of Yahoo Finance Live Valentina Caval and reporter Madison Mills crunched the numbers on this one, and here's where things stand.

While over 60% of analysts had a Buy rating on Tesla just last year, only 32% of analysts now have that same rating on the stock. About 44% have a Hold rating, while 23% sport a Sell.

And the US debt warnings continue — Bank of America's CEO weighs in

The IMF has been making waves this week at its spring meetings in D.C. with its warnings on the high levels of US debt ($34 trillion and counting).

Amid those warnings, we have seen rates on the 2-year and 10-year Treasurys move higher and the air come out of momentum stocks such as Nvidia ( NVDA ).

Bank of America chair and CEO Brian Moynihan is entering the conversation on US debt via a new interview with yours truly.

“So you really have to let the debt run at the right levels. And it's fine now, but it's something we have to be concerned about,” Moynihan told me on Yahoo Finance. "It's not something you raise the alarm on and say we have got to stop everything tomorrow. It's something you have to manage over the next decade because a little bit done every year adds up to a lot at the end of the decade."

You can watch our chat on other issues, such as the state of US consumers, below. And there's more analysis on the company's earnings this week here .

Genuine Parts (GPC) Q1 Earnings Beat, Sales Miss Estimates

Genuine Parts (GPC) envisions 2024 adjusted earnings in the band of $9.80-$9.95 per share.

Mortgage rates surpass 7% while home prices show no signs of declining

The rate on the popular 30-year home loan surpassed 7% this week. Some buyers moved to secure purchases but demand is muted overall.

Analysts reset Netflix price targets ahead of earnings amid ad-tier push

Netflix is pushing growth in its ad-supported platform as linear-TV spending continues to migrate to streaming.

Netflix stock has been on massive run — that makes for 'tricky' earnings set up

Netflix will report first quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday. Here's what to expect.

Biden gets Trumpy on trade

Biden is borrowing a Trump tactic by proposing new tariffs on a few Chinese imports. But it's far from the Full Trump.

Fed to cut rates in September and maybe once more this year: Reuters poll

The U.S. Federal Reserve will wait until September to cut its key interest rate, according to a majority of 100 economists polled by Reuters, with half saying there will be only two cuts this year and only about a third forecasting more. Fed Chair Jerome Powell also said on Tuesday "the recent data ... indicate that it's likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence" that inflation is falling back to the U.S. central bank's 2% target, remarks that dimmed hopes for rate cuts anytime soon. Financial markets, which earlier this year were pricing six Fed rate cuts starting in March, are also expecting the first reduction in September and one more in either November or December.

Las Vegas Sands Is Worst Performer in S&P 500 After Earnings Beat. Here’s Why.

The casino company filed first-quarter adjusted earnings of 75 cents per share, topping Wall Street’s call for 62 cents.

Ask an Advisor: We Have $1.2 Million in IRAs and Only $10k in Cash. Should We Use IRA Withdrawals to Build Our Emergency Fund?

I am 64 ½ and have been retired for just over a year. I am receiving Social Security benefits, a bit early, but have not touched my nest egg except to withdraw $10,000, which I placed in a high-interest savings account as an emergency fund. Would it be wise to use part of that cash […] The post Ask an Advisor: We Have $1.2 Million in IRAs and Only $10k in Cash. Should We Use IRA Withdrawals to Build Our Emergency Fund? appeared first on SmartReads by SmartAsset.

1 Spectacular Artificial Intelligence (AI) Semiconductor Stock to Buy (Not Nvidia)

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Entertainment

A New Netflix Series Makes Andrew Scott the Definitive Tom Ripley

A crucial scene in Ripley , the latest adaptation of Patricia Highsmith ’s classic thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley , places the eponymous grifter in Rome’s Galleria Borghese. As a tour guide lectures on Caravaggio’s David With the Head of Goliath , Tom Ripley drifts toward the painting. “Caravaggio links the killer and victim,” the docent explains, in Italian, “by portraying David as compassionate, even loving, in the way he gazes at the severed head of Goliath. And he made this bond even stronger by using himself as the model for both. Both are Caravaggio’s face.”

Highsmith never so much as mentions the artist’s name. But this moment, which takes place midway through the gorgeously realized yet torpid, ultimately a bit vapid eight-part drama, is neither the first nor the last time Caravaggio comes up in Ripley , now streaming on Netflix. A Baroque master equally famous for portraiture whose chiaroscuro illuminates his often-biblical subjects’ emotions and for killing a man in a Roman street fight, the painter becomes a sort of double for Tom—a tricky character played with dynamism and restraint by Andrew Scott. The series seizes on the book’s obsession with aesthetics, reimagining the 1955 page-turner as a Künstlerroman and its murderous antihero as an artist whose medium happens to be crime.

Its eight-hour runtime allows Ripley to hew more closely to the novel’s tortuous plot than either the 1960 French film Purple Noon , which cast a young Alain Delon in the Ripley role, or Anthony Minghella’s beloved version, from 1999, starring Matt Damon , Jude Law , and Gwyneth Paltrow . Tom is a small-time scammer scraping by in early-1960s New York City when he’s summoned to meet with Herbert Greenleaf ( Manchester by the Sea filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan), a shipping magnate whose son Richard has been living in Italy on a trust fund. Herbert wants the young man to come home, and he’s willing to pay a friend—Tom vaguely remembers Richard, as Dickie—to retrieve him. But upon arriving in the beach town where Dickie (Johnny Flynn) has set up house, he finds his unwitting host too entrenched in his dilettante’s routine of dabbling in painting and flirting with an American neighbor, Marge Sherwood ( Dakota Fanning ), to budge. Tom’s objective soon shifts to prolonging his own stay. Spooked by Tom’s growing fixation on him, Dickie tries to shake off his guest but only succeeds in awakening Tom’s inner psychopath.

There are two excellent reasons to savor the series, in all of its languor. The first is the care The Night Of creator and The Irishman screenwriter Steven Zaillian, who wrote and directed every episode, has taken in making it. The performers around Scott are smartly cast; Flynn captures Dickie’s blitheness, while Fanning endows the embattled Marge with some agency. Also superb, and too often overlooked on TV, is the sound design. Shrill doorbells, front-desk service bells, and especially ringing telephones torment Tom, threatening to expose his deceptions. Zaillian successfully translates into visual language motifs from the book, like Tom’s fear of water. In coastal cities from Naples to Venice, the sea glitters tantalizingly in the afternoon sun, but beneath its surface lurks an unknowable expanse of bottomless blackness.

At first, the black-and-white cinematography might seem pretentious—an easy way of elevating Ripley above the standard, art-agnostic Netflix original. But director of photography Robert Elswit, who collaborated with Paul Thomas Anderson on There Will Be Blood and Inherent Vice , earns the limited palate. Tom’s lowlife New York has the grit of tabloid crime-scene photos. In Italy, where statues grace piazzas, carved cherubs cling to building facades, and ancient crosses are everywhere, Elswit’s postcard panoramas could come straight out of mid-century Italian films by Fellini or Antonioni or Rossellini. In a profile of a killer who worships art for art’s sake, these allusions make sense. By avoiding the sun-drenched golden tones of Purple Noon and Minghella’s adaptation, the series also establishes a colder, more sinister mood.

Ripley ’s other great asset is Scott, who, at 47, may be more than two decades older than his character as conceived by Highsmith (he doesn’t look it) but has nonetheless given us the first definitive onscreen Ripley. Delon’s performance is a study in glamorous cruelty, yet it offers no glimpse of Tom’s evolution from awkward and aggrieved petty crook to worldly and polished criminal mastermind. Damon’s Tom does transform, but the actor’s aw-shucks wholesomeness in early scenes fails to persuasively foreshadow the protagonist’s violent potential.

Scott registers every shade of the chameleonic con man. When we meet him, he’s clearly stifled by his meager existence and uncomfortable in his own skin. As Highsmith wrote, Tom “had always thought he had the world’s dullest face, a thoroughly forgettable face with a look of docility that he could not understand, and a look also of vague fright that he had never been able to erase.” Scott is at his most captivating in long, solo scenes of Tom grimacing with the effort of dragging suitcases around unfamiliar cities or cleaning up after his impulsive murders.

Those labors pay off. Tom Ripley begins to merge with Dickie Greenleaf, affecting the confidence and ease that come with extreme privilege until he internalizes them. Is he in love with Dickie, or does he want to be Dickie, or both? Is there even a difference? By the end of the season, he’s shed this persona as well and recreated Tom in the image of Caravaggio—down to the wild hair and goatee. He is an artist now, achieving through illusion and fabrication and impersonation feats we’re meant to understand as rivaling his idol’s timeless masterpieces.

It makes for a tidy finale, culminating in a sly twist that Zaillian adds in the very last scene. The trouble is that, for all its technical and narrative elegance, Ripley doesn’t quite earn the Caravaggio comparison. Yes, homoeroticism permeates both the artist’s biography and Tom’s. Both men wander Italy, 450 years apart, in flight from their crimes. And in a story where Tom plays black swan to Dickie’s white, there is some symmetry in giving the former another icon to emulate: two sets of doubles. Yet mere cleverness makes the ending feel glib. Eight long episodes whose artful slowness rob suspense from what is, after all, supposed to be a thriller demand a more profound resolution. Caravaggio alchemized the rage that defined his life into paintings whose brilliance has outlived him by centuries. Tom Ripley enriches himself, and only himself, through violence and fraud. Both may be geniuses, but the similarities end there.

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The Best Movies New to Every Major Streaming Platform in April 2024

David ehrlich.

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Netflix may get most of the attention, but it’s hardly a one-stop shop for cinephiles looking to stream essential classic and contemporary films. Each of the prominent streaming platforms caters to its own niche of film obsessives.

From the boundless wonders of the Criterion Channel to the new frontiers of streaming offered by the likes of Ovid and Peacock, IndieWire’s monthly guide highlights the best of what’s coming to every major streamer, with an eye toward exclusive titles that may help readers decide which of these services is right for them.

Here is your guide for April 2024.

“Girls State” (dirs. Amanda McBaine & Jesse Moss, 2024)

Winner of the U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2020, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ “Boys State” embodied the best and worst of the eponymous tradition that it captured on camera: An annual leadership program, funded by the American Legion and held in almost all 50 states since the 1930s, in which 1,000 or so hyper-ambitious teenage boys from all walks of life are given a week to form and elect a mock government.

On the one hand, their film offered a semi-realistic microcosm of the American system at work, and an optimistic preview of what Gen Z — at least its most politically engaged young men — might bring to the table as they become old enough to and run for office. On the other hand, it reinforced the American Legion’s history of preserving the status quo through a “separate but not so equal” approach that makes it obvious who’s really expected to inherit the power in this country. McBaine and Moss’ sequel film returns to undress Boys State’s underfunded sister program, in which teen girls vie for the kinds of offices that few — if any — women have ever held in the real world. Shot in the purgatorial stretch of time between when the Dobbs memo was leaked and when Roe v. Wade was officially overturned, “Girls State” finds that teenagers are as divided on the issues as the rest of the country, but at the same time it also offers a powerful and encouraging portrait of young women who discover the power of listening to their own voices by sharing in the same primal scream.

Available to stream April 5

“Cleo from 5 to 7” (dir. Agnès Varda, 1962)

Truth be told, the most exciting addition to the Criterion Channel this month isn’t a movie, but rather a new channel unto itself: “Criterion 24/7,” which is now streaming a round-the-clock selection of classic and contemporary masterpieces from the platform’s unparalleled library. Criterion isn’t the first streamer to harken back to the glory days of cable TV, but this is still an absolute godsend for painfully indecisive cinephiles who often find themselves browsing through movies for hours without ever watching anything. Most of what’s played during the first days of “24/7” has been recognizable at a glance (“Chungking Express,” “The Seventh Seal, “Night on Earth,” etc.), but I’m hopeful the Channel will eventually provide an overlay so that people can see what’s on and more easily make their way down the rabbit hole of discovery.

In terms of the usual á la carte offerings, the Channel isn’t resting on its laurels. April’s most enjoyably themed retrospective offers a selection of movies that take place over the course of a single night (or, in the case of our monthly highlight, a late afternoon), a series that ranges from classics of the genre like “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” to more recent entries like Bertrand Bonello’s “Nocturama.” The Peak 1950 Noir package focuses exclusively on the highest year in the history of cinematic low-lifes, lending ultra-focused context to everything from “The Asphalt Jungle” to “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”

Elsewhere, fans of the late William Friedkin can delight in a selective retro that pairs his unassailable hits (“The Exorcist,” “Sorcerer”) with his more curious misses (“Deal of the Century,” “Jade”), while the “Hong Kong in New York” series brings Maggie Cheung to Chinatown in the accurately titled likes of Peter Chan’s “Comrades: Almost a Love Story,” and a glimpse at the glory of Jean Eustache offers subscribers the bask in the new restoration of his once-elusive “The Mother and the Whore.” And how cool is it to see Makoto Shinkai featured alongside the greatest auteurs of all time? “Suzume” is on Netflix this month, but check out “Children Who Chase Lost Voices” for one of the most luminous — and frustratingly under-seen — anime epics of the 21st century.

All films available to stream April 1

“Wish” (dirs. Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023)

You’ll wish this were better (not even Chris Pine trying to will “This Is the Thanks I Get?!” into a classic Disney song is enough to make it come true), but parents desperate for a reprieve from the likes of “Moana” and “Encanto” — masterpieces both! — might give Disney’s latest animated musical a whirl. It’s not like any other movies are coming to the platform this month, even if that 28-minute episode of “Bluey” is shaping up to be the motion picture event of the year.

Available to stream April 3

“Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” (dir. Hamaguchi Ryūsuke, 2021)

A playful triptych of self-contained vignettes (complete with their own credit blocks) that are bound together by a shared fascination with memory, coincidence, and the deep truths that shallow lies tend to uncover, Hamaguchi Ryūsuke’s wonderfully beguiling “Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy” feels more like a single film than it does a trio of smaller ones that have been stitched together into a makeshift anthology, but the finished product is only greater than the sum of its parts because the “Drive My Car” director understands that the best short fiction isn’t just a travel-sized version of something bigger. On the contrary, the short stories he tells here are so delightful because they operate in a way that “long” ones don’t. Together, they cohere into a fun, sexy, and deceptively lightweight reminder that Hamaguchi is one of the most exciting filmmakers alive right now — there’s no better way to whet your appetite for the release of his “Evil Does Not Exist” next month.

Available to stream April 12

Other highlights:

– “Beautiful City” (4/19) – “Dancing in the Dust” (4/19) – “White River” (4/19)

“She Came to Me” (dir. Rebecca Miller, 2023)

It often pains me that this column is so biased towards newer movies, because — with the exception of MUBI, the Criterion Channel, and a few others — most of the notable streaming platforms consider anything made before 1990 too antique for the cost to license. The only silver lining: The opportunity these platforms offer for even casual viewers to discover the genuinely fascinating stuff that was never given a proper chance in theaters.

Audiences may not have flocked to see Rebecca Miller’s “She Came to Me” when it opened in limited release last fall, but it’s easy to imagine people clicking on a Hulu button that promises them a tight, NYC-set rom-com starring Anne Hathaway and Peter Dinklage. What’s actually in store for them: A winsome and wonderfully strange modern fable about a disaffected operetta composer who falls in love with a salty tugboat captain played by Marisa Tomei(!) and decides to make her the subject of his next masterpiece. Did I mention that Hathaway strips naked for Chris Gethard while monologuing about kreplach? Or that Brian d’Arcy James and “Cold War” star Joanna Kulig have a custody battle in the middle of a Civil War reenactment? This might lure people in by posing as just another piece of standard-assembly streaming content, but Hulu doesn’t have anything else like it.

– “Blockers” (4/1) – “Little Women” (4/22) – “Stars at Noon” (4/28)

“EO” (dir. Jerzy Skolimowski, 2022)

Max has virtually nothing on offer when it comes to new originals this month, but at least its library content is a bit more interesting than what streamers typically circulate into their lineups. That starts with all four of Éric Rohmer’s “Tales of Four Seasons,” including the effervescently profound “A Summer’s Tale,” which ranked high on IndieWire’s list of the 100 best movies of the ’90s . There’s also Olivier Assayas’ thoroughly nightmarish and wholly unmissable “Demonlover,” Janicza Bravo’s early decade standout “Zola,” the first three movies in the “Once Upon a Time in China” series, and Terrence Malick’s “The New World” — just in time for another Cannes without the premiere of his long-gestating movie about Jesus Christ. But we’re going with Jerzy Skolimowski’s “EO,” because it’s about a donkey with cute pointy ears, and because it’s the only movie on this list that will break your heart more than the fact that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” isn’t coming back.

Available to stream April 1

Other highlights:

– “Demonlover” (4/1) – “The New World” (4/1) – “A Summer’s Tale” (4/1)

“How to Have Sex” (dir Mollie Manning Walker, 2023)

MUBI’s April all-killer, no-filler April lineup isn’t particularly robust, but good luck finding another streaming platform that’ll let you hop from Andrew Haigh’s “45 Years” to Alain Resnais’ “Stavisky” and S. Craig Zahler’s “Brawl in Cell Block 99” without having to close the tab or return to the menu page of your Apple TV. But MUBI’s streaming service is best known as the exclusive home for MUBI’s theatrical releases, and this month gives subscribers the chance to revisit or catch up with Mollie Manning Walker’s 2023 Cannes breakout “How to Have Sex,” a drama about a girls trip to Malia that dives head-first into post-#MeToo questions of conquest and consent with deeply sobering results.

– “45 Years” (4/1) – “Stavisky” (4/1) – “Brawl in Cell Block 99” (4/1)

“Anyone but You” (dir. Will Gluck, 2023)

As someone who’s professionally obligated to sit through “Rebel Moon: Part Two: The Scargiver,” I’m praying that it makes up for the catastrophic first installment of Zack Snyder’s sci-fi riff on “Seven Samurai” and gives Netflix subscribers an Original film worth celebrating this month, but the jury is still out on that one. In the meantime, safer bets abound. “American Graffiti” satisfies Netflix’s annual quota of streaming one (1) film made before 1980, while “The Land Before Time” offers parents some classic dinosaur content for their kids and “How to Be Single” suggests that everyone might’ve been a little too hard on the few studio rom-coms we got during the 2010s. If the genre is able to stage a proper comeback, fans will have “Anyone but You” to thank for reminding Hollywood that audiences will still pay to see beautiful people meet-cute, mess it up, and then make out in front of the Sydney Opera House. And if you love Glen Powell in this, just wait until you see him in “Hit Man” when it finally arrives on Netflix in June.

Available to stream April 23

– “American Graffiti” (4/1) – “How to Be Single” (4/1) – “The Land Before Time” (4/1)

“Always Shine” (dir. Sophia Takal, 2016)

Close your eyes and pick an IndieWire staffer at random and you’ll probably name someone who loves Sophia Takal’s “Always Shine.” Here’s what Film Editor Ryan Lattanzio had to say about the movie when it ranked on our list of the best female-directed horror films of the 2010s : Alongside ‘Persona’ ‘The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,’ ‘Black Swan,’ and the thematically similar ‘Queen of Earth,’ ‘Always Shine’ is the ultimate girlfriends-on-edge film.

Mackenzie Davis and Caitlin FitzGerald play a pair of blond, lithe, almost-lookalike actress friends who, in an effort to rekindle their cracking bond amid the pressures of Hollywood aspirations, take a healing trip to Big Sur. But in Takal’s world, there will be no R&R on this mini-vacation to hell. Beth (FitzGerald) and Anna (Davis) proceed to tear each other apart with eviscerating words and psychosexual mind games. Alone, and together, in the woods is no place to be for two women on the verge — and especially two competitive actors — who are locked in a suffocating folie à deux.”

Available to stream April 25

– “Sirens” (4/9) – “Museum Hours” (4/11) – “Saturday Night at the Baths” (4/16)

“Magnolia” (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)

Paramount Plus is still leaning on library titles to keep movie fans engaged, and the streamer’s offerings continue to pull from the same pool that most of its competitors have been swimming in for the last few years. Still, subscribers looking for something beyond the new season of “Star Trek: Discovery” could do a lot worse than the likes of “Galaxy Quest,” “Face/Off,” and “Malcolm X.” I’m only highlighting the eminently streamable “Magnolia” because its plague of raining frogs has always made it feel like something of a Passover film (ditto “There Will Be Blood”), and the inexplicability of its ending might resonate more than ever during the morally anguished seders that many of us will be leading this year.

– “Face/Off” (4/1) – “Juice” (4/1) – “Malcolm X” (4/1)

“M3gan” (dir. Gerard Johnstone, 2023)

Peacock doesn’t have much to offer subscribers in the way of exclusive new movies this month (it’s hard to compete with the new season of “Summer House,” and the mind-blowing reveal that Paige DeSorbo is paying $8,500 a month for a flavorless 2br in midtown), but parents with Illumination-pilled kids will surely appreciate “Migration” being just a click away. Beyond that, library standouts include “Waiting to Exhale,” the ever-underrated “Mission: Impossible — III,” and “House of Gucci,” which might receive a surge of interest in the wake of the “Joker: Folie à Deux” trailer. But we’ll give it up to our girl “M3gan,” because no other recent movie has had so much campy fun messing around with the horrors of AI.

Available to stream April 24

– “Mission: Impossible — III” (4/1) – “Waiting to Exhale” (4/1) – “Migration” (4/19)

“The Holdovers” (dir. Alexander Payne, 2023)

HOLDOVERS_FP_00406_R
Dominic Sessa stars as Angus Tully and Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham in director Alexander Payne’s THE HOLDOVERS, a Focus Features release.
Credit: Courtesy of FOCUS FEATURES / © 2023 FOCUS FEATURES LLC

It stands to reason that “The Holdovers” would be the last of this year’s Best Picture nominees to make its way to streaming, as this nuanced and hyper-literate Alexander Payne drama — set in the winter of 1970 and shot to look as if it had actually been made back then — takes great pleasure in defying every impulse of modern cinema from even before the moment it starts. And yet, it might take even greater pleasure in embracing some of the movies’ most time-honored tropes and traditions.

Chief among them: The inviolable rule that anything a school teacher “casually” tells their students in the first act of a film must speak to a core idea of the film itself. In that light, be sure to take notes during the opening scene in which Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) quotes Cicero to the “vulgar philistines” in his Ancient Civilization class. “Non nobis solum nati sumus.” “Not for ourselves alone are we born.” No spoilers, but that’s definitely going to be on the final exam of “The Holdovers,” which gradually thaws into a slight but sensitive tale about a trio of lonely souls who teach each other to push through their lives’ most isolating disappointments. I found Payne’s latest a bit strained and lacking in comparison to the likes of “Sideways” and “Election,” but Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s Oscar-winning performance really is that good, and the whole movie is worth it for the heartbreak and resilience she brings to it by the end.

Available to stream April 30

– “Chinatown” (4/1) – “Titanic” (4/1)

“Infested” (dir. Sébastien Vaniček, 2023)

Movies about giant spiders — and not the humanoid friendly neighborhood kind — are having a bit of a moment in the wake of recent fare like “Spaceman” and “Sting,” but Sébastien Vaniček’s “Infested” might have the strongest bite of them all. The story of a kind-hearted animal lover whose apartment becomes ground zero for an arachnid invasion after he adopts an illegally imported spider named Rihanna, this creature feature may not have the most remarkable monster in the world, but it makes up for that in just about every other arena. Reviewing the film out of this year’s Overlook Film Festival, IndieWire’s Alison Foreman wrote : “What Vaniček’s intricately crafted creature feature lacks in the specialness of its specimen it makes up for with a captivating killing den inhabited by multidimensional characters as melancholy as they are hilarious.”

Available to stream April 26

– “Late Night with the Devil” (4/19) – “The Changeling” (4/22) – “The Innkeepers” (4/22)

Most Popular

Netflix ‘Juggernaut’ Faces High Bar After $112 Billion Rally

(Bloomberg) -- Netflix Inc. investors have big expectations for the streaming giant’s first-quarter results due Thursday, which bulls hope will support a rally back toward record levels for the stock.

The shares have been on a tear in the past six months, adding $112 billion in value. Netflix is one of the top performers on the S&P 500 Index, rallying to within about 13% of its 2021 record high as growing earnings have driven down its valuation. It’s up 25% since its January report, where it flagged its best quarter of growth since the coronavirus pandemic.

The drivers behind that gain — a password crackdown and a new ad-supported subscription tier — are expected to continue into the first quarter of the year, with bullish investors hoping the results are the next catalyst for Netflix’s run. Wall Street expects this to be the firm’s strongest quarter yet in terms of adjusted earnings per share — the average analyst estimate is nearly 60% higher than the same period a year earlier.

“The bar is high and I think it’ll be high for a while,” said Rob Conzo, CEO and managing director of The Wealth Alliance. “It’s like a juggernaut, they just keep rolling along.”

Shares were down about 1% Thursday at 2 p.m. in New York.

After gaining more than 13 million new subscribers in the final quarter of 2023, Netflix is expected to have added another 4.8 million in the reporting period — an estimate that may even be on the low side, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Geetha Ranganathan.

“Continued traction on the advertising tier, paid sharing efforts and a steadily improving content slate suggest that net adds may be closer to 6 million,” she wrote in a note. In comparison, the Paramount+ streaming service added 4.1 million subscribers in its fourth quarter.

At the height of Netflix’s pandemic boom, its stock traded at about 53 times forward earnings. That’s currently down to about 33 times forward earnings, according to Bloomberg data — albeit still at a premium to the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index.

“When you have a product that just keeps delivering on its performance, it’s hard to argue it’s not worth it,” Conzo said.

Netflix Has Best Week Since 2022 on Stunning Subscriber Jump

To be sure, not all analysts are so bullish. Should Netflix not meet Wall Street’s expectations, its stock could be vulnerable to selling. And, while results have lifted it in recent quarters, the shares can be choppy around earnings, with an average move of 10% in either direction according to Bloomberg data.

“To continue to beat expectations that have already come up a lot is more of a challenging effort,” said Hanna Howard, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds. “It’s possible that they’ll meet expectations, but it’s going to be a little bit more challenging to beat as they have.”

Competition in the streaming space comes from Walt Disney Co., which recently enacted its own password crackdown, Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. Still, many see Netflix as the biggest winner in the sector.

Analysts led by Tim Nollen at Macquarie see upside ahead for Netflix revenue given its ad tier and paid sharing, and recently lifted their target price — implying the stock has another 12% to gain from current levels.

“While still early in its advertising journey, early signs indicate potential upside to out-year estimates,” Nollen wrote. “We believe the company remains the undisputed leader in streaming TV.”

Tech Chart of the Day

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. delivered a better-than-projected revenue outlook and stuck with plans to spend as much as $32 billion in 2024, shoring up expectations of sustained growth in AI demand. Its outlook may help assuage some investors worried that such demand won’t hold up, or that a smartphone recovery may be longer in coming.

Top Tech News

Earnings due thursday.

--With assistance from Gao Yuan, Jane Lanhee Lee, Mayumi Negishi and Stephen Kirkland.

(Updates stock moves)

IMAGES

17 Travel movies on Netflix, you need to stream right now! (2022)
Netflix's 'The Trip' Gives Us Some Very Different Scenes From a Marriage
Netflix tech shows you should watch!
Top 10 Best Travel Shows on Netflix for 2024
All The Cyberpunk Movies On Netflix You've Gotta See
12 Best Netflix Travel Documentaries & Shows to Watch

COMMENTS

Is 'Triptych' a True Story? Here's Everything You Need ...
The Mexican mystery thriller series follows a woman whose life is endangered after finding out she's an identical triplet.
Triptych (TV Series 2023- )
Triptych: With Maite Perroni, David Chocarro, Flavio Medina, Nuria Bages. It follows Becca, a forensics expert who, when investigating a murder, realizes that the body of the victim looks exactly like her.
Meet the Triptych cast: who's who in the new mystery thriller
Maite Perroni in Triptych. (Image credit: Netflix) Rebecca is a forensic agent, who works on crime scenes, however she's surprised to find one such body that looks identical to hers. The similarities only get deeper as Rebecca works through a web of secrets. As the plot synopsis suggests, Maite Perroni plays several roles.
What is Triptych about? New Netflix series explained
He's an action movie aficionado, '80s obsessive, and Oscars enthusiast. He loves Invincible, but he's also a fan of The Boys, the MCU, The Chosen, and much more. You can contact him at cameron ...
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Stream It Or Skip It: 'Stolen' on Netflix, a Superb Swedish Drama About One Woman's Battle Against Systemic Oppression ... entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn't kid himself: he ...
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Credits: Netflix "Triptych" is a mystery thriller series with never-ending twists and turns. Rebecca's life completely changed when she came face-to-face with a woman who looked just like her. She knew she had to get to the bottom of the truth, and the more she dug into it, the uglier it got. The journey to find her true identity is not a ...
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Triptych. Watch Triptych with a subscription on Netflix. After finding out she is one of three identical triplets, Rebecca embarks on a perilous journey to uncover the truth about her past.
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Triptych is a TV series that landed on Netflix in February 2023. Starring Maite Perroni in the triple role of Aleida, Rebecca, and Tamara, the show follows the story of a set of triplets who discover in adult age the existence of their sisters and, through long investigation, they find out they were the subjects of an experiment started with their birth.
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The Trip: Directed by Tommy Wirkola. With Noomi Rapace, Aksel Hennie, Atle Antonsen, Christian Rubeck. A dysfunctional couple head to a remote cabin to reconnect, but each has intentions to kill the other. Before they can carry out their plans, unexpected visitors arrive and they face a greater danger.
'The Trip' Netflix Review: Stream It or Skip It?
Anyway, the movie adheres to the cliche that all is fair in love and war. It's amusing and irreverent, bleak and repulsive — and therefore an exercise in cognitive dissonance, I guess. It's ...
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The 20 Best Travel Shows on Netflix to Watch in 2024
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The song explores the idea of finding solace in the fictional worlds created by movies and TV shows, something many people can relate to. It captures the feeling of getting lost in a series and feeling a connection to the characters and storylines. The song's lyrics describe the protagonist binge-watching a show on Netflix and feeling a sense ...
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