Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of December’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)
‘The Abandons’ Season 1
Starts streaming: Dec. 4
The “Sons of Anarchy” writer-producer Kurt Sutter carries his career-long interest in outlaws and clannish feuds to the Old West for this action series, which sets two families against each other on the American frontier. Set in the 1850s in the Washington Territory, “The Abandons” has Lena Headey playing Fiona Nolan, the matriarch of a cattle ranch that she runs with her adopted adult children. Gillian Anderson plays Constance Van Ness, a ruthless silver mining magnate whose family effectively controls the region and is actively trying to buy out or drive away anyone who opposes them. Similar to the period westerns of Taylor Sheridan (who was in the “Sons of Anarchy” cast, pre-“Yellowstone”), this show embraces the genre’s violence and darkness, exploring how a nation was forged out of conflict.
‘Jay Kelly’
Starts streaming: Dec. 5
George Clooney plays the title character in “Jay Kelly,” a dramatic comedy film about an aging movie star suffering an existential crisis. Adam Sandler plays Ron Sukenick, Jay’s longtime manager and friend, whose loyalty and compassion — alongside Jay’s similarly devoted publicist, Liz (Laura Dern) — tend to exacerbate the actor’s worry that he has not been as good of a father, partner or citizen of the world as he should have been. Directed by Noah Baumbach (who also co-wrote the screenplay with the actor Emily Mortimer), “Jay Kelly” is a Hollywood insider’s look at the rewards and challenges of show business, with Clooney giving a nuanced performance as a celebrity who cares deeply about both his public and private legacy.
‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’
Starts streaming: Dec. 12
The third installment in the writer-director Rian Johnson’s sly, satirical “Knives Out” murder mystery series is set at an old, upstate New York Catholic church, where a progressive young priest (Josh O’Connor) has been trying to offer the parishioners an alternative to the stern, angry social conservatism of their monsignor (Josh Brolin). When the senior cleric dies mysteriously during mass, the swaggering private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) arrives to try and solve what looks to be an impossible puzzle. Unlike the earlier movies in this franchise, “Wake Up Dead Man” is less about watching Blanc skillfully carve up a group of smug, vain suspects — played this time by Kerry Washington, Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner and Andrew Scott, among others — than it is about the spiritual crisis in this parish, which has been dragged into darkness by a demagogue.
‘Breakdown: 1975’
Starts streaming: Dec. 19
The 1970s were a remarkable era for cinema, especially in the United States, where the edgy films of the New Hollywood era competed in the marketplace with splashy blockbusters. In the director Morgan Neville’s documentary “Breakdown: 1975,” he takes a closer look at one particular year of American movies, with input from interview subjects including Albert Brooks, Ellen Burstyn and Martin Scorsese, among others. Neville — who specializes in incisive pop culture documentaries, such as the Oscar-winning “20 Feet From Stardom” — is also interested in what was going on outside movie theaters in 1975, considering how violence, war, malaise and economic turmoil informed classics like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Network” and “Nashville.”
‘Cover-Up’
Starts streaming: Dec. 26
The Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”), in collaboration with her co-director Mark Obenhaus, turns to the venerable investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in “Cover-Up,” a film in which the reporter reflects on some of his biggest stories. Hersh rose to prominence in the 1960s with his coverage of the Vietnam War — and the My Lai massacre in particular — and in the ’70s his stories about the Watergate scandal and secret C.I.A. programs shook up Washington. The documentary is partly about a rich era in American journalism, but mainly it’s a character study, about a man who has spent his life exposing various governments’ secrets while zealously guarding his own sources and personal privacy. He is a complicated and often cantankerous person, once begrudgingly described by Richard Nixon in his secret White House tapes as an annoying pest who is “usually right.”
Also arriving:
Dec. 1 “All the Empty Rooms” “CoComelon Lane” Season 6 “Love Is Blind: Italy” “Playing Gracie Darling” “Pulp Fiction” “Stripes” “Troll 2” “What Lies Beneath” “The Wolf of Wall Street” “Zero Dark Thirty”
Dec. 3 “My Secret Santa” “The Northman”
Dec. 4 “The Believers” Season 2 “Lali: Time to Step Up”
Dec. 5 “The New Yorker at 100” “The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2” “Owning Manhattan” Season 2 “The Price of Confession” Season 1
Dec. 7 “Babylon” “Cast Away”
Dec. 8 “Elmo & Mark Rober’s Merry Giftmas”
Dec. 9 “Badly in Love” Season 1 “Blood Coast” Season 2 “Masaka Kids, a Rhythm Within” “The West Wing” Seasons 1-7
Dec. 10 “The Accident” Season 2 “Record of Ragnarok” Season 3 “Simon Cowell: The Next Act”
Dec. 11 “The Fakenapping” “Lost in the Spotlight” “Man vs. Baby” Season 1 “Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft” Season 2
Dec. 12 “City of Shadows” Season 1 “Home for Christmas” Season 3
Dec. 13 “The Talented Mr. Ripley”
Dec. 15 “The Creature Cases” Season 6
Dec. 16 “Castle Rock” Seasons 1-2 “Culinary Class Wars” Season 2
Dec. 17 “The Manny” Season 3 “Murder in Monaco” “What’s in the Box?” Season 1
Dec. 18 “10DANCE” “Emily in Paris” Season 5
Dec. 19 “The Great Flood” “A Time for Bravery”
Dec. 22 “The Closer” Seasons 1-7 “Elway” “Sicily Express” Season 1
Dec. 24 “Goodbye June” “Tom Segura: Teacher”
Dec. 25 “Stranger Things” Season 5, Part 2
Dec. 29 “Members Only: Palm Beach”
Dec. 30 “Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story” “Ricky Gervais: Mortality”
Dec. 31 “Stranger Things” Season 5, Part 3
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