New on Netflix Dec 30-Jan 5: 5 best movies and shows picked by our streaming expert

Tom Bedford
·4 min read
12
Enzo Vogrincic in Society of the Snow.
Enzo Vogrincic in Society of the Snow.

January has a lot of fantastic new releases on Netflix with new gripping TV shows, informative documentaries and must-watch movies all hitting the streamer in the first few days of the year.

Here at What to Watch, we look through Netflix's release line-up every week, to bring you the hottest new movies, shows, documentaries and specials that everyone will be talking about.

We're looking at the week from Saturday, December 30 to Friday, Janaury 5 this week, although all the releases chosen are from the new year. Thankfully, those first 5 days of the year are chock-full of releases.

So let's look at five TV shows and movies that we think you need to see.

Bitconned

  • Type: documentary movie | Releases: Monday, January 1 | For fans of: financial true crime documentaries

Bitconned
Bitconned

Starting the year off is the feature documentary Bitconned, which could fill you with frustration or glee depending on your views on the topic.

Bitconned centers on the man Ray Trapani, who founded a company called Centra Tech alongside a friend just as the Bitcoin boom was beginning. What did Centra Tech do? Well, nothing, because it wasn't a real company — yet it still made millions every day.

The documentary follows the rise and fall of Centra Tech from Trapani's perspective, as well as interviews from others involved, looking at how it fed on people's love of get-rich-quick schemes to survive.

Fool Me Once

  • Type: TV show | Releases: Monday, January 1 | For fans of: Harlan Coben stories, true crime shows

Richard Armitage and Michelle Keegan in Fool me Once
Richard Armitage and Michelle Keegan in Fool me Once

The latest TV adaptation of a Harlan Coben story is here, in the form of Fool Me Once. a new British show on Netflix starring Michelle Keegan and Richard Armitage.

The 8-part show is about a wife, Maya, whose husband is brutally murdered. The crime seems to mirror a one similar to Maya's sister several months prior... but everything comes into question when a remote nanny-cam installed to look after Maya's kid shows her husband looking after the child, even though he's supposed to be dead.

In true Harlan Coben fashion it promises to be a twisty crime drama that you'll be sure to binge.

You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment

  • Type: documentary series | Releases: Monday, January 1 | For fans of: medical docs, food shows

A still from You Are What You Eat
A still from You Are What You Eat

While Netflix has plenty of cooking and baking shows, it has few eating shows, but You Are What You Eat is one of those few.

The show is an experiment to see how certain foods affect the body: it takes pairs of identical twins and changes their lifestyles and diets for eight weeks, to see what happens.

So it might be an interesting watch to learn more about our bodies, but at the very least it promises to show lots of tasty foods!

The Brothers Sun

  • Type: TV show | Releases: Thursday, January 4 | For fans of: crime dramas, action shows

Michelle Yeoh in The Brothers Sun on Netflix
Michelle Yeoh in The Brothers Sun on Netflix

One of the biggest upcoming Netflix shows is The Brothers Sun, an action-crime drama starring recent Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh.

The show is about the family members of the Taiwanese triad: when the head is killed, his son travels to the US to look after the man's wife and his other son. However the family has so many enemies that he has his work cut out for him — and that's before he starts to heal the family wounds that come from within.

With a star-studded cast and a fun premise, this could be Netflix's first big hit of the year.

Society of the Snow

  • Type: movie | Releases: Thursday, January 4 | For fans of: survival trhillers, true stories

Society of the Snow cast
Society of the Snow cast

Netflix's big run of awards-grabbing Originals like Maestro and May, December continues in January when Society of the Snow comes out, which looks set to grab even more.

The movie tells the true story of a 1972 plane crash in the Chilean Andes. Of the 45 passengers, 29 survived... the crash landing. However as the passengers find themselves stuck in the remote mountains, they turn to some drastic measures to keep on living (which you may be aware of if you've heard of this true event).

Directed by J.A. Bayona (The Impossible, A Monster Calls, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), this has already been chosen as Spain's entry into the 2024 Oscars, so it's definitely worth a watch.