Netflix is no longer just the biggest video streaming service on the planet: they are now also the biggest video streaming and download service. As of today, you can now Netflix and chill without the need for an internet connection, as downloading has been introduced to the iOS and Android apps.
Not everything in the catalogue is available for download due to complicated and extremely interesting licensing issues, so here, for your delectation, is our pick of the best movies and TV shows on Netflix UK, available to download to your mobile device.
Vertigo
Quite simply, this is one of the greatest films ever made. Alfred Hitchcock is at the peak of his considerable powers in a simmering psychological thriller which is as thematically bold as it is visually striking, with knockout performances from James Stewart and Kim Novak.
Step Brothers
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly are two men in their 40s who never grew up. Like a filthy, sweary, hairy-balled version of Peter Pan, this riotous bit of silliness from the team behind Anchorman is perhaps one of the best comedies of the last ten years.
Breaking Bad
Are you familiar with the one who knocks? If not, you need to start Breaking Bad immediately. It may seem like an irrational decision to start selling meth after a cancer diagnosis, but Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a man unto his own . This show is so addictive, it should be illegal.
The Shawshank Redemption
Thought of, at least according to one online poll, as the greatest film of all time (calm down Citizen Kane, we said ‘thought of’...), Frank Darabont’s adaptation of Stephen King’s short story Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption demands your immediate attention if you are one of the lucky few yet to see it for the first time.
The Lives Of Others
In communist East Germany, a tough Stasi officer wiretaps some suspicious characters before discovering his own unexpected humanity. This character-driven period drama beautifully affirms that we can find colour in even the greyest of places.
Catfish
It spawned an MTV TV show, but the original documentary film remains a must-watch homegrown classic, telling the possibly-true and almost-unbelievable story of an internet romance that is not all it seems.
Black Mirror
After calling Channel 4 home for its first two series, Charlie Brooker’s gloriously bleak anthology is now on Netflix, with six new episodes (including a feature-length story) added. Brooker’s satirical eye covers everything from reality television to virtual reality to memory implants – plus, that pig episode.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Somehow finding the funny side of kidnapping, Tina Fey’s quirky sitcom flits nimbly and confidently between goofy surrealism and painful subject matters; here, the belly laughs come with a point to make. And the joke density is so thick, it practically requires an immediate re-watch.
Orange Is The New Black
When Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) finds herself behind bars for a crime she committed a decade earlier, her life becomes a messy merry-go-round of exes, current fiancés and trying to avoid becoming a prison wife. Based on the real Piper’s memoirs, a diverse cast transform this quick-witted comedy drama into essential viewing.
Brooklyn
In the 1950s, a young Irish girl (Saoirse Ronan) moves to New York in the 1950s in search of opportunity. There are big questions about homesickness and how one fits into a new world – the answer to both seems to be ‘through the kindness of strangers’ – but also a romance that’s as sweeping as it is small-scale.
Pan’s Labyrinth
A tale of the power of fairy tale from Guillermo Del Toro, who has never been on better form. bringing gothic wonder to the grimmest of political settings: the Spanish Civil War. And in the Pale Man, he created one of the most visually striking monsters in modern cinema.
Boyhood
Richard Linklater’s family drama is a genre-transcending once-in-a-lifetime film about a child and his fragmented family, and how they both grow up over the course of an 11-year period, shot for a few weeks every summer for over a decade. A minor miracle, in other words.