Father’s Day is coming up this year on Sunday, June 16. And however you wish to celebrate with the fathers in your lives, at some point, you’re going to have to come home. So if you decide to spend a night watching TV with your dad, or if you simply skip going out at all, we’ve decided to put together this list of the 10 best Netflix shows to watch on Father’s Day.
There is a lot of variety on Netflix, but we thought it was fitting to choose shows in which fathers play a large role in the narrative — with one exception, but we’ll address that when the time comes. If none of these series are what you’re looking for, you’ll find a lot more options in our roundup of the best shows on Netflix. But there’s also a lot of overlap between the two lists.
Breaking Bad (2008-2013)
Let’s start with Breaking Bad and everyone’s choice for father of the year, Walter White (Bryan Cranston). At the start of the series, he’s not such a bad guy. Walt loves his family, but he’s dying of cancer. So he does what any brilliant high school science teacher would do to raise some quick cash. He seeks out his former student-turned-junkie drug dealer, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and convinces him to help cook and sell a batch of meth.
Walt’s moral slide only goes down from there, but Breaking Bad is absolutely one of the best TV shows of the last two decades. Walt has more of a fatherly relationship with Jesse than he does with his own son, Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte). Yet that doesn’t stop Walt from turning on Jesse when their relationship hits its rough patches. And Breaking Bad becomes truly riveting in its later seasons.
Watch Breaking Bad on Netflix.
How I Met Your Mother (2005-2014)
How I Met Your Mother would be a typical Friends clone if it weren’t for the central conceit that the entire series is a story told by a father, Ted Mosby (Bob Saget), to his children, Luke (David Henrie) and Penny (Lyndsy Fonseca). But neither of the kids are really central to the narrative. Instead, the focus is on young Ted (Josh Radnor), as well as his friends Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), and Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders).
The show really takes a long time before introducing the woman who will be the mother of Ted’s children. Ted’s love life goes through a lot of potential mates beforehand, including a long recurring courtship with Robin. Without spoiling too much, you’ll probably like the mother when she does finally join the cast.
Watch How I Met Your Mother on Netflix.
Cobra Kai (2019-present)
Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) were rivals in The Karate Kid four decades ago, and that rivalry continues in the sequel series, Cobra Kai. At this point in their lives, Johnny and Daniel are both fathers with varying success parenting their children. But their animosity is reborn when Johnny re-launches the Cobra Kai dojo and Daniel opens his own dojo in response.
The arc of the series has given Daniel and Johnny time to find common ground and rebuild their relationships with their kids. The sixth and final season is coming to Netflix in July, so there’s never been a better time to binge through the first five seasons of Cobra Kai.
Watch Cobra Kai on Netflix.
This Is Us (2016-2022)
There are few TV dads who are more wholesome than Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) in This Is Us. He’s a good husband to Rebecca Pearson (Mandy Moore) and a loving father to Kate (Chrissy Metz), Kevin (Justin Hartley), and Randall (Sterling K. Brown). The show doesn’t make a big secret out of the fact that Jack dies before his children become adults, but he’s around for the whole series through flashbacks.
This Is Us is a family drama first, and all three of the kids face struggles as adults in the present, while potentially starting families of their own. Admittedly, this show can be a bit of a tearjerker. But if your dad is up for some manly tears of joy and empathy, why not binge the series with him?
Watch This Is Us on Netflix.
Suits (2011-2019)
Suits is a show that has become bigger on Netflix than it ever was during its original run on USA Network. It’s also one of the few series on this list that isn’t really centered around a family dynamic. Having said that, it’s hard not to view the interplay between Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams) as a father-and-son-like relationship. Harvey took a chance and hired Mike to be his associate at a corporate law firm even though he was well-aware that Mike had never gone to law school.
That secret could have destroyed Mike and Harvey’s careers. Thankfully, it just led to several seasons of a fun legal drama that also followed Mike’s romance with Rachel Zane before the actress who played her, Meghan Markle, married into England’s royal family.
Watch Suits on Netflix.
Eric (2024)
Eric is a very recent addition to Netflix, and still one of the streamer’s most popular shows. This is a psychological thriller that takes place in the ’80s with Benedict Cumberbatch as Vincent Anderson, a man who is a better puppeteer than he is a father to Edgar Anderson (Ivan Morris Howe).
When Edgar goes missing, Vincent goes a little crazy and starts hallucinating his giant puppet Eric (who is voiced by Cumberbatch). And Eric may be Vincent’s only hope of reuniting with his son on the mean streets of New York City.
Watch Eric on Netflix.
Young Sheldon (2017-2024)
Before he grew up to become one of the most annoying men alive in The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon Cooper (Iain Armitage) was just a child prodigy in the prequel series, Young Sheldon. This sitcom has a very good family dynamic between Sheldon and his parents, Mary (Zoe Perry) and George Cooper (Lance Barber). Neither Mary nor George understand their son, but they love him and support him.
Sheldon also has some occasionally tense moments with his siblings Missy (Raegan Revord) and Georgie (Montana Jordan), but they also love each other. And that goes a long way toward smoothing over any differences between them.
Watch Young Sheldon on Netflix.
The Upshaws (2021-present)
Damon Wayans’ My Wife and Kids is also on Netflix, but we picked The Upshaws because it’s a more modern sitcom. Mike Epps stars as Bernie Upshaw, and he does his best to do right by his wife, Regina (Kim Fields), and their children Aaliyah (Khali Spraggins), Maya (Journey Christine), and Bernard Jr. (Jermelle Simon). The problem is that the Upshaws weren’t always united, and Bernie also has a teenage son, Kelvin (Diamond Lyons), with another woman.
Bernie’s time apart from his family was in the past at the beginning of the show, but those consequences play out in the present in the form of his strained relationship with Bernard. Bernie also finds himself at odds with his sister-in-law, Lucretia Turner, as played by Wanda Sykes, who gives the series a lot of its funniest moments.
Watch The Upshaws on Netflix.
Fubar (2023-present)
Fubar very shamelessly lifts aspects from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s True Lies and a little from Mr. and Mrs. Smith for the premise behind the show. This time, Schwarzenegger is playing CIA operative Luke Brunner, a man who is unaware that his adult daughter, Emma Brunner (Monica Barbaro), is also working for the CIA.
Once the truth comes out, father and daughter are placed on the same team and forced to work together for the good of their country. This isn’t prestige TV by any means. But if the dad in your life is looking for a little action to watch on Father’s Day, Fubar can fit the bill.
Watch Fubar on Netflix.
The Signal (2023)
To close out this year’s Father’s Day list, we’re going with the father and daughter bonding of the sci-fi miniseries The Signal. The mother in this series is Paula Groth (Peri Baumeister), an astronaut who has discovered something in space that may be proof of extraterrestrial life. And that proof may have cost Paula her own life when she returned to Earth with the evidence.
It falls to Paula’s husband, Sven (Florian David Fitz), and their young daughter, Charlie (Yuna Bennett), to unravel the mystery and elude the forces that are trying to silence them. There are only four episodes of The Signal, so it’s not a huge investment in time. But it is a fun adventure while it lasts.
Watch The Signal on Netflix.
