The 66th Primetime Emmy Awards aired last night, with ABC’s Modern Family taking home the award for Best Comedy for the fifth straight year, and AMC’s Breaking Bad taking Best Drama in its final season.
There’s plenty of Emmy-studded TV on Netflix, including lots of Emmy winners for you to watch while you’re waiting for your favorite shows to come back next month. You won’t find any of the award-winning HBO shows like The Sopranos on Netflix, but there’s more than enough content to keep you occupied until Scandal comes back.
Here’s a quick look at some of the Emmy winners for Best Comedy and Best Drama that are streaming on Netflix right now.
Emmy Winners on Netflix – Best Comedy – The Office
There’s a certain existential drudgery unique to working a white-collar job for a small business. The personalities of your coworkers quickly become the dominant part of the office, and no show has captured that experience quite so perfectly as The Office.
The show’s characters make it one of the best Emmy winners on Netflix. From Michael Scott’s wacky and cringe-inducing antics to Jim’s relentless charm and Dwight, uh … being Dwight … there’s plenty of great character work for comedy fans.
The show gets a little rickety in later seasons, but seasons two and three are still some of the best comedy around.
Emmy Winners on Netflix: Best Drama – Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is the show that arguably benefited the most from the existence of Netflix. The show’s first four seasons averaged fewer than 2 million viewers, which was decent enough by AMC’s still-pretty-new standards. But the show ‘s cult following exploded between seasons four and five, with more than 10 million viewers tuning in for the series finale.
Needless to say, it’s an easy pick for our list of Emmy winners on Netflix.
For anyone who missed the hype, Breaking Bad chronicles Walter White’s rise from lowly high school chemistry teacher to ruthless drug lord, with help from former student Jesse Pinkman. It’s an intense and increasingly dark journey that’s sure to keep viewers clutching the edge of their seats.
Emmy Winners on Netflix: Best Comedy – 30 Rock
Tina Fey was one of the best thing to happen to Saturday Night Live in years — both as Weekend Update co-anchor and head writer for the show — and she brought all that same talent to 30 Rock, which she created and wrote for. Fey stars as Liz Lemon, who just happens to be the head writer for a sketch comedy show, trying to wrangle the various personalities involved in production.
30 Rock is one of the best Emmy winners on Netflix, in part because it’s a well-written show that’s not afraid to expose its characters’ worst flaws for comedic effect. But it’s also helped by scene-stealing performances from guest stars like Jon Hamm, Chloe Grace Moretz and Elizabeth Banks. 30 Rock is great for people who like great ensembles, as well as pop-culture addicts.
Emmy Winners on Netflix: Best Drama – Mad Men
If you enjoyed Jon Hamm’s guest role on 30 Rock, you might want to check him out in a series called Mad Men, which took home an Emmy for Best Drama … four times in a row. The show is set in the 1960s and follows suave, mysterious ad exec Don Draper as he tries to maintain a work/life/secret-life balance.
Man Men earned its four Best Drama Emmys with careful, deliberate storytelling and phenomenal performances from the entire cast. Hamm shines as Draper, but Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks and — hell, pretty much everyone manages to deliver award-worthy performances with each episode.
If you’re a fan of intrigue, fashion or relentless character development, Mad Men is one of the best Emmy winners on Netflix.
Emmy Winners on Netflix: Best Comedy – Arrested Development
Father: “What comes before anything? What have we always said is the most important thing?”
Son: “Breakfast.”
Father: “Family.”
Son: “Family, right. I thought you meant of the things you eat.”
And with those opening lines, Arrested Development set the tone that would carry it through three glorious seasons (and a Netflix renewal). Before Emmy winners like The Office and Modern Family mastered the single-camera sitcom, Arrested Development paved the way with its character-driven, self-referential humor.
The show is great for anyone who likes humor, recurring jokes and great narration.
Adam Benjamin is an Assistant Editor at InvestorPlace.
