Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of March’s most promising new titles for subscribers in the United States. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)
‘The Leopard’
Starts streaming: March 5
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s posthumously published 1958 novel, “The Leopard,” is a rich reflection on the mid-19th century unification of Italy and how it affected the aristocrats who were reluctant to concede their land to the people. The book was adapted into a 1963 Luchino Visconti film, widely considered one of the best movies in cinematic history. Now it has been adapted again into a six-part mini-series. Kim Rossi Stuart plays Don Fabrizio Corbera, who is clinging to his prestige even as his ambitious, pragmatic nephew, Tancredi (Saul Nanni), sides with the revolutionaries. Like the novel, the series compares the larger sweep of history with the characters’ personal desires, including the question of who Tancredi will marry: Don Fabrizio’s daughter Concetta (Benedetta Porcaroli) or the more politically connected Angelica (Deva Cassel).
‘Chaos: The Manson Murders’
Starts streaming: March 7
The latest documentary from Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line,” “The Fog of War”) is partly a collaboration with the journalist Tom O’Neill, who spent decades investigating the crimes of the hippie guru Charles Manson and his “family” of followers. O’Neill turned his research into the 2019 book “Chaos: Charles Manson, the C.I.A., and the Secret History of the Sixties,” contending that the typical framing of the Manson Family’s murders — as would-be revolutionary acts by an evil counterculture cult — does not line up with evidence that suggests a criminal conspiracy involving gangsters and the government. Morris anchors his film with an extended interview between himself and O’Neill, intercut with clips from old news reports about Manson and his disciples. Like a lot of Morris’s work, “Chaos” examines the myths society supports and how the official versions of some stories break down under scrutiny.
‘Adolescence’
Starts streaming: March 13
In this opening minutes of this British mini-series, a teenage boy, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), is arrested on suspicion of murdering a classmate. Stephen Graham (who also wrote all four episodes of “Adolescence” with Jack Thorne) plays Jamie’s father, Eddie, who is named the boy’s “appropriate adult,” and watches helplessly as his son is swabbed, stripped, searched and questioned. Each episode of this procedural mystery takes place in real time and plays out entirely in one shot — an approach that the director Philip Barantini used previously in the 2021 film “Boiling Point,” starring Graham. The format may seem gimmicky, but the creative team does not treat it that way. Instead it focuses on the granular details of the arrest and its aftermath, shifting between the perspectives of the police, the suspect and the suspect’s family, all of whom are wondering not only what happened to the victim but also why.
