It’s similar to flicking through TV channels late at night and stumbling across something half-decent. Keep spinning the ‘wheel’ until you find something promising, then click the Watch on Netflix button to begin viewing. You can weight your chances of finding a hidden gem rather than a total stinker by choosing a category, narrowing results based on a particular rating range, and/or specifying the director’s name, actor’s name, or keyword. You’ll be surprised how many popular films and series aren’t available on our local Netflix, including Star Wars (can be watched in 23 countries), Harry Potter (Australia only), and Lord of the Rings (70 countries).

You can find out what’s available using the ‘unofficial Netflix online Global Search Tool’ (uNoGs for short, ), which lets you either browse genres or enter the name of a movie, TV show, actor, or director to view matching content from across the world. Many TV shows and movies that aren’t available on Netflix are offered by the service in one of its other 95 territories, some of which have a much bigger selection than ours. Netflix Categories for Chrome (bit.ly/ncchrome431) and FindFlix for Firefox both let you browse the available hidden sub-genres at the click of a button and open them directly to view their content. If you can’t face the hassle of visiting a separate website to find hidden Netflix categories and codes, there are browser add-ons that put this information at your fingertips.

Not every sub-genre is available in every country, but most links should work in the UK. In the case of political comedies (code 2700), you’d go to You can get the codes for all available sub-genres from the Netflix ID Bible or simply click directly through to them via the Netflix Secret Categories site.

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