The problem with Netflix is that it’s too bloody hard to find stuff. If you don’t have a specific title in mind and nothing on the front page grabs you, it can take hours of scrolling to find something worth watching.

That’s where Netflix’s “hidden” genres can help: these are browser codes that carve up the available shows and movies into highly specified categories: from ‘Film Noir’ to ‘Adult Animation’. Here are 15 of the best.
We’ve talked about Netflix’s hidden category pages before. For those who missed the original post, these are filters that split Netflix’s sprawling library into hundreds and thousands of sub-genres.

The benefit of this is obvious: it drastically reduces the list of available choices to a manageable level that better suits your tastes. For example, instead of scrolling through Netflix’s massive Comedy section, you can just look at ‘Mockumentaries’ or ‘Goofy Stand-Up’. Instead of tackling the entire Sci-Fi category, you can limit your selection to ‘Sci-Fi based on Books’ or ‘Sci-Fi from the 1970s’. Get the picture?

This is all done via your browser using the following URL:

http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/INSERTNUMBER

There’s also a Chrome extension available which adds a drop down Netflix menu to your Chrome menu bar. Annoyingly, the TV app doesn’t appear to be supported at present.

To get you started, here are 15 genres that are usually buried away in categories that are only tangentially related. We’ve also named a few suggestions in each category to make your life even easier. Have fun watching!

Asian Action Movies: 74652 (Highlights: Drunken Master (1978 version), Hero, 7 Deadly Venoms, Kung-Fu Hustle.)

Military Action & Adventure: 2125 (Highlights: Inglorious Basterds, Master & Commander, Platoon, U-571.)

Adult Animation: 11881 (Highlights: Rick and Morty, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Heavy Metal, Batman: The Killing Joke.)

Movies for children 8-10: 561 (Highlights: Fantastic Mr Fox, Zathura, How To Train Your Dragon, Labyrinth.)

Pixar/Disney: 67673 (Highlights: The Incredibles, Tangled, Monsters University, Zootpia, Aladdin.)

Classic Comedies: 31694 (Highlights: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Monty Python’s And Now For Something Completely Different, Clerks, Annie Hall.)

Film Noir: 7687 (Highlights: Gattica, Road To Perdition, Looper, L4er Cake.)

Epics: 52858 (Highlights: Mongol, Braveheart, Gandhi, Troy.)

Mockumentaries: 26 (Highlights: The Office, Summer Heights High, Internet Famous.)

Romantic Comedies: 5475 (Highlights: Coming To America, When Harry Met Sally, As Good As It Gets, Easy A, The Girl Next Door.)

Foreign Documentaries: 5161 (Highlights: Lucha Mexico, Steak Revolution, Under The Sun.)

Biographical Dramas: 3179 (Highlights: The Aviator, Into The Wild, Schindler’s List, Che: Part 2)

Tearjerkers: 6384 (Hghlights: Awakenings, ET, Good Will Hunting, Stand By Me.)

Gay & Lesbian Dramas: 500 (Highlights: Bridegroom, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Paris Is Burning, Rent.)

Creature Features: 6895 (Highlights: The Mist, The Descent, Evil Dead, Cabin In The Woods.)

You can find thousands of additional codes over on the What’s On Netflix website.

[Via What’s On Netflix]

This first appeared at Lifehacker Australia. See the original here.

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