We’ve all fallen down the Netflix rabbit hole before – browsing for the perfect movie or tv show that fits your exceptionally fickle mood (“British comedies from the 80s”), eventually spending more time browsing the thousands of titles than actually watching because you keep changing your mind on what you want to watch (now it’s “Buddy Cop Dramas in the South”). Ultimately you give up because you couldn’t find anything that that matches your desired “Space Cowboy Monkey Samurai Drama,” and your night alone is ruined.
But don’t worry, there’s no need to cancel your Netflix subscription just yet! Thanks to a recently leaked list of Netflix’s hyper-specific genre codes, you can now watch all the Campy Foreign Movies from the 1970s (1811) or Imaginative Fantasy Movies based on Books (819) you want!
The codes are Netflix’s cataloging method for organizing their hundreds of film and tv show “sub-categories.” Netflix’s codes are what have helped the streaming giant’s highly touted and mysterious algorithm find movies and tv shows you kind of wanted to watch; you know, the one that suggests and predicts what you want to watch next based on your viewing history, but invariably shows movies you’ve already watched?
“How does one go about figuring out the genre codes and where are we supposed to enter them?”, you may be asking. Well fret no more, if you want to watch a Scary Spanish-Language Movie from the 1970s (1134) or a show about Swing & Big Band (3208) on your movie night, just enter http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/and after the genre backslash, enter your genre code. So if you want to watch a Drama based on Real Life (3653), then enter http://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/3653.
There are literally hundreds of genre codes, so it might seem a little daunting, but if you’ve fallen down the Netflix rabbit hole before, finding the perfect Violent Cult Crime Movie (4268) is well worth the extra effort.
Here’s a link to the full list of genre categories on Netflix.
