BoJack Horseman, 12 years on: still one of Netflix’s best shows

Raphael Bob-Waksberg created BoJack Horseman, and Lisa Hanawalt shaped its look. It premiered on Netflix on August 22, 2014, and by May 2026 it still counted as one of the platform’s defining originals.

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Its run wrapped on January 31, 2020, after six seasons and 77 episodes. Over that stretch, Bob-Waksberg and Hanawalt took a satire about a washed-up 1990s star in a Hollywood populated by both humans and animals and turned it into one of the most acclaimed adult animated series of its time.

Watch it now and you’re dropped into celebrity culture, self-loathing, broken families, intergenerational trauma that keeps rippling outward, depression, anxiety, addiction, and one of the show’s hardest truths: recognizing the damage you’ve done doesn’t undo it, and it doesn’t stop that damage from spreading.

If you want a sitcom that’s hilarious, brutal, and humane, and that has no interest in handing out easy endings, BoJack Horseman more than earns the time. Growth stays unfinished. Characters still have to answer for what they’ve done. Even the optimism feels earned.

The first season got mixed reviews, but that didn’t last. The show went on to win four Critics’ Choice Television Awards for Best Animated Series, picked up three Primetime Emmy nominations, and drew praise from critics and academics for the way it blends comedy with tragedy, handles mental health, trauma, and substance abuse with unusual realism, and pushes at the limits of what adult animation can do.

That impact was still visible among U.S. fans as of May 2026, and all six seasons of BoJack Horseman were still streaming on Netflix.