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Home for Christmas is an actually good Netflix Christmas series you can binge before December 25.

 

Netflix really has its ‘so-bad-it’s-good’ Christmas content down.

Each year we’re gifted with a raft of wonderfully bad movies, like A Christmas Prince (and A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding and A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby), The Princess Switch and The Knight Before Christmas.

But once in a while, we might want to watch something good. Actually good. Something a little more realistic and relatable, without made-up Eastern European monarchies and magic.

Watch the trailer for Home for Christmas. Post continues below video.

Video via Netflix

Enter: Home for Christmas (a.k.a Hjem til Jul).

The Norwegian rom-com series stars Ida Elise Broch as Johanne, a 30-year-old single nurse whose family keep hounding her about her getting a boyfriend.

Johanne already leads a busy, fulfilling life: She works a lot and cares for her patients, keeps up with her (mostly married-with-children) friends and helps out with her family’s drama, both big and small.

But fed up by feeling left out and pitied for her singleness, she blurts out at a family lunch that she has a boyfriend, actually, and she’ll bring him to the family’s Christmas Eve dinner.

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home for christmas netflix
Image: Netflix.

What follows are six episodes of funny, heart-warming and addictive viewing as Johanne spends 24 days trying to find a boyfriend.

It sounds bad, I know. But Home for Christmas takes a stale premise and makes it fresh. It flips typical rom-com traits on their heads.

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It's not that she can't find a boyfriend. In fact, there's plenty of options, actually, but Johanne's sort of just... disinterested, or oblivious.

With the help of her roommate Johanna gets back into the dating scene.

She starts with speed dating, which is horrifically bad, and then succumbs to everyone's last resort: A dating app.

We watch Johanne on a number of dates, and spoiler: They don't go very well.

home for christmas netflix
Image: Netflix.
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There's an escape room date with a guy who has a clear aggression problems, a lovely-but-bland skier and a literal 19-year-old.

After a few - including the most cringeworthy double date with her parents you could ever imagine - Johanne is frankly, done with this sh*t.

All the while she's taking care of her patients, spending time with her family and realising her friends in relationships really don't have it all together.

Finally, Christmas Eve rolls around and its family dinner time. Johanne's mum is practically shaking with excitement over meeting her 'boyfriend', and that's as much as I'm going to tell you because #nospoilers.

Home for Christmas is hilarious, cringeworthy, jaw-droppingly shocking, with many twists you definitely won't see coming.

It's messy and it's realistic. There's no perfect man to sweep Johanne off her feet, and she's her own hero.

The story becomes about so much more than Johanne finding a boyfriend. Honestly, she doesn't even really seem to care about that part too much.

Home for Christmas is about being vulnerable, stepping out of your comfort zone and making memories. It's about focusing on the wonderful things - and the people - you already have in your life, instead of what and who you don't.

And there's not a prince in sight.

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