They say three’s a crowd, but is it? There are so many platonic throuples that prove otherwise, like The Three Musketeers, The Three Stooges, and the Three Amigos (starring, coincidentally, much of the Only Murders in the Building trio, save Selena Gomez). Why have an odd couple when you can have an odd trio, three people whose bond — no matter how tenuous at first — develops into lasting friendship? Whether they form a duo who adopted a third or a trinity of wayward souls who met at just the right time, the characters in these movies and TV shows on Netflix have each other’s backs.
This cozy mystery about a group of friends in a posh retirement community who solve cold cases is based on Richard Osman’s 2020 book of the same name and directed by Chris Columbus. Elizabeth Best (Helen Mirren), Ron Ritchie (Pierce Brosnan), and Ibrahim Arif (Ben Kingsley) are amateur sleuths whose innocent hobby turns treacherous when they put themselves in the middle of a new murder investigation that could change their lives forever. With their latest member, Joyce (Celia Imrie), a retired nurse, they might be able to piece together this latest puzzle.
Good partnerships are key in the field, even when you don’t want to team up. That’s the case, at least, for Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon), FBI Agent Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), and Sergeant Bernadette Manuelito (Jessica Matten), who grudgingly work together to solve murders and other mysteries in the American Southwest. The series is based on Tony Hillerman’s novels that follow a pair of fictional Navajo Nation police officers (Leaphorn and Chee), and it was executive produced by McClarnon, Graham Roland, George R.R. Martin, and Robert Redford.
Saving people, hunting things … the family business. Supernatural follows brothers Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean Winchester (Jensen Ackles), monster hunters who zigzag across the United States looking for spooky things to kill over a whopping 15 seasons. Their loyal sidekick, the angel Castiel (Misha Collins), doesn’t join the party until Season 4, but once united, this trio fights vampires, werewolves, demons, and, yes, even God to protect innocent people from things that go bump in the night — and to save each other.
Co-workers can make some of the best friends, and while DCI Carl Morck (Matthew Goode) would likely roll his eyes at any insinuation that he enjoys his colleagues Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov) and DC Rose Dickson (Leah Byrne), he’s stuck with them for now. In this series, Morck leads Department Q, the newly formed cold case unit in Edinburgh, Scotland. Season 1 follows him and his ragtag team as they chase down a missing woman, prosecutor Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), who disappeared four years ago.
Trauma-bonding is very real in this film series based on the dystopian novels by James Dashner. Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf) stars as a teenager who wakes up in the center of a dangerous maze with no memories except his name, Thomas. He soon befriends the other boys — especially Newt (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) and Minho (Ki Hong Lee) — as they attempt to escape the ever-changing labyrinth in which they’re trapped. But the world outside might prove more dangerous than the one they left behind.
