With VPNS i usually vouch for two services: Mullvad and Proton.
Mullvad is a no-bullshit VPN as described before, it just works and it's cheap as hell. It'll let you do your netflix hopping, but for any skullduggery I believe they're killing their port forwarding, so I wouldn't really recommend it for that front. You'd be better off subscribing to a usenet index for that and then using mullvad on the side instead of ARRing.
Proton is amazing but only truly worth it if you're using the suite-- Emails, drive, VPN, the whole 9 yards. It's a bit costly but no one does it like them. They also have a solid free tier for the VPN if you'd like to try them. And they do port forwarding (as of this comment).
Haven't tried expressVPN but I've heard lots of good things about their audits. I'd feel comfortable with them but I can't give any pointers.
TL:DR: Mullvad for simplicity and price, Proton for features & using their Suite, something like Express for something that just does VPN and nothing else.
I steer clear of Nord & Surfshark for personal reasons. VPNS that do too much sponsor marketing outside of network/privacy communities strike me as suspicious IMO.