These 10 amazingminiserieshad no bad episodes, so make sure you don’t get distracted for a single one. Whilesome long-running TV showscan be forgiven for having a few crummy episodes, a miniseries, with maybe only five episodes, is not so easily forgiven when it comes to having a bad episode.
That’s not to say every episode in even a great miniseries is excellent. Plenty of fantastic miniseries may have one episode that’s a step below.I absolutely loveThe Pacific, but on rewatches, I tend to skip the Australia episode. This isa list of amazing miniseries where each episode is as good as the last.
In the pantheon of TV shows about businesses gone wrong,WeCrashedmay be the best. The eight-episode Hulu miniseries tells the true story of Adam Neumann (Jared Leto), the founder of WeWork, and his wife, Rebekah Neumann (Anne Hathaway). Together,the pair hustle to grow their business, ignoring laws and ethics with equal abandon.
It’s a fascinating series, particularly if you’re not completely familiar with the WeWork story. While plenty of people were harmed by the Neumanns' negligence, the problems with WeWork did not damage lives in the same way as something like Theranos inThe Dropout, which makesWeCrashedmuch more palatable.
Unorthodoxis inspired by the 2012 autobiography by Deborah Feldman,Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, which tells the story of Etsy Shapiro (Shira Haas), a 19-year-old Jewish woman in an ultra-Orthodox community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City. She flees an arranged marriage and lands in Berlin with her estranged, secular mother.
It’s a fascinating look at a woman suddenly experiencing life outside a closed system, and rejecting all the beliefs and models of life she grew up with. It’s an intimate and careful series centered on an incredible performance from Haas. You never get tired of watching her on screen for the four episodes.
8Haunting Of Hill House (2018)
Terrifying From The First Episode To The Last
One of Netflix’s best miniseriesand also the best of Mike Flanagan’s excellent catalog of horror miniseries,TheHaunting of Hill Housecertainly owes some of its success to the quality of the original novel, written by Shirley Jackson in 1959. It’s a terrifying, mysterious, and satisfying haunted house tale.
It’s an exceptionally frightening series and one that never takes its foot off the pedal, ensuring each episode is better than the last.
The series follows the Crain family in 2018, who come together after a tragedy and are forced to reckon with the frightening things they experienced growing up in Hill House. It’s an exceptionally frightening series and one that never takes its foot off the pedal, ensuring each episode is better than the last.
A remake of the beloved and better-known 1977 miniseries of the same name starring LeVar Burton, the 2016 version made for the History Channel is actually a better all-around show. The series follows Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby), a Mandinka man from Jufureh in The Gambia, who is sold into slavery in America.
Both the original series and the remake ofRootsare based on Alex Haley’s 1976 novel,Roots: The Saga of an American Family.
It’s as harrowing a series as it ever was, and if you’ve never seen the show before, you may be surprised to see how many horrible injustices Kunta Kinte manages to survive. It’s a shocking portrait of a dark period, and yetevery episode is eminently rewatchable with something to be gleaned in every scene.
Beef
Cast
Beef, released in 2023, depicts a contentious conflict initiated by a road rage incident between a struggling contractor and a discontented entrepreneur. As their feud escalates, both individuals delve deeper into their most shadowy instincts, unraveling a complex narrative about societal tensions and personal grievances.
Netflix’sBeefstarts innocently enough. Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) are two strangers who have an incident on the road. This one moment of road rage quickly snowballs into a prolonged feud, a “beef”, if you will. Though there are ten episodes, every one is crucial to understanding the series.
Wong and Yeun are perfectly cast as one another’s foils, andthe pathetic fight between them is equal parts hilarious and disturbing. The plot structure of the series is critically important to making you understand the roiling feelings in each character. So every episode is a satisfying step towards a dark but funny finale.
The seven-episode miniseriesJohn Adamsis naturally about the titular lawyer, one of the founding fathers of the United States. However, it’s even more about the founding of America and howit wasn’t just bullets and warfare that earned the United States of America its independence from the British.
Paul Giamatti plays the curmudgeonly but dogged Adams in one of his best performances, and each episode of the series offers fascinating, and impeccably designed, insights into the world at the time of the American Revolution. It’s not a boring history book; it’s a detailed, stirring portrait of persistence and politics.
Based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Elizabeth Strout,Olive Kitteridgestars Francis McDormand as the titular character, a misanthropic retired school teacher living in the seaside town of Crosby, Maine. At only four episodes,Olive Kitteridgeis a methodical, sad, and ultimately beautiful series with no bad episodes.
Though the story itself, about a woman who struggles to overcome her jealousy, apathy, and selfishness, is a slow burn, the moment-to-moment of each episode ofOlive Kitteridgewill have you glued to the screen. Each episode features a short time jump, but it’s enough to have you constantly engaged in where Olive’s life goes.
Damon Lindelof’sWatchmenis a sequel both toAlan Moore’s 1986 comic book and Zack Snyder’s 2007 adaptationof the same source material. This nine-episode TV show manages to thread the needle of both the movie and the comic,creating something entirely new and unique in the process.
Taking place over 30 years after Adrian Veidt (Jeremy Irons) dropped a psychic squid on New York City,Watchmencontends with the aftereffects of a world where vigilantes were raised to be heroes, then cast down as villains. Unique, strange, and incredibly resonant, it’s a TV show that answers all the questions it poses.
One ofthe greatest miniseries on HBOand on any streamer for that matter,Chernobyldepicts the events just before the explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and the diabolical and horrific events that occurred afterward. With only five episodes,Chernobylexplores many different angles of the tragedy.
Each episode of the series is worth watching for one reason or another, with unbelievable event after unbelievable event as the Soviet Union tries to accomplish the impossible: clean up a historic mistake and ensure no one knows the mistake was theirs. It’s a miniseries you won’t turn off until it’s over.
Each episode ofBand of Brothersis so excellent and so unique that you can watch the series in almost any order, and you’ll enjoy it almost as much as watching it as it aired. Based on the experiences of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division during WWII,Band of Brothersis a harrowing, inspiring tale.
Far from a flag-waving, whitewashed piece of television,Band of Brothersis a brutal retellingof what the men of the 101st had to go through during the invasion of Nazi-controlled Europe. Each episode of theminiseriestends to partially focus on one soldier in particular, and each character has the depth to carry a story.
