30 Best Miniseries
Taylor Jenkins Reid wrote the novel and then co-produced this excellent limited series. The novel follows the “unreliable narrator” approach, where different characters tell different and often conflicting versions of events. The show changes that format, and Jenkins Reid and the main characters say it does a perfect job showing what actually happened.
It’s glorious to watch. It’s traumatic, covering conflict and chaos and addiction, but it builds and builds, both towards the creation and then (pre-announced) breakup of the band, the way Billy and Daisy bring out the best and the worst in each other, and finally two joyous endings. It brought out feelings for me that I’d buried for years. It’s the only show or movie I’ve watched four times.
I have watched this complex, challenging, and ultimately triumphant post-apocalyptic series three times, despite knowing everything that’s going to happen. It’s based on a book by Emily St John Mandel, with some major changes (including a redemption arc). Mackenzie Davis as Kirsten Raymonde gives the performance of her career, ranging from an abandoned young child to a powerful champion to an angry attacker to, finally, the hero who both saves and welcomes everyone. It covers several different timelines, with cuts to the main characters in each of these different timelines, from the day civilization basically ended due to a global plague, to the initial struggles for the few survivors, to the post-technology sparsely-populated world twenty years later.
Westerns typically have good guys and bad guys; emphasis on the word “guys”. This fantastic limited series rejects that expectation, focusing on a town where nearly all the men were killed in a mining accident and the surviving women hold it together. Michelle Dockery is the main hero, a female rancher estranged from the town because she won’t support their attempts to find new men to rescue them. She’s obviously famous for Downton Abbey and Restless, but this series is better, and she is incredible in it: complex, emotional, honorable, brave.
Throughout her young life, chess prodigy Beth Harmon faces and overcomes major challenges: being abandoned, abuse in a harsh orphanage, misogynistic beliefs that she could not succeed in chess, adoptive parents who very much had their own problems and were not on her side, self-doubt, and eventually alcoholism. Her journey here is inspiring and joyful as she adapts her approach to new opponents and never gives up. Beth Harmon is played by Anya Taylor-Joy, in what was hailed as her breakout role.
5 A Murder at the End of the World
Starring Emma Corrin as Darby Hart, this series seems at first to be a traditional Agatha Christie (or Knives Out) whodunit: a dozen guests who mostly don’t know each are invited by tech billionaire Andy Ronson (Clive Owen) to his remote retreat. Not surprisingly, one guest dies, and the investigation starts. But the show is more complex and challenging, not just as Darby hunts for the killer, but as other characters come on and off her side, and the power figures try to stop her (or do they?).
6 The English
Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer lead this almost-meandering suspenseful tale of investigation, conflict, and a bit of revenge. (It starts as a revenge story, but as the two leads keep uncovering more surprises, the show gets deeper and darker and both more confusing and more rewarding.) I was surprised how much I loved it, and shared it with my kids, who agreed. There’s nothing simple about this story. It’s #6 on this list for good reasons.
7 Restless
Haley Atwell, Michelle Dockery, and Charlotte Rampling. How could this cast go wrong? It couldn’t. It doesn’t.
The Guardian’s review called it “well-acted, well-written, well-paced and well-filmed".
Michelle Dockery is Ruth Gilmartin, the difficult activist daughter of Sally Gilmartin (Charlotte Rampling). But Ruth is caught up in something she doesn’t understand, as she increasingly doubts her mother’s sanity. Her mother finally shares a notebook describing her true past: she is actually Eva Delectorskaya, and she played a key role as a spy in World War II. We then see the story as lived by a young Eva (Haley Atwell). The story is about secrets, deaths, betrayals, a real-life tragedy engineered by the Nazi government (the Venlo Incident), and Eva being recruited to spy for who she thinks is an honorable British spy, Lucas Romer (Rufus Sewell). Slowly all of Eva’s team (Romer’s group of spies) are assassinated, and she realizes there’s a traitor among them. She escapes to Canada, the last one alive, and creates a new life and identity for herself.
In the present, Sally/Eva is afraid she has been discovered at last. Ruth won’t let this go and goes hunting for the traitor. It turns out to be Lucas Romer, now a successful and wealthy British noble—but he’s actually a Russian spy. Ruth will not let him get away with the deaths of so many of his agents and the near-destruction of her mother’s life.
Michelle Dockery and Haley Atwell carry this incredible two-episode miniseries to the conclusion it deserves.
8 Lessons in Chemistry
9 True Detective: Night Country
True Detective is a recurring crime anthology series, but each season stands alone, and this season is the one I recommend. So I’m putting here in this limited series list. It’s spooky, eerie, exciting, challenging, with the lead character (Jodie Foster) stepping into messes, going back on her commitments, failing to support those who need her, while constantly regretting that she isn’t as noble as she once was. Until finally, she rejects all that pressure to conform and risks everything to do what she believes in right. Kali Reis, whom I’ve never seen before this show, is as conflicted, and as dogged, and as heroic. With some hard-to-watch scenes and a surprising and disturbing ending, it’s a solid and satisfying romp through a small Alaska town, an evil mining company, a corrupt sheriff, a conflicted cop (John Hawkes evoking the complex characters Teardrop and Sol Star he played in Winter’s Bone and Deadwood), rebellious protestors, Native Americans banding together under threat, and a couple of heroes standing up for what’s right.
10 Life of Crime
This is the three-episode BBC miniseries starring Haley Atwell (not the mediocre movie). I did not expect one short season, covering three different crimes over a thirty-year period, could be so captivating and rewarding. But anything with Haley Atwell soars, and she carries this series.
11 The Tourist
The Tourist, written by the same people who wrote The Missing (which has an amazing, all-time best season 2), also has two seasons, shorter than The Missing. It’s not clear to me if it should be on the TV list or this miniseries list. It feels short and complete, like a miniseries.
12 Prime Suspect: Tennison
13 The Little Drummer Girl
14 WandaVision
15 Mrs. Wilson
16 Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
17 1883
18 Band of Brothers
19 John Adams
20 Why Didn’t They Ask Evans
21 The Escape Artist
An anti-hero you end up rooting for.
22 Renegade Nell
23 Unbelievable
24 Alias Grace
This is a tricky one for me. For most of the series, for more than five and a half of the six episodes, it is compelling, tricky, absorbing, and hard to let go. It’s got a supernatural thread that might or might not be real. Grace is imprisoned, but she’s also aided by outsiders; she is still angry about the death of her best friend (who had been impregnated and then evicted by the wealthy nobleman where they worked), and we can’t tell if she’s lying in order to get a pardon, or it’s what she actually believes. We finally start to wonder why the show is called “Alias Grace”; who is Grace, really? But it’s based on a Margaret Atwood novel, and that often means we don’t get the resolution we want, or indeed any resolution at all. There aren’t many shows that leave you hanging, that end without showing what actually happened; and there are even fewer of those that are still riveting and mesmerizing.
25 Unforgiven
26 Sharp Objects
27 Monsieur Spade
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