The Best Limited Series of the 21st Century, Ranked
Are there any sweeter words in the age of too much TV than “limited series?” It’s a category that guarantees minimal time commitment with maximum return — be it weekly watercooler gossip or a delicious binge. The limited series is the perfect hybrid between a movie and a longer-running TV series, with intricate stories, complex characters, and just the right amount of moving parts. The fact that a series will not return makes the narrative precious and the ending paramount, even if that means leaving things deliberately open-ended. This one-off nature makes them perfect for literary adaptations, epic events, and period pieces.
What doesn’t qualify? Those that started as limited series but then blew up enough to get a second season. (We’re looking at you, “Big Little Lies” and “White Queen.”) We’ve also limited (ha!) ourselves to scripted for now, since Ken Burns will probably deserve his own ranking down the line, once he slows down and we can catch up with his prolific output. (“Wormwood” also is a borderline docuseries, so it didn’t make the cut.) Even anthologies such as “True Detective” and “Fargo” eventually got the boot because the limited series category has never been richer or more impressive than it is now.
Now that we’ve told you what’s out, here’s what’s in.
Liz Shannon Miller, Hanh Nguyen, Ben Travers, and Christian Blauvelt contributed to this list.
28. “Hatfields & McCoys”
In 2012, History Channel was best known for Hitler documentaries, but its first big scripted play, the Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton-starring look at one of America’s most famous feuds, established the network as a newcomer in the ever-escalating Emmy wars, receiving 16 nominations and winning Costner and Tom Berenger awards for their roles. What makes “Hatfields & McCoys” stand out even today is that while the name invokes the ideas of a certain trope, the series actually aimed to bring a human edge to the story, drawing us into these characters’ lives and making the betrayals and bloodshed all the more effective. This is what a scripted depiction of historical events should do — under the guise of fiction, confront us with the emotional reality of what happened.
27. “Devs”
Alex Garland’s mist-laden Silicon Valley mystery, “Devs,” is at-once an ethereal story of exacting science-fiction and an escape thriller rooted in the depths of humanity. Sonoya Mizuno plays Lily Chan, a software engineer at a quantum computing company run by an aloof genius named Forest (Nick Offerman). But when her boyfriend turns up dead — shortly after he’s promoted to the company’s top-secret development team — Lily’s interest in her boss, his plans, and the power he’s been given to realize them takes on added urgency. Garland threads tension throughout a dreamy, enigmatic plot, allowing the audience time to consider the magnitude of each discovery, whether it’s of private relevance or something broader. Rob Hardy’s vibrant cinematography captures exquisite contradictions in how man carves space through nature, building on themes of free will and determinism — and how technological advancements relate to both. As bizarre happenings and surreal protrusions pile up, “Devs” always feels at one with itself, which is how you know it’s onto something real; something you not only appreciate in the abstract, but feel in your bones. — B.T.
26. ”The Looming Tower”
“The Looming Tower” gets a lot of credit for being important. Not only is it so steeped in largely unknown historical facts that it functions as a 9/11 origin story, but Dan Futterman, Alex Gibney, and Lawrence Wright’s Hulu limited series is stocked with even more first-rate names beyond the two Oscar winners (and Pulitzer Prize winner) listed already.
And yet for all its significant points about responsibility, diplomacy, and bipartisan politics, the eight-part miniseries is still a human story. There’s a complex portrait of a brilliant FBI agent marred at work and at home by his personal proclivities. There’s a story of a Muslim-American who’s trying to take back his religion after it’s hijacked by extremists. And there’s a man who lost a friend to a bombing, and a boss to the exact thing both of them fought against. “The Looming Tower” uses a moving character study to tell its weighty tale, and does so with great power.
25. “Losing Alice”
Blurring the line between fiction and reality isn’t exactly a novel foundation anymore. But as Sigal Avin weaves together all the psychological threads of this mindbender, it’s enough to make you believe that there are infinite variations on the formula. The eight-episode Apple TV+ season follows Alice (Ayelet Zurer), a director who meets an ingenue screenwriter (Lihi Kornowski) offering her a career-making script. So begins a dense, twisty story of desire and creation and jealousy that plays like a slow burn neo-noir thriller. It’s a show that works in patient, unbroken glimpses into the filmmaking process and offers up some hypnotic dreamlike sequences sprinkled in between. Up until the final seconds, “Losing Alice” keeps you guessing which is actually which. —S.G.
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