6 Best Miniseries Released Between 2020 and Now, Ranked
Michael Block is a 14 time GLAM Award nominated writer, producer, and host of the podcast Block Talk. Throughout his time in the entertainment industry, he has worked on and off Broadway as a stage manager, written several produced plays, critiqued hundreds of theatrical performances, drag and cabaret shows, and has produced events randing from drag competitoons to variety concerts!
On Block Talk, he interviews nightlife personalities, covers the wide world of entertainment through features, ranking episodes, and recaps ALL of Drag Race, as well as Dragula and Survivor. He has interviewed hundreds of RuGirls that span the globe at DragCon NYC, DragCon LA, and DragCon UK.
In his free time, he makes one-of-a-kind jewelry and gift baskets with his mom. He is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community.
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The way we consume our television has vastly evolved over the past two-plus decades. With the rise of streaming, instant gratification has taken over, and binge-watching has become common practice. Because of this, we’ve seen an influx of miniseries. The self-contained stories provide its audiences with a concise beginning, middle, and end that leave you satisfied by completion. With miniseries as the greatest form of storytelling, we’ve been living in its heyday.
The 2020s have boasted some of the greatest miniseries of all time. These six titles are proof. From a ripped-from-the-headlines true-crime shocker to a profoundly human crime drama, these miniseries have become true game changers. But with so many excellent shows, which is the very best? It’s time to find out!
6 'The Dropout' (2022)
One of the most fascinating stories of the century is the madcap chaos surrounding Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the disgraced Theranos. Her story was brought to life in The Dropout. Created by Elizabeth Meriwether, it is a biographical drama that chronicles the meteoric rise and subsequent downfall of Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried) and her biotechnology company, Theranos. It follows Holmes as she drops out of Stanford University to launch a startup with the promise of revolutionizing healthcare through a faulty blood-testing technology. Driven by intense ambition, she deceives high-profile investors and misleads the public, ultimately putting millions of patient lives at risk before her massive fraud is exposed. The Dropout masterfully transforms a well-known corporate scandal into a deeply compelling, character-driven Shakespearean tragedy. If you've seen You Can See Everything, you must watch The Dropout.
The Dropout brought a unique, slightly absurd comedic sensibility to a very dark subject. The Dropout uses its 8-episode runtime perfectly. Every episode represents a distinct, necessary era of the Theranos timeline. The writing highlights the sheer ridiculousness of Silicon Valley "fake it 'til you make it" culture. At its core, The Dropout presents a dark romance between Holmes and Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews). Their relationship elevates the standard business documentary-drama into a tense psychological thriller. It exposes the toxic feedback loop between them, where mutual ambition, paranoia, and isolation warp their reality. The series lives and breathes through Seyfried’s portrayal of Holmes. Seyfried captures the gradual, deliberate lowering of Holmes's vocal pitch while mirroring her intense, wide-eyed gaze. Seyfried makes Holmes empathetic in her early, idealistic days, which makes her eventual descent into fraud and cold-hearted deception all the more chilling. The Dropout remains the gold standard for limited series in the 2020s because it delivered a complete, perfectly paced, and beautifully acted autopsy of modern ambition gone wrong.
5 'Midnight Mass' (2021)
The latter part of the 2010s saw a resurgence of horror television thanks to the brilliant collaboration between Mike Flanagan and Netflix. He followed it up in 2021 with the haunting Midnight Mass. The supernatural horror series centers on Crockett Island, an isolated and impoverished fishing community struggling to rebuild itself. The town's existing divisions are deeply amplified following the simultaneous return of a disgraced, guilt-ridden young man, Riley Flynn (Zach Gilford), and the arrival of a highly charismatic, mysterious new priest, Father Paul Hill (Hamish Linklater). As the priest introduces unexplained, seemingly miraculous events to the islanders, fervent religious fanaticism takes hold, masking a darker, sinister danger threatening the entire community. Midnight Mass remains a masterpiece due to its deeply personal approach to existential horror, sharp critique of religious extremism, and focus on character-driven drama.
Flanagan shaped the story around his own small-town Catholic upbringing, alcoholism, and personal journey with sobriety, lending the script an emotional weight rare in the horror genre. Rather than treating vampires as standard action or monster tropes, the series uses the mythos to examine blind faith, communal groupthink, and the justifications people invent to excuse fanaticism. Flanagan builds dread through long, theatrical monologues and rich, three-dimensional character studies of Crockett Island's isolated residents. Linklater delivers a career-defining performance, but it’s the chilling terror brought by Samantha Sloyan as Bev Keane that defines the series. Midnight Mass remains peak horror.
4 'The Queen's Gambit' (2020)
Chess never looked so cool until The Queen’s Gambit. Based on the book by Walter Tevis, the Scott Frank and Allan Scott-created series follows Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), an orphaned girl in the mid-1950s who discovers an astonishing talent for chess. As she rises through the ranks of the male-dominated world of competitive chess during the Cold War era, she transforms into a world-class prodigy. However, her journey to stardom is plagued by a deepening addiction to tranquilizers and alcohol, forcing her to battle her personal demons to conquer the international stage. One of the best self-contained series of the decade, The Queen’s Gambit’s tight seven-episode narrative structure, magnetic lead performance, and massive cultural footprint set the tone for limited series that followed.
Directed by Frank, the series won acclaim for its pitch-perfect mid-century modern aesthetic, cinematography, and costume design, in which designer Gabriele Binder color-coded Beth's wardrobe to mirror actual chess pieces. The series thrived due to its impeccable authenticity. Endorsed by chess experts and grandmasters like Magnus Carlsen, the match sequences were crafted to feel realistic and distinct. Taylor-Joy catapulted to superstardom with her incredibly complex performance. Taylor-Joy captured the psychological cost of genius, training extensively to physically handle chess pieces with the speed and precision of a real grandmaster. As much as you might have wanted more, The Queen’s Gambit was presented precisely. It became Netflix's most-watched scripted miniseries at the time and sparked a global resurgence in chess interest.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Netflix Character Would Be Your Best Friend? Dustin · Emily · Wednesday · Gi-hun
Some friends drag you out of the house. Some sit with you on the worst night of your life. Netflix has written both, plus the one who tells you the truth you have been avoiding all week. Answer eight quick questions about how you actually do friendship, and find out which of them was always going to end up in your corner.
🧢Dustin(Stranger Things)
🗼Emily(Emily in Paris)
🕷️Wednesday(Wednesday)
🟢Gi-hun(Squid Game)
01
How do you usually end up making a new friend? The origin story says a lot about the friendship that follows it.
02
What is a perfect Saturday with your best friend? Friendship is mostly built out of very ordinary hours.
03
You call them at two in the morning. What happens? This is the real test of a friendship, and everybody knows it.
04
What do you want from them when you are clearly wrong? The best friendships are the ones that survive being corrected.
05
What do your friends actually value about you? The friend you attract says something about the friend you are.
06
You have a falling out. How does it go? How a friendship repairs itself matters more than how it breaks.
07
What do you actually need a best friend for? Everybody is missing something. The right friend fills that gap.
08
Ten years from now, what keeps the two of you close? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who you get.
The Group Chat Has Spoken Your Best Friend Is…
Four Netflix characters, four completely different ways of showing up for somebody. This is the one who fits how you actually do friendship, and what having them in your life would be like.
Dustin Henderson
You do not do friendship at half volume, and neither does he. What you want is somebody who says yes to the plan before you have finished describing the plan.
- Dustin is the friend the entire show runs on: loyal past the point of sense, enthusiastic about everything, and incapable of leaving anybody behind.
- You have the same instinct. Your friendships are loud, specific and slightly ridiculous, and they last for decades because of it.
- He is also the one person who would take your strangest interest completely seriously, which is far rarer than it sounds.
- You would have a group chat. It would never once be quiet.
Emily Cooper
You are the friend who makes things happen, and so is she. Together you would be mildly exhausting to everyone around you and completely delighted with yourselves.
- Emily treats an ordinary Tuesday as something that could be turned into an occasion, which is either the best or the worst quality in a friend depending on your energy levels.
- You share her refusal to sit still. Neither of you has ever accepted a night in when something was happening somewhere else.
- She is far more loyal than people give her credit for. She defends her friends loudly, publicly, and occasionally before checking the facts.
- She would post the photo without asking. You would forgive her, because it is a very good photo.
Wednesday Addams
You have no patience for pleasant lies, and she has no ability to tell them. What looks like coldness from the outside is the most reliable friendship on this list.
- Wednesday never says a kind thing she does not mean, which makes the rare ones count for an enormous amount.
- You would rather be told the truth than be made comfortable. She is constitutionally incapable of offering you anything else.
- Underneath all of it she is ferociously protective. She simply refuses to make a performance out of caring.
- Do not expect a birthday message. Do expect her to ruin anyone who wrongs you.
Seong Gi-hun
You look after whoever is having the worst day. So does he. It is the least strategic way to move through the world and the best possible quality in a friend.
- Gi-hun is not the strongest player in Squid Game, or the cleverest. He is the one who keeps choosing to protect somebody else, over and over, at genuine cost to himself.
- You have the same instinct. You notice who is struggling and you stay with them, long after anybody would blame you for leaving.
- He is a flawed friend, and that is part of why it lands. He lets people down, then comes back and tries again, which is more than most manage.
- He would give you his last chance and never once mention that he had done it.
3 'WandaVision' (2021)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe changed forever thanks to the arrival of character-driven series that extended beyond the big screen. Their very best remains WandaVision. The celebrated standout series, created by Jac Schaeffer, follows Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) as they live an idealized suburban life inWestview, New Jersey, while trying to conceal their superpowers. However, as they move through different eras of classic television sitcoms, the couple begins to suspect their reality isn't what it seems. The show explores Wanda's deep grief and the mystery behind the reality-warping bubble she has created around the town. WandaVision traded standard superhero formula for a deeply personal, genre-bending exploration of grief.
WandaVision was built natively as a television experience. It utilized a real showrunner-driven pace and structured its narrative around the evolution of classic sitcom tropes. For TV lovers, it watched the story cleverly move through decades of television, from 1950s black-and-white multi-cams to modern mockumentaries, using each era's visual style and production methods to reflect Wanda's internal state. Rather than treating Wanda's trauma as a background plot device, the entire reality of Westview is externalized grief, capturing a raw sense of loss that resonated heavily with audiences. Though MCU fans had already fallen for the titular characters, this series placed the duo in a brilliant new light. Kathryn Hahn delivered the standout performance, bringing sensational life to Agatha Harkness. She was so good, she earned her own spin-off, Agatha All Along. WandaVision kicked off a streaming revolution for Disney+ that’s powering through currently with VisionQuest.
2 'Mare of Easttown' (2021)
HBO has hosted quite a few substantial limited series over the years, but Mare of Easttown was its own unique beast. Created by Brad Ingelsby and directed by Craig Zobel, the seven-episode series follows cynical police detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) as she investigates the brutal murder of a teenage mother in a close-knit Pennsylvania town. As the intense investigation progresses, it uncovers dark, interconnected secrets buried deep within the community. Simultaneously, she must navigate her own fractured personal life, which is heavily weighed down by family custody battles and the haunting trauma of her son's suicide. A premier series, Mare of Easttown emerged as a standout for its taut, self-contained storytelling, grounded realism, and career-redefining performance from Winslet.
Rather than relying solely on a generic "whodunnit" plot, the narrative balances a dark murder investigation with heavy personal grief, family dynamics, and the opioid crisis affecting the community. Set in a wonderfully intimate, lived-in world, Ingelsby made DelCo feel immersive with its local texture, from the accents to corner shops and backyards. Winslet strips away her glamorous facade to craft a remarkably authentic individual. She made her an accessibly flawed, exhausted single mother and grandmother desperately trying to hold her family and community together while grappling with her own demons. Backed by standout performances from Jean Smart, Julianne Nicholson, and Evan Peters, the series layers sharp, dry humor into an otherwise bleak, heavy atmosphere. Though it remains a single-season wonder, Mare of Easttown will live on as Nicholson’s Lori Ross will appear in Season 2 of Task, Inglesby’s other smash hit.
1 'Adolescence' (2025)
Though we still have a few years to go, it seems impossible at this point to ever surpass the sheer brilliance of Adolescence. Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, and directed by Philip Barantini, the four-part crime drama centers on the shattering fallout after a 13-year-old boy, Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), is arrested for fatally stabbing a female classmate. Filmed in a real-time, continuous one-shot format per episode, the narrative follows his ordinary family, detectives, and a psychologist as they navigate the harrowing criminal justice system. Throughout the investigation, the series delves deeply into the destructive impacts of cyberbullying, online misogyny, and toxic internet culture on impressionable modern youth. One of the finest ever made, Adolescence succeeds through groundbreaking technical triumphs, raw emotional urgency, and piercing thematic exploration.
At only four episodes, Adolescence was perfectly plotted and distinctly crafted. Every one-hour episode is filmed in a single, continuous, uninterrupted take with zero cuts, heightening the dramatic weight as audiences are dropped into the chaotic school hallways, tense police interrogations, and the family's living room as events unfold. The story quickly reveals Jamie committed the crime, diving deep into how toxic masculinity, online incel culture, and digital echo chambers can radicalize ordinary children. Quickly climbing into the platform's most-watched limited series ranks, Adolescence essentially swept the awards circuit, cementing it as a true masterpiece series.
Adolescence
9 10
- Release Date
- March 13, 2025
- Network
- Netflix
- Directors
- Philip Barantini
- Writers
- Stephen Graham, Jack Thorne
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