7 Near-Perfect Netflix Miniseries That Hooked Us in the First 5 Minutes
Remus is a writer, editor, journalist, and author with an eye for detail and an extremely active imagination. He is an enthusiast of everything to do with the graphic medium, whether it's Western comics and their adaptations or manga and anime. Remus is also the author of the sci-fantasy novel Once Upon a Time in Hyperspace and several works of short fiction in the mystery, comedy, and horror genres.
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One of the best things about miniseries is that, because of their short runtime, they have to make every minute count. A miniseries that isn’t engaging in the first few moments is unlikely to achieve much success. But the ones that can catch the audience’s attention right from the opening often climb to the greatest heights. In recent years, Netflix has become the home of some of the greatest miniseries of this century, proudly housing several such shows that do a fantastic job of engaging the audience within the very first minutes.
In fact, many of these miniseries start strong and keep building, compelling the viewer to watch the entire thing with rapt attention. Though they range from critically acclaimed genre gems to cult hits and niche favorites, these highly engaging miniseries are all masterpieces of the single-season, self-contained story format. Now, without further ado, here’s our handpicked selection of near-perfect Netflix miniseries that successfully hooked us within the first five minutes.
1 ‘When They See Us’ (2019)
Ava DuVernay’s multi-award-winning true crime drama When They See Us is a tragic retelling of a real-life case from 1989, in which five teenage boys of color were wrongfully accused of assaulting a Caucasian American woman in Central Park, New York City. The four-part series recounts the fateful event, followed by their arrests, and how the case completely upended the lives of these five young men and their families in the years to come. Asante Blackk, Caleel Harris, Jharrel Jerome, Ethan Herisse, and Marquis Rodriguez portray the five central characters.
One of the most critically acclaimed crime-drama miniseries of the last decade, When They See Us takes an incisive look at our dysfunctional social systems and raises important questions. The story opens with the five boys enjoying an ordinary day in the spring of 1989 in their Harlem neighborhood, but soon shifts to chaos and darkness when the group finds themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. While deeply unsettling, the first minutes of When They See Us are quite compelling and encourage the viewer to watch more, drawing you into a harrowing but eye-opening true story.
2 ‘Ripley’ (2024)
Steven Zaillian’s miniseries adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s crime bestseller, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Netflix’s Ripley is a neo-noir psychological thriller about the titular conman, Tom, who is hired by a wealthy New Yorker to bring his wayward son, Dickie, back home from Italy. Tom goes to Italy but finds himself tempted by Dickie's romantic life and develops a dangerous obsession, sending him down a dark and deadly path. The show boasts a phenomenal cast led by Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, with Johnny Flynn, Dakota Fanning, Eliot Sumner, and more in key roles.
A very Hitchcockian thriller, Ripley is a deliberate blend of jarring narrative styles, striking visual atmosphere, and a quiet paranoia creeping in with every passing minute that grips attention right from the start. The series opens with a highly stylized but disorienting black-and-white sequence that reminds us of Giallo films and classic expressionism, acting as a flash-forward before the actual story begins. From the staging, scene setting, and the striking cinematography in the very first minutes to the enigmatic ending, Ripley is by far the best interpretation of Tom Ripley we’ve seen on screen so far.
3 ‘Baby Reindeer’ (2024)
Scottish actor and comedian Richard Gadd created and stars in this semi-autobiographical dark comedy thriller miniseries, based on his one-man show of the same name. In Baby Reindeer, Gadd plays Donny, an aspiring comedian and bartender whose life is turned upside down when a friendly gesture towards a customer named Martha leads her to an obsession, and he’s forced to confront the shadows of his own past. Jessica Gunning co-stars as Martha, with Nava Mau and Tom Goodman-Hill as other key characters.
Beginning in media res, Baby Reindeer does not ease us into the story; it thrusts us directly into Donny’s misery even before we get to know him, immediately encouraging us to find out more about his life and what led him to the first scene. Sharply written and well-performed, Baby Reindeer takes an intense look at the human condition and buried trauma. Widely praised for its direction and acting, particularly for Gunning’s breakout performance, Baby Reindeer ranks among Netflix’s top miniseries produced in the 2020s.
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.
4 ‘Pluto’ (2023)
Pluto is an anime series adaptation of the Astro Boy spin-off manga, Pluto: Urasawa X Tezuka by Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki. Robots and humans cohabit in a future world where a series of brutal murders of important human and robot personalities shakes their uneasy balance. A robot detective named Gesicht from Europol begins investigating and discovers a decades-old conspiracy in motion that could destroy the world humans and machines have built together. Directed by Toshio Kawaguchi, Pluto stars the voices of Shinshū Fuji, Hiroki Yasumoto, Koichi Yamadera, Yoko Hikasa, and Minori Suzuki.
Pluto is an extraordinary anime miniseries that combines the sci-fi, philosophical drama, murder mystery, and political thriller genres into a highly intriguing narrative style. In the first five minutes, the series successfully sets the foundations of an apocalyptic tragedy and welcomes the audience to a chilling whodunit investigation that slowly unfolds into a more serious meditation on humanity. Exceptionally written, animated, and performed, Pluto is a remarkable miniseries that attracts attention with its brilliant style and art while engaging the mind with some truly profound themes.
5 ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ (2023)
A modern gothic thriller at its best, Fall of the House of Usher is Mike Flanagan’s deliciously diabolical interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name. Also inspired by other works of Poe, the eight-episode series follows the titular family’s story of corruption, tragedy, and redemption, where the brother-sister duo Roderick and Madeline are forced to pay the price of their sins by a mysterious woman named Verna. Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Mary McDonnell, Mark Hamill, and more star as the main characters.
The Fall of the House of Usher delights and terrifies in the same breath, with a stylish and rich visual style and an equally intense psychological horror narrative. The first few minutes of the show set a chilling atmosphere, preparing the viewer for what is about to come, when Roderick confesses to his felonies and finally explains the bizarre, impossible deaths of his children. From here on, every turn of The Fall of the House of Usher is a slow, wicked slide into madness, full of unexpected shocks and surprises.
6 ‘Bodies’ (2023)
Created by Paul Tomalin, Bodies is an underrated sci-fi mystery thriller miniseries adapted from the DC Vertigo graphic novel of the same name by Si Spencer, centering on the discovery of a mysterious dead body in an obscure London alley in four different timelines. Four determined detectives, in their respective timelines, set out to solve the puzzle, uncovering a time-bending and life-threatening conspiracy. Stephen Graham, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Shira Haas, Amaka Okafor, and Kyle Soller star as the primary protagonists.
Bodies is a fun fusion of sci-fi, murder mystery, and historical drama, where each genre seamlessly fits in with the other. The series is addictive right from the start, capturing the audience’s complete attention with a high-stakes chase and then exposing them directly to the mysterious corpse before shifting the scene from the present to the past. The deliberate chaos of this back-and-forth narrative is what compels the viewer to indulge in the cerebral thrill of Bodies.
7 ‘Adolescence’ (2025)
The most critically acclaimed psychological crime drama of 2025, Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence is an emotionally heavy exploration of teenage crime and every parent’s worst fear. When 13-year-old Jamie Miller is charged with the murder of his fellow school student, his life is torn apart between heartbroken parents, law and order, and a skewed social system. Owen Cooper plays Jamie, with Graham as his father, Eddie. The series also stars Erin Doherty, Christine Tremarco, Ashley Walters, Faye Marsay, and more as key characters.
At the time of its premiere, Adolescence became a massive success and a highly impactful teen crime drama with major social and political impact, particularly within the UK. While the show is definitely mentally jarring from the beginning, it is the long-take filming that hooks the audience right away, moving without a blink between one tension-packed scene and the next. Adolescence has since left a lasting impression on the crime drama genre and set new standards for miniseries, proving that sometimes shorter series can speak louder than their longer counterparts.
- Release Date
- March 13, 2025
- Network
- Netflix
- Directors
- Philip Barantini
- Writers
- Stephen Graham, Jack Thorne
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