8 Miniseries With the Highest Rotten Tomatoes Scores, Ranked

Published Oct 18, 2026, 8:41 PM EDT

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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Today, Rotten Tomatoes is an almost universal rating system for movies and shows that shapes box office success, marketing decisions, and consumer choices. A perfect or near-perfect score on the Tomatometer is as highly coveted as any award, and it’s a distinction that has been earned only by a select group of titles. A lot of those are miniseries.

Whether it’s because the shorter runtime demands greater quality in every moment or because they can afford bigger budgets than longer-running shows, miniseries have climbed to the very top of the TV landscape in recent years. The best of them are acknowledged by most (if not all) viewers and reviewers as being among the greatest shows of all time. With that in mind, here’s our ranked selection of some of the greatest miniseries with the highest Rotten Tomatoes scores.

8 ‘Chernobyl’ (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes: 95%

Image via HBO

Created by Craig Mazin, Chernobyl is a historical drama that chronicles the real-life events surrounding the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which caused massive casualties and devastated the entire region for decades to come. The HBO miniseries explores the events before and after the explosion, revealing the factors that led to the catastrophe and the stories of the first responders who put their own lives on the line in the aftermath. The ensemble cast includes Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, Paul Ritter, Jessie Buckley, Adrian Rawlins, Barry Keoghan, and more, playing real-life employees at the plant, their family members, and others affected by the disaster.

At the time of its release, Chernobyl was a global pop culture phenomenon, gripping the attention of audiences around the world. The series captures the gravity of its subject matter within its short span, delivering an immersive, harrowing, and eye-opening experience. While it embellishes the facts a little bit, Chernobyl is still a near-perfect historical drama and one of the greatest miniseries of all time, with impeccable cinematography, direction, writing, and performances.

7 ‘Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?’ (2022)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Image via BritBox

Adapted from Agatha Christie's 1934 novel and directed by Hugh Laurie, Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is a mystery miniseries centered on the death of a strange man on a Welsh golf course. Bobby Jones (Will Poulter) happens to be playing golf nearby, hears the man’s final words, and decides to investigate the case, with the help of his longtime friend, Lady Frances “Frankie” Derwent (Lucy Boynton). The series also features Daniel Ings, Maeve Dermody, Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Emma Thompson, and Alistair Petrie in key roles.

There have been multiple TV adaptations of Agatha Christie’s Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?, but out of all of them, the 2022 BritBox series is the most charming. A witty and fast-paced thriller told across three parts, the show boasts high production values and a talented cast, with Poulter and Boynton delivering particularly endearing performances as Bobby and Frankie. The series was quite well-received at the time of its release, and though it’s since been overshadowed by other Christie adaptations, it’s easily one of the better shows inspired by the author’s work in recent years.

6 ‘Giri/Haji’ (2019)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Image via BBC

Created by Joe Barton, Giri/Haji is a British crime drama series that follows the story of Kenzo (Takehiro Hira), a Tokyo detective who travels to London searching for his brother, Yuto (Yōsuke Kubozuka). Previously assumed to be dead, Yuto has been accused of murdering the nephew of a yakuza boss, triggering a gang war, and to find him, Kenzo must navigate the unfamiliar culture, legal landscape, and criminal underworld of London. Kelly Macdonald and Will Sharpe play notable supporting roles as Detective Constable Sarah and local sex worker Rodney.

Slick, stylish, and highly suspenseful, Giri/Haji is a standout miniseries that’s easily among the best crime shows of all time. Featuring impeccable performances, great cinematography, and inventive animated sequences that intersperse the storytelling, the show has earned high critical acclaim. Though it may not be as widely known as it ought to be, Giri/Haji is a must-watch for all fans of high-tension crime dramas.

Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard

Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.

🐕Wick

🏁Fast

🧨Mission

🎄Die Hard

FIND YOUR FRANCHISE →

01

How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.

ASomeone recognises me, and the temperature in the room drops without a single word being said. BLoudly and warmly. I arrive with my people, and we're already laughing about something. CI'm the one who told everybody where to stand. I walked this room twice before anyone else arrived. DBy accident. I wasn't supposed to be here, and now I'm the only one who can do anything about it.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.

AEconomical and devastating. Trained technique, no wasted motion, finished before most people notice it started. BLoud, heavy and weirdly joyful. I'm not elegant, I hit like a truck, and I always have backup. CTo plan, until the plan breaks. Then I improvise at full sprint and refuse to stop moving. DBadly, honestly, and with a lot of swearing. I take more damage than I deal and I still don't go down.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.

ANobody. I have contacts, favours and people who owe me, but when it begins I work alone. BEveryone. My people are the entire point, and I'd trade the whole mission for any one of them. CA small hand-picked team I trust completely, and I'd still take the worst part of the job myself. DA voice on the other end of a radio and a building full of people who don't know I exist.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of.

AFocus, commitment and sheer will. Grief is fuel if you point it in the right direction. BThe people counting on me. I don't appear to have a limit when it's family on the line. CRefusing to accept the odds. Somebody has to do the impossible part, and it's going to be me. DSpite, mostly. And a growing sense that these people picked the wrong building.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.

AA black muscle car I am unreasonably attached to, and I will dismantle an entire empire over it. BSomething impossibly modified, at impossible speed, off an impossible ramp. Physics is a suggestion. CA motorbike at full throttle through a city I memorised last night. And then off a cliff. DA borrowed car, badly, while somebody in the passenger seat politely asks me to slow down.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.

AThere are rules and I respect them absolutely, right up until somebody breaks one against me. BI don't take orders. I take care of people, and everything else tends to sort itself out. CI serve the mission, not the memo. If my people are in danger, the orders come second. DThey're in a van outside telling me what I'm doing wrong while I'm the one bleeding on broken glass.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.

ASomething was taken from me that can't be replaced, and I've been settling that account ever since. BBelonging. I built a family out of people who had nowhere else, and I'll defend it with everything. CThe conviction that if I stop, people die. I don't know how to hand that to anyone else. DI just wanted to get through the holidays with my family. Everything after that was self-defence.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.

AThat I was a myth people warned each other about in whispers, and that they were right to. BThat I never left anyone behind, the door was always open, and there was always a place at the table. CThat I did the impossible part myself, every single time, and never asked anyone to risk it for me. DThat I was just a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, who turned out to be very hard to kill.

REVEAL MY FRANCHISE →

Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…

Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.

John Wick

You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.

• The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
• You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
• Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
• People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.

Fast & Furious

You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.

• This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
• You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
• You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
• The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.

Mission: Impossible

You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.

• This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
• You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
• Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.

Die Hard

You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.

• Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
• You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
• You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
• You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

5 ‘Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ (2022)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Image via Netflix

Directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi and produced by CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an anime prequel miniseries inspired by CD Projekt Red’s bestselling video game Cyberpunk 2077. Set in Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk universe, the story kicks off approximately a year before the events of Cyberpunk 2077, following David Martinez, a street kid who becomes a cybernetically enhanced mercenary and discovers he has an unusual tolerance for implants. The series' original Japanese voice cast stars Kenn, Aoi Yūki, Hiroki Tōchi, and more, with Zach Aguilar, Emi Lo, William C. Stephens, Giancarlo Esposito, and others voicing the English dub.

Released in September 2022 to universal acclaim, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has earned praise from fans and critics alike for its striking visuals, well-designed characters, and evocative worldbuilding. Though fully integrated into the franchise’s style and aesthetics, the story is intended as a standalone, so it’s still a great watch even if you haven’t played the game before. Action-packed and fully engaging from start to finish, it’s a brilliant cyberpunk adventure, and a standalone sequel series, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, is set to arrive on Netflix on October 20, 2026.

4 ‘Scavengers Reign’ (2023)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Image via HBO Max

Created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner, Scavengers Reign is an adult-animated sci-fi series that started life as their Adult Swim short film Scavengers. The series begins with the crew of the interstellar cargo ship Demeter 227 suffering heavy damage that forces them to crash-land on an unknown planet, stranding them spread out across a lush but dangerous environment. Sunita Mani, Wunmi Mosaku, Alia Shawkat, Bob Stephenson, Ted Travelstead, and more star in the voice cast, and the series was produced by Titmouse, Inc. and Green Street Pictures.

It’s shocking how underrated Scavengers Reign is. At the time of its premiere, the show received near-universal acclaim, and it went on to win a Creative Arts Emmy, but it was quietly canceled and forgotten not long after. Despite the lack of mainstream attention, however, the series is a sci-fi masterpiece, taking audiences on a beautiful and bizarre adventure with glorious visuals, excellent storytelling, and perfect voice acting. It’s easily one of the best sci-fi miniseries of all time and worth watching for all fans of excellence in animation.

3 ‘River’ (2015)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Image via BBC One

Created by Abi Morgan, River is a British crime thriller miniseries starring Stellan Skarsgård as Detective Inspector John River. A brilliant investigator suffering through a difficult period as he grieves the death of his partner, Sergeant Jackie “Stevie” Stevenson (Nicola Walker), River gets back to work with a new partner and covertly investigates Steve’s murder, discovering some dark secrets. Adeel Akhtar, Lesley Manville, and Eddie Marsan star as key supporting characters.

River is best described as a Nordic-style noir story, following a troubled detective on a complex psychological and emotional journey. With an excellent story and powerful performances, it’s a highly compelling watch, anchored by Skarsgård’s awe-inspiring central performance. River has been widely praised by critics and viewers alike, and it’s a gritty, suspenseful story that uses its noir narrative to explore grief, loss, and inner struggle.

2 ‘Cunk on Earth’ (2022)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Image via Netflix

People generally assume that a documentarian would, at the very least, know what their documentary is about. Those people haven’t met Philomena Cunk. Starring Diane Morgan as the chronically uninformed Cunk, Cunk on Earth is a mockumentary series created by Charlie Brooker that follows Cunk as she quizzes real-life experts on world history, from the early days of civilization to the present, and presents her own speculations on what could be next for our planet. The experts are real, even if Cunk herself is not, and they include archaeologist Paul Bahn, art historian Martin Kemp, classicist Nigel Spivey, composer Shirley Thompson, and more.

Universally acclaimed for its weird, deadpan humor and Morgan’s brilliant performance, Cunk on Earth is simultaneously an actually informative documentary about world history and a satirical mockumentary that pokes fun at the act of documentary-making in general. It’s a highly enjoyable watch, packed with laughs in every episode, and seeing the experts attempt to navigate Cunk’s, shall we say, eccentric ways is a treat in itself. Morgan’s performance in Cunk on Earth earned her a BAFTA nomination for Best Female Comedy Performance.

1 ‘Pluto’ (2023)

Rotten Tomatoes: 100%

Image via Netflix

An anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki’s Astro Boy spin-off manga Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka, Pluto explores a world where humans and robots co-exist in the uneasy but generally peaceful aftermath of a devastating war. When prominent humans and robots alike are found murdered by a powerful villain, robot detective Gesicht discovers a conspiracy that could lead to the death of all life on the planet. Written by Heisuke Yamashita and Tatsurou Inamoto, the show’s voice cast stars Shinshū Fuji, Hiroki Yasumoto, Koichi Yamadera, Yoko Hikasa, and Minori Suzuki.

A mind-blowing sci-fi thriller story, Pluto is extraordinarily touching and full of hard questions about what it means to be human. Simultaneously, its central mystery is endlessly compelling and keeps the viewer in tension. A fascinating blend of hard science fiction, murder mysteries, and philosophy, the series is thoughtful and thought-provoking, and it’s easily one of the best anime shows on Netflix.

Pluto