8 Most Perfect Miniseries of the Last 15 Years, Ranked
In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 3000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix's Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio.
Sign in to your Collider account
Content Warning: This list contains a brief mention of sexual assault.The BBC's 1953 sci-fi drama The Quatermass Experiment is regarded as the very first miniseries, accidentally becoming the pioneer for the perfect format for TV's most prestigious dramas. Back in the early days of the small screen, the miniseries was a much rarer occurrence, often saved for the most culturally pressing television events. Today, miniseries are much more common and popular, although that shouldn't mean they are any less important and impactful.
At a time when shows are being cancelled left, right, and center, the miniseries offers a safe and sure-fire way to tell a story in completion on TV. But that then comes with its own challenges, as a miniseries doesn't benefit from the extended narrative time of the multi-season format. This, thus, breeds a necessity for quality over quantity, usually encouraging writers and creators to distill the essence of their message and the most vital points of their story into just a handful of episodes. Of these many miniseries made in recent memory, a few have stood out as the finest examples. With that in mind, here's a list of the most perfect miniseries of the last 15 years, ranked.
'I May Destroy You' (2020)
HBO is known for providing a platform for some of the most unique and exciting voices in film and TV today. In 2020, HBO went across the pond to the UK to acquire the latest series from rising star Michaela Coel, who had already shot to fame with her series Chewing Gum in 2015. After exploring the Black British experience in modern London through a comedic lens, Coel took things to a darker place in I May Destroy You, which follows aspiring writer Arabella as she tries to piece her life together after being sexually assaulted.
Coel is one of the most important voices in modern British media, and I May Destroy You is her magnum opus. As a semi-autobiographical narrative, this raw and honest miniseries has the power to change lives, but never does so through preaching, instead using hard-hitting, inventive reality to explore its truly gut-wrenching themes. I May Destroy You won two Primetime Emmys in 2021, including the prize for Outstanding Writing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
'Baby Reindeer' (2024)
Similar to I May Destroy You, four years later, the platform was offered to Scottish actor and comedian Richard Gadd to tell his story on Netflix. What resulted was a series that surprised the world and dominated conversation, earning 84.5 million views within its first 91 days and becoming one of the most important releases on the streamer so far.
Baby Reindeer follows Gadd's aspiring stand-up comic as he navigates a strange, dark relationship with a stalker, forcing him to tackle some terrifying trauma in the process. Supported by a career-defining performance by Jessica Gunning as Martha, Baby Reindeer weaves between enthralling and emotionally devastating in the blink of an eye, winning six Primetime Emmy Awards in the process, including the Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series prize.
'The Night Of' (2016)
Peter Moffat's 2008 British show Criminal Justice is a truly underrated BBC series that aired back in 2008. Eight years later, HBO would deliver an American adaptation that managed to surpass its predecessor. Led by a pair of Emmy-nominated performances from John Turturro and Riz Ahmed, the series follows a man who wakes up following a night of partying to find the woman he picked up stabbed to death.
A premise simple and effective enough to entice anyone delivers on all counts in The Night Of, which boasts excellent performances, a selection of tight, detailed scripts, and a mature understanding of sensitive subject matter. Despite featuring just nine episodes, Richard Price and Steven Zaillian take their time to slowly uncover this mystery, resulting in a finale that is one of the best and most jaw-dropping of the past decade.
'The Penguin' (2024)
There have been few miniseries as popular as The Penguin in the past decade. After his transformative performance in Matt Reeves' The Batman, Colin Farrell returned to play Oz Cobb, only this time as the headline name of his own series. The pressure was on, and Farrell didn't disappoint, delivering one of the most remarkable lead performances on the small screen we've ever seen.
Beyond Farrell's chilling performance, The Penguin is a masterclass in style, setting, and, most importantly, how to expand on world-building from a previous project. Gotham City never felt so immersive as in this series, despite facing backlash for shedding some of the neo-noir visual originality from The Batman. This was replaced by a more grounded exploration of the city, which helped differentiate Oz Cobb's story from its big-screen predecessor. The Penguin was the recipient of countless nominations and awards for its trouble, most notably picking up a jaw-dropping 24 Primetime Emmy nominations.
Collider Exclusive · Villain Personality Quiz Which Criminal Mastermind Would Be Your Nemesis? Lecter · Joker · Moriarty · Chigurh
Four of the finest criminal minds ever put on screen. One of them would look at you and see something worth their time. Eight questions decide which one comes for you, why they picked you, and what they would want when they arrived.
🍷Lecter
🃏Joker
♟️Moriarty
🪙Chigurh
01
What would a criminal mastermind notice about you first? Great villains choose their opponents carefully. Something about you got their attention.
02
How do they make first contact? The introduction tells you everything about what is coming next.
03
What do you actually believe about right and wrong? Every nemesis is really an argument about the thing you believe most.
04
What finally gets under your skin? Everybody has a pressure point. Finding yours is the whole plan.
05
They have made their move. How do you fight back? This is the part of the film where the audience finds out who you are.
06
What would they use against you? A good villain never brings a weapon you have not already handed them.
07
What do they actually want from you? The money is never the point. Something else always is.
08
How does it end between the two of you? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who comes for you.
The Case File Is Complete Your Nemesis Is…
Four criminal masterminds. One of them was always going to be yours. Here is who comes for you, why they picked you out of everyone available, and what they want from the encounter.
Hannibal Lecter
Your nemesis does not want to beat you. He wants to know you completely, and he is patient enough to wait for it. The frightening part is how good the conversation is.
- Lecter is the most dangerous kind of opponent: the one who finds you interesting. He never raises his voice, because he has never needed to.
- You keep a great deal to yourself and you are careful about what you show. That reserve is exactly the door he would knock on.
- The films understood something other thrillers missed. The horror is not the violence. It is being perfectly understood by the wrong person.
- He would be unfailingly polite about all of it. That is the worst part.
The Joker
Your nemesis is not after money, territory or revenge. He is after a demonstration, and you are the person he has chosen to prove his point on.
- The Joker only picks opponents who believe in something. Your decency is not a defence against him. It is the entire reason he showed up.
- He has no plan you can predict and nothing you can take away, which removes every tool you would normally reach for.
- His whole argument is that you are one bad day away from being him, and you would spend the rest of your life proving him wrong.
- He would call it a magic trick. You would call it the worst night of your life.
Moriarty
Your nemesis respects you, which sounds flattering until you work out what it means. He chose you because nobody else was worth his time.
- Moriarty is the original criminal mastermind, the template every later one borrows from: a mind the equal of the hero's, pointed the wrong way.
- You enjoy being the cleverest person in the room. He is counting on exactly that, and he has already built the room.
- This is the rare nemesis who would be genuinely disappointed if you lost badly. He needs the game to be worth playing.
- It ends the way these things always end. Two people, one problem, and only one way down.
Anton Chigurh
Your nemesis has no personal interest in you whatsoever, and that is precisely what makes him unsurvivable. You are not a rival. You are a stop on the way.
- Chigurh does not negotiate, gloat or explain. He arrives, he asks one question, and the answer was decided long before you opened your mouth.
- You trust yourself to handle things. He is the one problem in the world that has no interest in how capable you are.
- No Country for Old Men rewrote the screen villain by removing the thing audiences quietly rely on: the sense that talking might work.
- Call it. He will wait.
'The Queen's Gambit' (2020)
Crafting a great miniseries requires patience, imagination, and an eye for detail, much like playing a game of chess. In 2020, creators Scott Frank and Allan Scott took this to a new level by combining both, as they adapted Walter Tevis' 1893 novel of the same name, The Queen's Gambit, and added one of the most exciting rising stars in Hollywood as the headliner.
The story follows the rise of prodigious introvert and orphan Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy), as she masters the game of chess in the 1960s. A precise, intelligent miniseries exploring the cost of young stardom, The Queen's Gambit became one of the poster shows during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a record-breaking 62 million households watched in just the first 28 days. Helped by a global lockdown or not, the show deserves each of these views, standing tall as one of the most influential miniseries of the past five years.
'Normal People' (2020)
A will-they/won't-they romance between two people is a perfect structure for a miniseries. However, most will explore a typically screen-friendly, romanticized version of love that inevitably ends in a passionate embrace as fireworks explode, and they both live happily ever after. Normal People, based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Sally Rooney, is different, choosing to dive headfirst into the minutiae of modern love at its heart-achingly doomed best.
Marianne Sheridan (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal) are seemingly perfect for each other, but opposing livelihoods and consistent miscommunication get in the way. That's essentially the premise of this genius Irish miniseries, which exposed the world to the hugely talented Edgar-Jones and Mescal. The pair's chemistry is so raw and real that rumors of their off-screen love continue to swirl six years later. But poignantly, the two are just best friends, which makes for the perfect on-screen connection sure to fill your heart before shattering it in the way only true love can.
'Adolescence' (2025)
This is the most important miniseries to ever be released on Netflix. Debuting to an unsuspecting audience early last year, Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham's Adolescence is a call-to-action against a sudden and shocking rise in femicide amongst young women. In particular, there is a crisis among teenage boys being radicalized into hating women on the internet, with this very issue and its devastating ramifications explored in excellent, jaw-dropping detail in Adolescence.
This crucial tour-de-force has been watched for more than 555 million hours and picked up countless accolades, including four Golden Globes, and the admiration of critics across the world. But these accolades feel superficial when accounting for the show's subject matter, with the mere existence of Adolescence on a major streaming platform the biggest victory of them all. So powerful it sparked discussion in the British government, it's difficult to imagine a more vital piece of television in recent memory, especially one that uncovered a star in Owen Cooper who seems destined to rise to the very top of Hollywood.
'Chernobyl' (2019)
If any future miniseries hopes to become one of the greatest, it should be held up to the perfect standard of Chernobyl. Somehow written by the mind behind Scary Movie 3 and The Hangover Part II, this small-screen masterpiece follows the infamous incident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in April 1986, exploring the immediate and long-term aftermath, and uncovering many of the lesser-known stories of those involved.
The winner of ten Primetime Emmys and the Best Miniseries prize from both the Golden Globes and the BAFTA TV Awards, Chernobyl has long been celebrated as a major masterpiece, with it difficult to find new superlatives to describe the series. Of all its many achievements, perhaps the most impressive is its ability to deftly tackle an incident so sensitive with both respect and maturity, but without ever sacrificing drama and entertainment. That or being dubbed "masterfully made" and "filmed with great respect for ordinary people" by the Russian culture minister, showcasing the true widespread power and impact of unmistakeable genius.
Chernobyl
- Release Date
- 2019 - 2019
- Network
- HBO
- Showrunner
- Craig Mazin
- Directors
- Johan Renck
-
Valery Legasov
-
Boris Shcherbina
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.