These 10Netflix miniseriesare the best the service has to offer and some of the best miniseries you can watch today. Miniseries marry the gravitas and production values of movies with the long-form storytelling style of television to create something excellent to watch that won’t take forty hours of screen time.
Netflix is well known for the many original TV seriesand movies it’s put out since the early days of the 2010s, but its miniseries catalog has always been a bit more spare than theminiseries libraries of streamers like HBO.Netflix still has some great miniseries, though, and these 10 are the very best.
The rare Western miniseries,Godlessis set in New Mexico in 1884, where a young outlaw, Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), is on the run from his former boss, Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels). Roy’s flight takes him to the town of La Belle. After a mining accident,La Belle is now run by, and mostly inhabited by, women.
The scenes and the violence will be familiar to anyone who has seen a Western TV show or movie before,but it’s the mostly female cast that setsGodlessapart. Western is as male-dominated a genre as any in Hollywood and on TV, andGodlessunearths something unique with its conceit in a well-trod story.
One of the earlysports documentaries originally made for streaming,The Last Dancedoes what few other shows have been able to do after it: give a reason for its own existence other than vanity.Vanity is certainly at play here. The narrative was essentially controlled by Michael Jordan at the cost of the rest of the NBA.
There’s a case to be made that to really tell the story of that era, you needed more than just Jordan, but he is such an electric and unbelievably talented figure, he carries the show alone.
Here’s the thing, though, Michael Jordan’s story is that good. There’s a case to be made that to really tell the story of that era, you needed more than just Jordan, but he is such an electric and unbelievably talented figure, he carries the show alone.Even his curated talking heads reveal a ferocious competitive streakthat’s hard to ignore.
A prequel spin-off show to the ever-popularBridgertonseries,Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Storycould have been a cynical attempt by Netflix to cash in on the hip period drama love of the moment. Instead,Queen Charlotteexacts a tone and story even more interesting and accurate than its mother show.
The series stars India Amarteifio as a young Queen Charlotte, a woman new to the pressures of court life and palace intrigue.Despite her unfamiliarity with the finer points of Buckingham Palace, Amarteifio imbues Charlotte with grandeur and intelligence in the beautifully shot series.
The Queen’s Gambitis by no means Netflix’s first successful TV show, butit feels like one of the streamer’s first critically acclaimed miniseries with mass audience appeal. It was a series that, a year earlier, you would expect to show up on HBO and be the talk of the pop culture world for weeks.
Instead, it was on Netflix, bringing a new sense that the streamer had higher aspirations than previously thought. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Elizabeth Harmon, an orphan chess prodigy who struggles with substance dependency,all while playing the socks off any challenger who comes her way, man or woman.
Directed by Ava DuVernay,When They See Usis a four-episode miniseries based on the true storyof the 1989 Central Park jogger case. The case involved the sexual assault of a female victim and the false accusation levied at five juvenile men of color who were eventually exonerated after years in prison.
The series focuses on the lives and the families of the five accused.
Showing howthe justice system, media attention, and misrepresentations by powerful men encouraged their guilty verdict. It’s a powerful and moving show that leaves an uneasy feeling after the credits roll as you wonder if anything has changed.
The animated Netflix miniseriesCarol & the End of the Worldis set in a modern version of Earth where a previously unknown planet is on a collision course with us.With extinction imminent, humans finally feel liberated to pursue their wildest fantasies, that is, save for Carol, who becomes an office worker to pass the time.
She’s both unfulfilled and content.
Carol Kohl, voiced by Martha Kelly, the sinister drug dealer Laurie inEuphoria, is an amazing creation.She’s both unfulfilled and content. Carol wants something more, but at the same time is so unconcerned with finding that more that even the impending end of the world is not enough to spur her to action.
What happens when you combine the horror and directing sensibilities of Mike Flanagan with the haunting Shirley Jackson novel,The Haunting of Hill House? You get a masterful 10-episode horror drama of the same name and one of the best original productions that Netflix has ever put out on its streamer.
The best ofMike Flanagan’s horror miniseries,The Haunting of Hill House, alternates between two timelines, following five adult siblings whose experiences in the haunted Hill House continue to torture them many years after they left. Atmospheric and terrifying,it’s a horror series with few equals.
Margaret Qualley stars inMaidas Alexandra “Alex” Russell, a young, single mother who moves into a shelter with her toddler daughter and begins working as a maid. She has to balance staying free from her abusive former boyfriend, government assistance, her job, and dreaming about a career as a writer.
Based on the 2019 memoir by Stephanie Land,Maidis a sensitive, smart, and profound drama series, elevated bya fantastic performance from Qualley, who makes Alex come alive and not feel like a caricature. Despite the happy ending, it’s an unflinching look at the toll poverty and abuse create.
Baby Reindeeris one of the most surprising and shocking miniseries to come out on Netflix, or anywhere for that matter.The black comedy-drama is adapted from the autobiographical one-man show by comedian Richard Gadd. Gadd stars in the show, though the character has been renamed Donny Dunn.
Donny is an aspiring comedian working at a bar in London when he makes a brief, kind connection with a sad, older customer named Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning). Martha turns out to be interested in more than tea and begins a stalking and harassment campaign. Bracing and honest,Baby Reindeeris made palatable by Gadd’s dark sense of humor.
2024’sAdolescencefollows Eddie Miller (Stephen Graham), a middle-class man in England, whose 13-year-old son, Jamie (Owen Cooper), is arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate.The series depicts the long, complicated court trial and the Millers' efforts to keep living a normal life.
The trick of filming each episode in one long take would have been reason enough to watch the impressive series, but it’s the probing and well-acted story that makes it such a standout Netflixminiseries.Adolescenceasks pertinent questions about the harmful effects of the internet, the “manosphere”, and the misogynistic aspects of both.
