The cast of Band of Brothers stand in a row amidst rubble, looking at the camera wearing military uniforms.Image via HBO
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Luc Haasbroek
Published 17 minutes ago
Luc Haasbroek is a writer and videographer from Durban, South Africa. He has been writing professionally about pop culture for eight years. Luc's areas of interest are broad: he's just as passionate about psychology and history as he is about movies and TV. He's especially drawn to the places where these topics overlap.
Luc is also an avid producer of video essays and looks forward to expanding his writing career. When not writing, he can be found hiking, playing Dungeons & Dragons, hanging out with his cats, and doing deep dives on whatever topic happens to have captured his interest that week.
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Sometimes a miniseries is the perfect medium for a story. Long enough to give it room to breathe, not too long that it overstays its welcome. They're self-contained experiences that never lose momentum. The best of them lend themselves to rewatching, as they're jam-packed with hidden details or fresh layers.
With this in mind, this list ranks some of the best miniseries that are worth going back to. From prestige dramas to surreal comedies to haunting mysteries, these ten shows deserve a permanent place in your personal rotation.
10 ‘Wolf Hall’ (2015)
Damien Lewis as Henry VIIIImage via BBC
"I’ll tell you what’s wrong with your ethics: you don’t have any." Wolf Hall turns Tudor politics into a tense psychological game. This historical drama is based on Hilary Mantel’s masterful novels and anchored by an astonishing performance from Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. Damian Lewis is also enjoyable as the power-hungry monarch. But unlike most Henry VIII-era dramas, this one isn’t just about gowns or courtly pomp. Instead, the focus is on strategy, three-dimensional characters, strategy, and the subtle machinations of power.
Rylance plays Cromwell like a man constantly doing multiple calculations at once, forever trying to stay three steps ahead. Sometimes, his life depends on it. Rewatching Wolf Hall becomes an act of studying the movements of a chess master; each time, you catch new details. Those who enjoyed it should check the follow-up series The Mirror & the Light, which came out late last year.
9 ‘Godless’ (2017)
Two women in western apparel outdoors holding rifles and looking at something off-screen in Godless.Image via Netflix
"You’re a man who can’t see far enough to see himself." Godless is a revisionist Western with dust-bowl melancholy and mythic sweep. Set in a town run almost entirely by widowed women after a mining catastrophe, the story follows outlaws, wounded men, and defiant survivors whose lives converge in a powder keg of vengeance. Michelle Dockery and Merritt Wever play the courageous, complex leads, while Jeff Daniels delivers one of the finest TV villain performances of the decade as the menacing Frank Griffin, equal parts frightening and charismatic.
Godless stands above most Western shows because it's really about psychology and morality rather than horses and gunfights. The characters inhabit a harsh world, and the most compelling story arcs involve how they respond to that. They're all shaped by violence but starving for grace. The majority-female cast also makes for an interesting counterpoint to the usual genre fare.
8 ‘The Night Of’ (2016)
Defense attorney John Stone (John Turturro) sits in court with his client Nasir Khan (Riz Ahmed) in 'The Night Of' (2016).Image via HBO
"Truth is whatever you can make someone believe." Riz Ahmed delivers one of his best performances in this drama as Naz Khan, a young man accused of murder after a night he barely remembers. He soon finds himself swallowed whole by the American justice system, his situation seeming to grow worse and worse with every new scrap of evidence that emerges. Yet the show isn’t about guilt or innocence so much as the system itself, how broken institutions reshape individuals, grinding them down until they barely resemble who they were.
Opposite Ahmed, John Turturro is phenomenal as a weary, eczema-tormented defense lawyer with just enough stubborn decency to keep fighting. He's essentially the only ally Naz has left. Each viewing reveals new shades of despair and humanity. By the end, you're left uncomfortable by the plausibility of the situation and the knowledge that such things are really happening every day.
7 ‘Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace’ (2004)
Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.Image via Channel 4
"I know writers who use subtext, and they’re all cowards." One of the strangest, funniest cult shows ever made, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace remains a rewatch goldmine. The series parodies low-budget '80s horror TV with such loving, outrageous precision that each viewing feels like uncovering a new layer of absurd genius. It helps that the stars are so hilarious. Matthew Holness plays Garth Marenghi, an egomaniacal horror novelist who "wrote, directed, and starred" in the fictional series, while Richard Ayoade steals scenes with the stiffest line readings ever committed to screen.
The always great Matt Berry (perhaps most well-known for What We Do in the Shadows) is also entertaining as pistol-toting Todd Rivers/Dr Lucien Sanchez. The show is deliberately bad, replete with deliberate continuity errors, gloriously terrible effects, and earnest nonsense dialogue. While only six episodes were ever produced, they contain more than enough entertainment value to earn Darkplace a spot in the comedy-horror pantheon.
6 ‘Fargo’ Season 1 (2014)
Martin Freeman as Lester Nygaard in Season 1 of 'Fargo'Image via FX
"The devil has his rule book, too." Anthologies rarely arrive fully formed, but Fargo’s first season was lightning in a bottle. Inspired by the Coen Brothers movie yet wholly its own, it spins a darkly comic nightmare of deception, small-town hypocrisy, and moral corrosion. Billy Bob Thornton is hypnotic as Lorne Malvo, a calm, smiling agent of chaos who wanders into Minnesota like the devil on casual business. Meanwhile, a stellar Martin Freeman unravels as a weak man seduced by violence and cowardice.
Rounding out the trio is Allison Tolman, who grounds the chaos with warm integrity, a reminder that decency can survive in snow-stained shadows. The script is fantastic, full of deliciously dark humor, quirky quotes, and surprising twists. The subsequent seasons would offer diminishing returns, but the first go-around achieves a rare kind of TV alchemy. Chilling, funny, philosophical, and tightly structured.
5 ‘Mare of Easttown’ (2021)
Julianne Nicholson sitting on a park bench with Kate Winslet's head on her shoulder in 'Mare of Easttown'Image via HBO
"Doing nothing is worse than making a mistake." At first glance, Mare of Easttown looks like another small-town murder mystery, but it’s really a character study in grief and resilience. Kate Winslet gives one of her greatest performances as the title character (and not just for her authentic Philadelphia accent), a detective haunted by personal loss while holding together a fraying community. While the mystery is compelling, the show’s real treasure lies in the lived-in realism: church basements, high-school gyms, friendships forged in sorrow and cigarettes.
Other shows would try to imitate this setting and story structure, but none have done it so well, mostly because it's hard to draw characters as vividly as those that populate Mare of Easttown. The writing is smart and the performances are rich. Mare, in particular, is no saint. She has great strengths, but also serious flaws, capable of real ugliness when backed into a corner.
4 ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ (2020)
Image by Jefferson Chacon
"It’s an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it." The Queen's Gambit is way more cinematic than your average miniseries, feeling like a 7-hour movie rather than a show. At the heart of it, Anya Taylor-Joy is mesmerizing as chess prodigy Beth Harmon. She absolutely nails every dimension of this multifaceted character, including the rebellious, loneliness, addiction, and ferocious ambition. It is one of the few prestige dramas that feels uplifting without losing complexity.
The star and the showrunners also deserve props for making chess games white-knuckle tense. Here, the game almost feels like a contact sport. Tournaments become psychological duels. The aesthetics deliver, too. Netflix clearly went all out on the production values. The costumes, the music, and the period settings all glow with a nostalgic shimmer. Taken together, it adds up to one of the company's very best offerings.
3 ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ (2018)
Victoria Pedretti as Nell Crain suffering in 'The Haunting of Hill House'.Image via Netflix
"Forgiveness is warm. Like a tear on a cheek." Speaking of bangers from Netflix, Mike Flanagan's take on The Haunting of Hill House is, simply put, one of the greatest horror TV series of all time. While the scares are exceptional, it' the emotional architecture that keeps viewers returning: regrets trapped like spirits, childhood wounds echoing across years, family bonds fraying and reforging. Fundamentally, the show is about a family fractured by trauma. The real haunting is one of grief, not ghosts. The supernatural stuff is almost just a bonus.
The visuals are sumptuous, the cast (including Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Kate Siegel, and Victoria Pedretti) is committed, and the frights are subtly unnerving (that shadow under the door!) Episode Six, shot in long takes like a looping nightmare, alone rewards endless rewatching, revealing new emotional fissures every time. All in all, a modern gothic masterpiece.
2 ‘Band of Brothers’ (2001)
Soldiers yelling in a field in Band of Brothers.Image via HBO
"We’re paratroopers, Lieutenant. We’re supposed to be surrounded." The most rewatchable war series ever made. Following Easy Company from Normandy to the war’s end, Band of Brothers honors real soldiers with humility, brutality, and human warmth. Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston, and an astonishing ensemble disappear into roles shaped by duty and fear. Every episode is its own emotional journey, and each viewing hits differently; some days hopeful, some days heavy.
The setpieces are spectacular, and the historical recreation is immersive, but a big part of the show's success is also due to its emotional depth. The most moving scenes are often the moments of quiet camaraderie between battles, men learning to trust life again after staring into hell. It makes for a powerful snapshot of a pivotal moment in history. It’s rare for television to feel like a monument. Band of Brothers does.
1 ‘True Detective’ Season 1 (2014)
Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the first season of True DetectiveImage via HBO
"Time is a flat circle." Existential dread meets southern-gothic noir in the greatest single-season detective story television has produced. Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle and Woody Harrelson’s Marty Hart carry a case across years of corruption, cosmic horror, and philosophical despair. The first season brims with unforgettable sequences, from the six-minute tracking-shot raid to the finale's eerie hush. It also defies genre expectations by bringing in unusual influences, including ideas borrowed from comic books and horror.
Cohle's monologues alone are worth endless rewatches. They're bleak, poetic meditations on time, consciousness, and human frailty, frequently quoted, rarely understood. The central mystery is compelling, and the themes hit hard, delving deep into masculinity, memory, trauma, and the fragile hope that light might exist beyond darkness. All this set such a stupendously high bar that the following seasons couldn't help but be disappointing. Arguably, no crime show since has quite topped it.
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TV-MA
Drama
Mystery
Crime
Release Date
January 12, 2014
Network
HBO Max
Showrunner
Nic Pizzolatto
Directors
Cary Fukunaga
Cast
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Matthew McConaughey
Rust Cohle
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Colin Farrell
Ray Velcoro
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