6 Most Perfect Miniseries Released Since 2020, Ranked

Image via HBO Published Sep 26, 2026, 7:44 AM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Limited series used to be where networks dumped ideas that couldn't sustain a full ongoing show. Somewhere over the last five years that flipped completely, now some of the most ambitious, technically difficult television being made shows up in six or eight episodes and then just ends, on purpose, before it can wear out its welcome. Every one of these committed fully to a single, contained idea instead of stretching it out for a renewal. That commitment is exactly why every one of these still plays as complete, in a way an ongoing series almost never manages. 6 'The Queen's Gambit' (2020) Image via Netflix Costume designer Gabriele Binder color-coded Beth Harmon's (Anya Taylor-Joy) entire wardrobe to mirror actual chess pieces, her outfits growing darker and more commanding as her ranking climbs through the series. Taylor-Joy also trained to physically move chess pieces the way real grandmasters do, fast, precise, almost aggressive, a detail chess players notice immediately and casual viewers absorb without realizing why it looks so convincing. The Moscow championship scenes near the end were actually filmed in Berlin, standing in for a Soviet capital none of the production could access. Beth's rise from an orphanage to international chess champion never once feels like it's skipping steps, every single match adds to her story and keeps the ending properly deserved. 5 'I May Destroy You' (2020) Image via HBO The show opens with Arabella (Michaela Coel) doing the literal walk of shame home from a party the morning after her drink gets spiked, and that unglamorous, disoriented cold open sets the tone for everything that follows. Coel reportedly met with real assault survivors while writing the scripts, which makes sure that the show's messier, more contradictory reactions to trauma actually matched how people describe living through it. Most scenes run without any musical score at all, which strips away the usual emotional cues television normally leans on and leaves everything feeling uncomfortably unfiltered. The show refuses a clean, satisfying justice narrative too, and chooses to sit with how unresolved most of Arabella's actual feelings stay even after the story technically ends. 4 'Mare of Easttown' (2021) Image via HBO Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet) investigates the murder of a teenage mother in a small Pennsylvania town while quietly falling apart over her own son's suicide and a custody fight over her grandson. Winslet trained extensively to nail the extremely specific Delaware County accent, thick, clipped, unmistakably local, and the show became something of a regional obsession because of how accurately it captured that world. Brad Ingelsby wrote the show based on his own hometown, and that familiarity shows in how lived-in every diner, porch, and backyard cookout feels. A local cheesesteak shop mentioned constantly throughout the show turned into real merchandise and memes once the finale aired, an unusually direct crossover between fiction and actual local culture. Jean Smart, playing Mare's sharp-tongued mother, gets some of the funniest lines in a show that's otherwise almost entirely bleak. 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) FIND YOUR BEST FRIEND → 01 How do you usually end up making a new friend? The origin story says a lot about the friendship that follows it. AWe got loud about the same obsession and never stopped. BThey invited me somewhere before we had properly met. CWe bonded over disliking exactly the same thing. DThey noticed I was struggling and stayed with me. NEXT QUESTION → 02 What is a perfect Saturday with your best friend? Friendship is mostly built out of very ordinary hours. AA ridiculous plan neither of us should attempt. BSomewhere new, photographed heavily, ending very late. CSomewhere quiet, few people, zero small talk. DSomething simple, and a conversation that actually matters. NEXT QUESTION → 03 You call them at two in the morning. What happens? This is the real test of a friendship, and everybody knows it. AThey are already putting their shoes on. BThey answer instantly and turn it into a plan. CThey answer and say something unflattering and true. DThey listen for an hour and never check the time. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What do you want from them when you are clearly wrong? The best friendships are the ones that survive being corrected. ASupport first. We can review the mistake later. BA relentlessly positive reframe of the entire disaster. CThe blunt version. Do not soften it for me. DPatience, and no judgment about how I got here. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What do your friends actually value about you? The friend you attract says something about the friend you are. AI am all in, always, about everything. BI can turn almost any situation into a good time. CI say the thing nobody else in the room will. DI look after whoever is having the worst day. NEXT QUESTION → 06 You have a falling out. How does it go? How a friendship repairs itself matters more than how it breaks. ALoudly, briefly, then back to normal by Tuesday. BThey apologise first, enthusiastically, with a gift. CCold silence, then one dry joke that fixes everything. DWe talk until we both understand what actually happened. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What do you actually need a best friend for? Everybody is missing something. The right friend fills that gap. ATo make my life bigger than it would be alone. BTo push me out of the house and into my own life. CTo catch me when I start lying to myself. DTo be the person who never gave up on me. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Ten years from now, what keeps the two of you close? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who you get. AWe would still drop everything for each other, instantly. BWe still make plans, and we still actually go. CWe still cut through each other's nonsense in one sentence. DThey stood by me once when it cost them something. REVEAL MY BEST FRIEND → 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 HendersonYou 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 CooperYou 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 AddamsYou 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-hunYou 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. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 3 'Beef' (2023) Image via Netflix A road rage incident in a parking lot between two total strangers spirals into a months-long campaign of mutual destruction, and neither Danny (Steven Yeun) nor Amy (Ali Wong) seem capable of just letting it go. Lee Sung Jin created the show, using that initial petty grudge to dig into class resentment, suburban rage, and the specific pressures of Asian American identity no one can fully name out loud. The finale goes somewhere properly strange, both characters ending up stranded together in the desert after eating hallucinogenic berries, forced into the first honest conversation they've had the entire show. It won multiple Emmys, including acting wins for both Yeun and Wong, recognition for two performances built almost entirely on barely contained fury. 2 ‘Baby Reindeer' (2024) Image via Netflix Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd), a fictionalized version of Gadd himself, gets stalked relentlessly by a woman named Martha (Jessica Gunning), and the show is based directly on Gadd's own real experience surviving it. One episode includes an extended, almost unbroken confessional monologue direct to camera, where Donny finally reveals a history of sexual abuse by a mentor figure that complicates everything the audience thought they understood about him. The show avoids turning Martha into a simple villain, and lets her come across as pitiable even while her behavior stays terrifying throughout. After release, online sleuths tracked down and harassed the real woman believed to have inspired the character, a disturbing real-world echo of the exact behavior the show was trying to examine. Gadd has said repeatedly that identifying her was never the point, and that the backlash misunderstood what the show was actually trying to do. 1 'Adolescence' (2025) Image via Netflix Each of the four episodes in this show was filmed as a single, unbroken continuous take, including one that follows characters between multiple floors of a police station and another set entirely inside a school in real time. Owen Cooper, in his first-ever acting role, plays Jamie, a thirteen-year-old boy arrested for murdering a female classmate, and his performance handles scenes most seasoned actors would struggle to pull off. Stephen Graham both stars in and co-created the show, using Jamie's story to dig into incel forums and online radicalization among teenage boys most parents have no idea exists. The UK's Prime Minister publicly praised the show, and schools across the country started screening it specifically to open conversations about the exact culture it depicts.