The 10 Best Thriller Shows With Less Than 20 Episodes, Ranked

Committing to a new show is a lot to ask these days. Telling someone to start Breaking Bad means asking them to sit through five seasons and 62 episodes. Better Call Saul is an even bigger ask at six seasons. Both shows are worth it, but not everyone has the time or the patience to invest that much into TV. That's where this list of great yet short thrillers comes in. These are some of the best thriller shows out there that fans of the genre will almost certainly enjoy, ranked from great to greatest. And every single one of them clocks in at under 20 episodes total, making them perfect for a quick weekend binge-watch. 10 'Defending Jacob' (2020) Image via Apple TV Chris Evans stars as Andy Barber, an assistant district attorney assigned as the lead prosecutor in the murder case of a 14-year-old boy found stabbed in a local park. But he's soon pulled off the case when his own teenage son, Jacob (Jaeden Martell), becomes the prime suspect and is charged with the crime. But don’t go into it thinking it’s going to be a courtroom drama. The vast majority of Defending Jacob's plot focuses on the intense psychological toll and suspicion building inside the Barber family home as the parents begin to question their son's innocence. And the series does an incredible job of keeping you wondering if Jacob actually did it or not. If you liked shows like Adolescence and Presumed Innocent, this one is going to be right up your alley. 9 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen' (2026) Image via Netflix Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen opens with the bride-to-be, Rachel (Camila Morrone), walking down the aisle in her wedding dress to her fiancé, and then cuts away to the same venue's hallways soaked in blood, accompanied by the sounds of screaming. Then it flashes back five days before the wedding, to the couple madly in love, driving to the family's rural cabin. Given the title and what you just saw, you already know something very bad is going to happen. The rest of the show is a tightly constructed mystery box where something constantly feels off, from the eccentric family members acting weird around Rachel, to whispers of an ancient family curse, to a mysterious creature that may be stalking the hallways of the house. And it all culminates in a blood-soaked final episode that may be one of the best finales in recent memory. Executive produced by the Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame, the show gets everything right. From its rustic, dreamlike aesthetic and gorgeous cinematography to its eerie sound design and strong performances, every piece of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen fits together perfectly. 8 'The Gentlemen' (2024–Present) Image via Netflix A spinoff sequel to Guy Ritchie's film of the same name, The Gentlemen follows Eddie Horniman (Theo James), a former military captain who unexpectedly inherits his family's country estate, and with it, a massive underground cannabis empire he never asked for. As Eddie tries to figure out what he's inherited, he gets pulled deeper into the criminal underworld and has to outmaneuver rival criminal factions to keep control of the empire beneath his estate. It’s Ritchie doing exactly what Ritchie does best: sharp suits, sharper dialogue, and a sprawling criminal underworld where everyone seems to be aura-farming for an audience even when nobody's watching. It's stylish to a fault, and that's the point. The action looks like it belongs on the big screen. And the world itself is peak manor-core, filled with massive European estates, ridiculously posh British accents, gorgeous cars, and finely tailored old-money fits that make everyone look like they walked straight out of a Ralph Lauren campaign. 7 'Peacemaker' (2022–2025) Image via HBO Max Peacemaker is easily one of James Gunn's best works so far, and it was definitely a big factor in why he got the reins to the entire DCU. Season 1 follows Chris (John Cena) as he's recruited into a secret A.R.G.U.S. black ops team known as Project Butterfly to stop a parasitic alien invasion. It was full of unhinged jokes, zany side characters, A-tier action sequences, an incredible soundtrack, and a whole lot of heart. And it proved once and for all that Cena has some real acting chops. He completely embodied the flawed and broken side of Chris and made the character feel way more human than anyone expected. Season 2 took everything that made the first season so much fun and dialed it up to 11. This time, Peacemaker was fully integrated into the new DCU. The cameos and the dimension-hopping stuff made it feel like a real piece of the bigger universe. The jokes were even more unhinged, and the needle drops were bigger and better. It's full of creative flair and lays the groundwork for big DCU storylines to come, which makes it a must-see for anyone who loves superhero media. 6 'Sherlock' (2010–2017) Image via BBC Sherlock follows the iconic detective Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his flatmate Dr. John Watson (Martin Freeman) as they solve complex crimes across modern-day London. What makes Sherlock especially fitting for this list is how much it manages to pack into so few episodes. Each season has just three episodes, with each one running around 90 minutes, so every season essentially plays out like its own self-contained Sherlock Holmes film trilogy. Each episode focuses on a new standalone mystery, but there are always bigger threads and character arcs developing in the background, so the individual cases eventually become pieces of a much larger puzzle. Back when it was airing, it was absolutely everywhere. Tumblr was obsessed with it. Facebook was full of screenshots and theories. The way words pop up on screen as he examines someone or notices some tiny detail makes his thought process feel like we’re watching his brain work in real time. And the deductions themselves, far-fetched as they may be, are so damn cool and never get old. 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 MEET YOUR NEMESIS → 01 What would a criminal mastermind notice about you first? Great villains choose their opponents carefully. Something about you got their attention. AMy manners, and everything I am careful not to say. BThat I still believe people are basically decent. CThat I am clever, and quietly enjoy proving it. DThat I handle things myself, and always have. NEXT QUESTION → 02 How do they make first contact? The introduction tells you everything about what is coming next. AA polite letter. Beautiful handwriting. Quietly wrong. BSomething on fire, with a message left beside it. CA puzzle, left where only I would look. DNo contact. Just the aftermath, and a coin. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What do you actually believe about right and wrong? Every nemesis is really an argument about the thing you believe most. AThere are lines. Mine are private and absolute. BRules are the only thing keeping us from being animals. CMorality is a system, and systems can be solved. DThings happen. Most of it was never up to me. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What finally gets under your skin? Everybody has a pressure point. Finding yours is the whole plan. ABeing seen clearly by somebody I cannot read. BWatching good people do something ugly. CLosing to someone who was simply better prepared. DHaving no move left that changes anything. NEXT QUESTION → 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. ACarefully, and never where they expect to be touched. BLoudly. I would rather lose than play their game. CWith a better plan. I can out-think this. DDirectly, once, with whatever is closest to hand. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What would they use against you? A good villain never brings a weapon you have not already handed them. AMy privacy. I have kept far too much to myself. BMy conscience. I will not cross the line they want. CMy ego. I cannot resist a worthy opponent. DMy certainty that I can handle it alone. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What do they actually want from you? The money is never the point. Something else always is. ATo understand me better than anyone ever has. BTo prove I am no better than they are. CTo finally be beaten by someone worth the trouble. DNothing at all. I stepped into the wrong path. NEXT QUESTION → 08 How does it end between the two of you? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides who comes for you. AA conversation I will be replaying for years. BA choice forced on me that has no clean answer. COne final move, and the better mind wins. DA coin in the air, and nothing I can say. REVEAL MY NEMESIS → 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 LecterYour 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 JokerYour 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. MoriartyYour 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 ChigurhYour 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. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 'Mindhunter' (2017–2019) Image via Netflix David Fincher’s Mindhunter takes place in the late 1970s, back when the FBI was still figuring out that serial killers were a different breed of criminal from your typical murderer. The series follows FBI agents Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) and Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) as they interview infamous serial killers to understand what makes them tick and why they do what they do, with the goal of developing criminal profiling techniques that could help catch future killers. By Season 2, those methods are put to the test as Holden and Bill try to apply what they've learned to an active serial killer case. If criminal psychology is your thing, no show does it better than Mindhunter. Fincher is infamous for his obsessive perfectionism, and every bit of it shows here. The cinematography. Blocking. Writing. Sound design. Editing. Performances. It’s all flawless. Every frame looks like someone spent way too much time getting it exactly right. The series was canceled after two seasons because it was deemed too expensive for Netflix to keep producing, which tells you just how much Fincher was putting into it every season. But even unfinished, Mindhunter is one of the greatest crime thrillers you'll ever see. 4 'The Looming Tower' (2018) Image via Wolf Moon Productions The Looming Tower is a 10-episode miniseries on Hulu that explores the events leading up to the September 11 attacks. It traces the growing threat of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda while showing how 9/11 was, in many ways, a preventable tragedy. The FBI and CIA were both trying to stop terrorist threats on American soil. But a toxic rivalry between the two agencies kept critical information from ever reaching the people who needed it. It seamlessly switches from dramatized reenactments to real-life security footage from that time, and it hits you like a ton of bricks because there’s no escaping the fact that what we're watching actually happened. The series also avoids the usual discriminatory lens that so many stories about terrorism fall into. Its central FBI character, Ali Soufan (Tahar Rahim), is himself a Muslim, and the show goes into extreme depth to show how extremist groups misuse faith and gradually radicalize and brainwash people. 3 'Task' (2025–Present) Image via HBO Task stars Mark Ruffalo as an FBI agent who's pulled off desk duty to lead a task force investigating a string of violent home invasions. On the other side of the case is Robbie Prendergast (Tom Pelphrey), a sanitation worker who robs drug houses at night to get his family out of debt. It's a perfect cat-and-mouse thriller with a surprising amount of heart and mind-bending plot twists in every episode that constantly keep you on the edge of your seat, desperate to watch the next episode. But the best part about the show is undoubtedly the characters. Everyone is deeply flawed, and they all act like real people. They make decisions you'd actually make in those situations, and they're all likable on both sides of the law. You're rooting for the task force just as hard as you are for the people they're chasing, and that makes for some great television. 2 'The Penguin' (2024) Image via HBO The Penguin picks up right after The Batman, following Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) as he claws his way through the power vacuum left in Gotham City. But don't worry, you don't need to see The Batman at all because it's entirely standalone. The series digs into his childhood and the abuse and neglect by his mother that made him who he is, and tracks his relentless climb from a mere nobody to kingpin of the entire Gotham underworld. Just like in The Batman, Farrell is completely unrecognizable in the role and even earned an Emmy nomination for it. The camerawork and aesthetics feel ripped straight out of The Batman. And it's got a gut-punch ending that puts this right up there with The Sopranos and The Godfather as one of the greatest pieces of gangster media ever made. 1 'The Day of the Jackal' (2024–Present) Image via Peacock The Day of the Jackal centers around MI6 agent Bianca (Lashana Lynch) as she hunts down a world-class assassin known only as the Jackal (Eddie Redmayne). The series follows the Jackal as he travels around the globe taking out high-profile targets in some seriously cool action set pieces, but you soon find out that he has a wife and a family who have absolutely no idea what he does for a living, and he constantly has to juggle his two lives and make sure they never collide. The premise might sound a little cliché on paper, but almost everything about the execution is top-tier. The action is better than what you’ll find in most big-budget action blockbusters, and practically every episode ends on a cliffhanger that makes it very difficult not to immediately hit the next one. And the attention to detail is wild. When the Jackal takes on a disguise, the show doesn’t just cut to another actor. We watch him study the person he’s impersonating, copy their mannerisms, mimic their walk and speech, and painstakingly build the disguise himself. Redmayne completely disappears into every identity he takes on, and it is genuinely some of the best acting you’ll ever see on television.