Looking for a great season of television to watch? Here are the best limited and mini series you can watch right now at home, on Netflix, Max, and others.
It can be nice to have a TV show in your rotation that you know isn’t ending any time soon. But sometimes, you want something with an end point in mind from its creators. Freed from the pressures of renewal and cancellation, limited series can give us some of the best storytelling the medium of television has to offer.
That’s been on full display recently, with a strong run of limited series in 2024 alone. The best TV of the year includes multiple “one and done” shows: The Regime, Baby Reindeer, Masters of the Air, and the excellent Shōgun, one of the best American TV shows in recent memory. And more are on their way: Park Chan-wook’s The Sympathizer is running through its season on HBO, The Veil and Under the Bridge just started on FX on Hulu, and even Knuckles is getting in on limited series action.
All the strong one-season shows on offer this year had the Polygon staff wondering: What are the best limited series ever that you can watch at home right now? Anthology series and shows that got cancelled after a season don’t count — we’re looking only at shows that were planned as one-and-done entities.Band of Brothers
Where to watch: Max and Netflix
A lot has changed about prestige TV in the 23 years since Band of Brothers first premiered on HBO. But no matter what trends have come and gone since then, one thing that hasn’t changed is the absolute excellence of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ World War II series.
Band of Brothers follows a regiment of soldiers, nicknamed Easy Company, from paratrooper training through their experiences in the Second World War’s European theater. The show’s depiction of war is downright hellish: a muddy, bloody, and terrifying portrait of conflict that manages to capture both the moment-to-moment imperative of survival, and the often-futile feeling of individual gun fights and victories.
All this is given incredible life by the series’ impressive filmmaking as well as its parade of recognizable faces and future movie stars. Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston, Michael Fassbender, David Schwimmer, Tom Hardy, Simon Pegg, Colin Hanks, Dominic Cooper, James McAvoy, and more all show up at one point or another.
Each episode starts with a real-life interview from a member of Easy Company, on which the characters and events of the series are based. It’s a jarring choice to this day, but one that helps underscore the true-to-life horrors of the show and serves both creatively and practically as a profound memorial to the soldiers themselves. The interviews also give the series a stately feel that both makes it feel right at home with prestige TV, and oddly out-of-step and unique from everything that’s come before or after. —Austen GoslinDevs
Where to watch: Hulu
Can a limited series survive on vibes alone? Devs supposes that perhaps, with enough sumptuous techno-religious set design and otherworldly electro-drones, you can. Luckily, the rest of Alex Garland’s 8-episode silicon valley espionage thriller also delivers. Nick Offerman effortlessly puts his dry, understated delivery to sinister effect as mysterious tech CEO Forest, a man who talks like a guru but also orders a murder the second his quantum machine is threatened. And what a machine it is: the cubic, shimmering gold set is nearly as iconic as the former Parks and Rec star.
What exactly this machine does is at the heart of the show’s mystery, as is the aforementioned murder Sonoya Mizuno’s Lily is trying to solve. Her raw, heart-wrenching performance takes many twists and turns, keeping the whole thing emotionally grounded. Though the show luxuriates in poetry readings and languid establishing shots, it’s still more than just cerebrally intense viewing thanks in particular to Zach Grenier’s menacing turn as Forest’s head of security Kenton. Few shows can so effortlessly shift from gripping hand to hand combat to ruminations on the nature of free will and back again. —Clayton AshleyI, Claudius
Where to watch: Acorn TV, free on Hoopla with a library card, digital purchase on Amazon/Apple
There are several reasons you should watch I, Claudius, the classic 1976 BBC miniseries, not least of which is: Have you ever wanted to see Patrick Stewart in the most bizarre Roman legionnaire wig you’ve ever seen?
Thankfully, I, Claudius’ legacy is greater than anything that curly hair could invoke in us.
