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The best limited series of all time
Trading cliffhangers and endless renewals for narrative closure
If you've ever watched a television show that stumbles as it tries to extract season after season of material from a creative reservoir that has already been drained, you'll have a fresh appreciation for the much rarer format of the limited series. Their definitive narrative endpoints offer viewers closure, or at least a tidiness that can't always be found in long-running programs. Often adapted from celebrated novels or works of non-fiction, the best limited series can be appreciated years or even decades after they air.
'Roots' (1977)
ABC's adaptation of Alex Haley's bestselling 1976 novel was a "social phenomenon" as well as a "potentially important benchmark in U.S. race relations," said Time. The show followed Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton), who is kidnapped from present-day The Gambia by slavers in 1767, rendered to colonial Maryland and sold to the Reynolds family. The unflinching depiction of slavery, decades before the rise of "prestige television," was unusual for its time. "Sympathetic, even beloved, white TV stars" including Lloyd Bridges "were enlisted to play unsympathetic roles," and while the show can feel "antiquated" in some ways, it is nevertheless "still fresh and shocking" decades later, said the Los Angeles Times.
'Band of Brothers' (2001)
Band of Brothers | Trailer | Warner Bros. Entertainment - YouTube
The success of 1998's wrenching "Saving Private Ryan" led to a flurry of ultra-realistic war films, as well as HBO's acclaimed limited series that traced the exploits of Easy Company from basic training through D-Day and the grinding months that finally vanquished Hitler's war machine. Ron Livingston ("Office Space") and Damian Lewis ("Homeland") led an enormous ensemble cast in a portrayal of the horrors of war. An "incredibly visceral and evocative piece of war drama," the ten-episode production highlighted the "brutal and horrific reality of armed conflict," said Den of Geek.
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HBO's harrowing five-part miniseries depicts the hours and weeks following the 1986 catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine. Perhaps its most chilling element was the portrayal of Soviet administrative inertia and delusion, as one bureaucrat after another chooses to downplay the seriousness of the crisis. Jared Harris plays Valery Legasov, a scientist sent to investigate the disaster and contain its fallout, and a large ensemble cast depicts firefighters, bureaucrats and citizens eventually forced to evacuate. While the series takes creative liberties with some events, it condemns the "Soviet system that created Chernobyl and made the explosion inevitable," said The New Yorker.
HBO Max's "Station Eleven" hit screens while the Omicron variant of Covid-19 was prolonging the worst pandemic in a century, so the timing was perhaps not ideal for a multiple-timeline flu-apocalypse drama. Based on Emily St. John Mandel's bestselling novel, the narrative follows the aimless Jeevan (Himesh Patel), who by happenstance pairs up with a child, Kirsten (Matilda Lawler), on the night of the outbreak. Years later, a grown-up Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) is part of The Traveling Symphony, a troupe of actors who perform for small communities of survivors, menaced by a mysterious terrorist called "The Prophet" (Daniel Zovatto). The "stark beauty of the ruined world the characters inhabit" propels this "moody, beautiful and moving" show, said Slate.
This Netflix series sheds light on the frequently humiliating day-to-day challenges of hardscrabble poverty in America. Adapted from Stephanie Land's memoir, the show stars Margaret Qualley as Alex, a stay-at-home mom who flees her abusive boyfriend Sean (Nick Robinson) with her toddler Maddy (Rylea Nevaeh Whittet) and takes a job as a maid to make ends meet. She must navigate the harsh realities of indigence while simultaneously undergoing the agonizing process of extricating herself from Sean. The series demonstrates that "being poor is incredibly stressful," but also "how hard it is to get help and to build upon the help one has already received," said Vulture.
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David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics." He's a frequent contributor to Newsweek and Slate, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation, among others.
