Great short series: ten shows, eight episodes or fewer

The modern streaming trap is the ten-episode season that needed six. The limited series is the antidote: a story with a planned end, a cast that goes home when it is done, and a runway short enough that nothing can afford to drag. These ten are the best arguments for the form - every one is eight episodes or fewer, and every one sticks the landing.

The ten

Chernobyl (HBO/Sky, 2019) - 5 episodes

The reactor explodes in episode one; the series is about what a system does when the truth is radioactive. Five of the most concentrated hours ever televised.

The Queen's Gambit (Netflix, 2020) - 7 episodes

An orphan chess prodigy battles the grandmasters, the pills and herself. Made chess appointment viewing for a hundred million people - and the tournaments play like heist set pieces.

Sharp Objects (HBO, 2018) - 7 episodes

A reporter returns to her small hometown to cover a child's murder, and the house she grew up in is the second crime scene. A slow poison of a show with a finale that recolours everything.

Big Little Lies (HBO, 2017) - season 1, 7 episodes

Three mothers, one glamorous school, one body at the bottom of the stairs. Season one is a complete novel - the (unnecessary, optional) second season exists but owes you nothing.

Godless (Netflix, 2017) - 7 episodes

A mining town made entirely of women, an outlaw hunting his ex-mentor, and a magnificent slow build to one of television's great shootouts. The western for people who think they do not like westerns.

Unbelievable (Netflix, 2019) - 8 episodes

A young woman reports an assault and is not believed; two detectives hundreds of miles away start patterning the same attacks. Devastating, procedural, and impossible to forget. Kaitlyn Dever and Merritt Wevers give two of the decade's best performances.

The Night Of (HBO, 2016) - 8 episodes

One bad night, one murder charge, and the machine that grinds a nice kid into a case number. The best courtroom-adjacent miniseries since the form was invented.

Escape at Dannemora (Showtime, 2018) - 7 episodes

The true 2015 prison break that charmed a whole town. Benicio del Toro and Paul Dold (and Patricia Arquette, unrecognisable) turn an escape plan into a love triangle with power tools.

Generation Kill (HBO, 2008) - 7 episodes

Marines rolling into Iraq in 2003, filmed like a road trip nobody can get off. From the The Wire team; funnier and angrier than war dramas are supposed to be.

Pride and Prejudice (BBC, 1995) - 6 episodes

The blueprint adaptation: six hours, one smouldering Darcy, and the most satisfying slow burn in screen history. Proof that "limited series" was never a new idea, just a good one.

Where to go next

The movie version of this idea lives on what to watch in 90 minutes. If you are choosing for a group, films for a group settles the vote. Everything else - shelves, catalogues, verified trailers - is on the browse desk, and the boredom algorithm on what to watch when you are bored will route you in two minutes.