10 Greatest HBO Miniseries of the 2010s, Ranked

It isn’t TV, It is HBO. Ever since that slogan was first publicized nearly 30 years in the past, HBO has repeatedly remained on the forefront of tv programming. Their comedy and drama collection have revolutionized tv as a medium, with The Sopranos and Game of Thrones (to call solely a pair) drastically altering what audiences anticipated from their weekly tv reveals. In a short time, the tag of “HBO show” relayed an expectation of quality.

Nevertheless, whereas HBO’s long-running choices acquired many of the cultural fanfare, a few of its most daring, revolutionary, and perceptive storytelling was occurring amongst its miniseries roster. A miniseries, by definition, is restricted to 1 season, and the idea of telling a compact and finite story inside 4 to 10 episodes was a feat the community shortly mastered. The restricted runtime additionally proved enticing to A-list film expertise, who did not must decide to years of an annual tv present. The 2010s have been a golden time for the format on HBO, with the community producing the last decade’s greatest miniseries. These are the very best HBO miniseries of the 2010s, near-flawless representatives of the golden age of TV. They are going to be ranked by how memorable they’re, how impactful they have been on the time of their launch, and, in fact, their high quality as an entire.

10 ‘Years and Years’ (2019)

Created by Russell T Davies

Within the again half of the 2010s, many items of media sought to have interaction with modern tradition by telling tales about populism, the rise of fascism, and demagogue leaders. Russell T Davies‘ Years and Years was one such present. Oscar-winner Emma Thompson performs Vivienne Rook, an outspoken British celeb businesswoman who parlays a controversial tv second right into a springboard for a political profession stuffed with populism and controversy.

Nevertheless, Years and Years excels the place the numerous different reveals attempting to talk to the occasions failed by focusing not on the demagogue politician however as an alternative on the Manchester-based Lyons household. Years and Years examines how the household, each as an entire and individually, navigates the various unsettling modifications within the 15 years after Vivienne’s controversial second. By selecting to concentrate on the multi-layered household, Russell T Davies empathetically portrays the resilience of on a regular basis folks and the familial bonds that endure whereas utilizing the ever-worsening political, financial, and technological backdrops to literalize how the rise of those unsavory sects may result in society’s collapse.

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9 ‘Mosaic’ (2018)

Created by Steven Soderbergh, Casey Silver and Ed Solomon

Few filmmakers are as open to technological developments and new strategies of manufacturing and supply as Steven Soderbergh, to some thrilling outcomes. With Mosaic, the constantly innovative filmmaker discovered a brand new option to shock audiences. In true Soderbergh out-of-the-box-thinking, Mosaic, a homicide thriller investigating the loss of life of Sharon Stone‘s Olivia Lake, was first launched as a cellular app months earlier than its debut on HBO. The app allowed audiences the chance to comply with the story from both of the suspects’ factors of view, though the endpoint remained fixed.

Specializing in the story, although, the miniseries is anchored by reliably glorious route from the most effective filmmakers working at the moment. Ed Solomon‘s teleplay excels by totally realizing all of the aspect characters and never simply the potential killers. This selection, together with Steven Soderbergh’s route, elevated Mosaic from one other run-of-the-mill homicide thriller to an intricately plotted and intentionally paced story that all the time remembers that everyone is the hero of their story. With glorious performances from Sharon Stone, Joel Hurley, and Eric Neill, Mosaic proved to be greater than only a gimmick.

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8 ‘Our Boys’ (2019)

Created by Hagai Levi, Joseph Cedar and Tawfik Abu-Wael

On thirtieth June 2014, the useless our bodies of three Israeli youngsters have been discovered, allegedly killed by members of Hamas. Two days later, on 2nd July 2014, a Palestinian teenager was discovered burned to loss of life, apparently a retaliatory act. These are the tragic occasions that HBO’s Our Boys delicately and sensitively recreates and dramatizes. To inform any story revolving across the Israel-Palestine battle would contain an excessive amount of trepidation and talent, a lot much less a collection of murders that occurred solely 5 years prior. Fortunately, talent is certainly what all 10 episodes of Our Boys showcase.

Our Boys
reveals nice care to characters on each side of the decades-long battle and, as an alternative of putting blame, opts to spotlight the continual violent cycle and the way it inevitably consumes even probably the most harmless.

Co-created by Israeli filmmakers Hagai Levy and Joseph Cedar and Palestinian filmmaker Tawfik Abu-Wael, Our Boys, which might be condemned by each the Israeli Prime Minister and his son, fastidiously and sympathetically approached the fabric, specializing in the households as they navigated their grief and need for justice. Our Boys reveals nice care to characters on each side of the decades-long battle and, as an alternative of putting blame, opts to spotlight the continual violent cycle and the way it inevitably consumes even probably the most harmless.

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7 ‘Present Me A Hero’ (2015)

Created by David Simon and William F. Zorzi

Persevering with his prolific collaboration with HBO, David Simon set his sights on adapting Lisa Belkin‘s nonfiction guide Present Me a Hero with frequent The Wire collaborator William F. Zorzi. After delivering arguably one of history’s greatest shows in The Wire, the duo utilized their trademark journalistic strategy to the story of Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac). In Present Me a Hero , Wasicko’s rise to the mayor of Yonkers on the age of 28 coincides with an unpopular federal order demanding that the New York city present reasonably priced housing to its residents, no matter race.

What adopted was a collection of protests towards the order, starting from the conventional residents of Yonkers to the councilors who constantly refused to uphold any desegregation legal guidelines. David Simon, William F. Zorzi, and the present’s director, Paul Haggis, expertly visualize the scope of the battle and symbolize the non-public stakes inherent to it. One might be forgiven for forgetting that the occasions of Present Me a Hero occurred in 1987 as a result of the themes the six-episode season handled stay current to today. Via critiques of political forms and insidious bigotry amongst People, Present Me a Hero engaged with themes which have recurred in American life for a number of a long time. Nevertheless, positively, the collection posits that no matter the minority however loud detractors, change will all the time come, and we’re all the higher for it.

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6 ‘Sharp Objects’ (2018)

Created by Marti Noxon

“Do not inform Mama.” These have been the surprising phrases that punctuated HBO’s Sharp Objects and left audiences in awe and continually re-evaluating the eight hours of TV they’d been watching. Following earlier characteristic movie diversifications of Gone Girl and Darkish Locations, Marti Noxon selected to adapt Gillian Flynn‘s debut novel, Sharp Objects, as an HBO miniseries. The writer would additionally be part of the manufacturing and writing groups, with the late, nice Jean-Marc Vallée directing all eight episodes.

Amy Adams is spectacular as an emotionally susceptible reporter making an attempt to bury her previous trauma who returns residence to research the murders of two younger women. Her return residence, coupled with the viciousness of the murders, forces her to confront each her relationship along with her mom (Patricia Clarkson) and her bigger, buried trauma. The overarching thriller is terrifically unspooled by Jean-Marc Vallée with the identical deftness he utilized in his earlier HBO outing, the primary season of Big Little Lies. Nevertheless, Sharp Objects‘ biggest achievement is in the way it confidently examines the broken psyche of Amy Adams’ Camille whereas revealing what despatched her to the depths of despair and why her thoughts can by no means depart the previous regardless of her many bodily makes an attempt to take action.

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5 ‘Mildred Pierce’ (2011)

Created by Todd Haynes

For the primary of her rising list of collaborations with HBO, Kate Winslet teamed up with Todd Haynes to play the eponymous character in his adaptation of James M. Cain‘s 1941 novel. Set in the course of the Nice Melancholy, Mildred Pierce follows a latest divorcée juggling her just lately opened restaurant, a brand new love life, and attempting to please her more and more useless and demanding daughter (Evan Rachel Wooden). Each body of Mildred Pierce bursts with beautiful manufacturing design and an apparent consideration to element.

Versus the Oscar-winning 1945 movie adaptation that featured Joan Crawford in a movie noir, Todd Haynes’ adaptation takes its time to completely understand its world and lean into the emotionality of the single-mother-new lover-spoilt-child dynamic. Anchored by Emmy-winning performances from Kate Winslet and Man Pearce, Mildred Pierce sensitively depicts the industriousness of a lady attempting to start out over and the way far she is going to go within the face of the extraordinary austerity of the Nice Melancholy whereas intent on fixing previous and beginning new, vital relationships.

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4 ‘Olive Kitteridge’ (2014)

Created by Jane Anderson

Olive Kitteridge, starring Emmy-winning performances from Frances McDormand, Richard Jenkins and Invoice Murray, HBO’s must-watch miniseries adaptation of Elizabeth Strout’s 2008 novel, is likely one of the most lauded and impressively acted seasons of tv it has ever produced. Jane Anderson adapts the novel into 4 semi-standalone installments that paint a deeply advanced, depressed, misanthropic and ultimately sympathetic portrait of Frances McDormand’s titular character.

In selecting to inform the story in these 4 vignettes, Jane Anderson and director Lisa Cholodenko satisfiably concentrate on Olive’s worldview at that individual time whereas additionally partaking in delicate conversations with the variations of Olive which have come earlier than within the present or which might be but to reach. Olive’s emotional arc is depicted by way of her relationship along with her husband and different essential figures. Due to Frances McDormand’s reliably glorious work, audiences can witness Olive’s slowly evolving worldview, her altering attitudes to the folks in her life and the way sure traumas are both softened or calcified by way of time.

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3 ‘The Night time Of’ (2016)

Created by Richard Value and Steve Zaillian

Richard Value, making his return to HBO after engaged on The Wire, and Steve Zaillian, making his tv debut, mixed their appreciable powers to adapt the primary season of the BBC’s Legal Justice for HBO. The eight-episode miniseries follows Riz Ahmed‘s Naz, who wakes as much as discover the girl he met solely hours earlier than brutally stabbed to loss of life. Via the valiant however out-of-his-depth efforts of his lawyer (John Turturro), the present uncovers what occurred that night time whereas having bigger discussions concerning the function of incarceration in our society.

The Night Of is a thought-provoking cocktail of race, intercourse, medicine, faith and the jail industrial advanced, all set inside the dependable constructions of each a police procedural and a courtroom drama. By setting the story in these tried and examined TV tropes, the present interrogated American society’s relationship with its justice system, the irrevocable harm that even a short keep at a jail may have, the way in which the media sensationalizes such tales, and the way it influences the court docket of public opinion. The most important praise one will pay to the present is that, whereas deftly dealing with such heavy materials, The Night Of always remains entertaining and ultimately unfolds a very pleasant thriller.

2 ‘Watchmen’ (2019)

Created by Damon Lindelof

So incisive is the political and societal commentary in Damon Lindelof‘s Watchmen that it might be troublesome to imagine that it got here out earlier than the nation was marred with political and racial unrest in 2020. Opting towards a direct adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons‘s seminal graphic novel, Damon Lindelof and his crew set the HBO miniseries as a sequel 34 years after the novel’s occasions. This selection proved to be a artistic masterstroke because it enabled them to make use of the central themes of the graphic novel to have interaction with modern America and converse to the nation’s present (and upcoming) frustrations.

Led by Emmy-winning performances by Regina King and Yahya Abdul-Matten II, Watchmen deftly used its supply materials to deal with discussions on race, institutionalized racism, identification, energy, legacy, and far more. Amongst different issues, the present grappled with the lengthy shadow of the 1921 Tulsa Race Bloodbath, rising mistrust of the police and politicians and how America at the moment chooses to neglect crimes towards its minorities. Future Oscar winner Wire Jefferson (American Fiction) would win an Emmy for co-writing Watchmen’s excellent sixth episode, which examined a Black vigilante’s crime-fighting efforts in 1938.

1 ‘Chernobyl’ (2019)

Created by Craig Mazin

On the face of it, a dramatization of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe and its ensuing cleanup shouldn’t make for exhilarating TV. Nonetheless, HBO’s five-episode miniseries shortly grew to become appointment viewing. Chernobyl was created by Craig Mazin, who, 4 years later, would create the acclaimed The Last of Us for the community. The collection, led by Emmy-nominated performances from Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson, additionally options Barry Keoghan and Jessie Buckley in emotional, supporting performances.

Like Watchmen, Chernobyl is in simultaneous dialog with the previous, current and, extremely presciently, the long run. Craig Mazin highlighted the institutional and governmental failures that may result in devastating disasters. The collection additionally used the political panorama of the Soviet Union on the time to interrogate how highly effective males have been extra prepared to obfuscate and deflect as an alternative of proudly owning as much as their errors, even on the threat of misplaced lives. It examined how a nationwide tragedy may be made worse by way of private hubris, deceit, incompetence, and misplaced nationwide/political pleasure. Wanting again, the truth that Chernobyl was made earlier than the Coronavirus outbreak and so completely engages with the eventual political and societal response solely provides to its legacy because the best HBO miniseries of the 2010s.

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NEXT: The 10 Best Miniseries of the Last 5 Years, Ranked