Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1Fleabag (2016)Fleabag (2016) 8.7/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jul 21, 2016The quickest conversion on this list. Phoebe Waller-Bridge adapted her own one-woman stage show, and it keeps the intimacy of theater: the heroine turns to the camera mid-scene and makes you her accomplice, then slowly lets you see what the jokes are covering. Episodes are short and both seasons…0
  2. 2Normal People (2020)Normal People (2020) 8.4/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 26, 2020For anyone who read Sally Rooney's novel and assumed television would flatten it. Rooney co-wrote the adaptation herself, and its 12 half-hour episodes follow Marianne and Connell from school in a small Irish town to university in Dublin with the same attention to what goes unsaid. Paul Mescal and…0
  3. 3Wolf Hall (2015)Wolf Hall (2015) 8.2/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 21, 2015Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell novels, done with the patience they deserve. Mark Rylance plays Cromwell as a man who says almost nothing and misses nothing, and Damian Lewis's Henry VIII is charming until he very suddenly is not. There are two seasons, and that is the whole story: the 2015 season…0
  4. 4RIPLEY (2024)RIPLEY (2024) 8.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 4, 2024The 2024 Netflix limited series, shot entirely in black and white, which is the first clue that this is not ordinary streaming fare. Steven Zaillian wrote and directed all eight episodes of this Patricia Highsmith adaptation, and he won the Emmy for directing it. Andrew Scott's Tom Ripley is…0
  5. 5The Queen's Gambit (2020)The Queen's Gambit (2020) 8.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired Oct 23, 2020You do not need to know how the pieces move. Adapted from Walter Tevis's 1983 novel, it follows Beth Harmon, an orphan with a gift for chess, and makes every match readable through faces, pacing and Anya Taylor-Joy's stare. It is one complete story with no second season hanging over it, which…0
  6. 6Chernobyl (2019)Chernobyl (2019) 9.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired May 6, 2019Five episodes, and the first one alone usually settles the argument. Craig Mazin's 2019 drama about the 1986 reactor disaster plays like a thriller about lying: officials deny what the instruments are telling them while scientists try to get the truth heard. Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and…0
  7. 7Olive Kitteridge (2014)Olive Kitteridge (2014) 8.2/10 on IMDbFirst aired Nov 2, 2014Built from Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning book of linked stories about a Maine schoolteacher, and told in four parts that first aired over two nights. Frances McDormand plays Olive as blunt, funny and often unkind, and won an Emmy for it; Richard Jenkins as her patient husband is just as…0
  8. 8Patrick Melrose (2018)Patrick Melrose (2018) 8.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired May 12, 2018Five episodes, one for each of Edward St Aubyn's five Melrose novels, adapted by the novelist David Nicholls. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a wealthy, witty Englishman working through addiction and a monstrous childhood, and the dialogue keeps St Aubyn's savage, elegant jokes. Each episode jumps to a…0
  9. 9Station Eleven (2021)Station Eleven (2021) 7.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired Dec 16, 2021An end-of-the-world story for people who hate end-of-the-world stories. Based on Emily St. John Mandel's novel, with Mandel co-creating it, the ten episodes follow a traveling troupe that performs Shakespeare to scattered settlements two decades after a pandemic. The show cares about art, memory…0
  10. 10Pride and Prejudice (1995)Pride and Prejudice (1995) 8.8/10 on IMDbFirst aired Sep 24, 1995The 1995 BBC version, six episodes long, which is exactly enough room for Jane Austen's novel. Andrew Davies kept the wit and the slow-burning misunderstandings intact, and Jennifer Ehle's Elizabeth is sharp and amused rather than merely spirited. Colin Firth's Darcy made him a star, but the real…0