The best limited series you can watch right now
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.
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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.
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.
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All this is given incredible life by the series’ impressive filmmaking as well as its parade of recognizable faces and future movie stars.
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