Best Limited Series Worth Your Time

A reactor explodes; the lies around it spread almost as fast. Chernobyl turns the disaster and its aftermath into five harrowing episodes about institutional denial and the people forced to confront it.

Following Easy Company from training through the war in Europe, Band of Brothers earns its scale through the men inside the uniforms. The battles are staggering; the relationships make them matter.

Beth Harmon’s climb through competitive chess makes every match feel personal. The period style is immaculate, but her struggle with addiction gives this seven-episode story its bite.

When a prosecutor’s son is accused of murder, professional certainty gives way to parental doubt. Chris Evans and Michelle Dockery make the question of whom to believe painfully intimate.

A murder accusation pulls a young man into a system that starts changing him long before a verdict. The Night Of finds its suspense in the grinding machinery of the case, not just the identity of the killer.

Ava DuVernay follows the five boys wrongfully convicted in the Central Park case and the lives those convictions tore apart. It is an exacting, devastating drama that keeps the people at the center of the story.

A reporter returns home to investigate two murders and finds that her own history is impossible to keep out of the story. Amy Adams anchors a Southern Gothic mystery whose smallest details are worth watching closely.

A young woman’s report of rape is doubted while two detectives begin connecting other attacks. Unbelievable builds its power from patient investigation and the enormous consequences of choosing whether to listen.

Dopesick follows the opioid crisis from a Virginia mining community to the people selling and investigating OxyContin. Michael Keaton gives the sprawling institutional story a bruising human center.

An outlaw’s pursuit of his former protégé leads to a mining town where women are rebuilding after disaster. Godless pairs an imposing villain with a community that refuses to be easy prey.

Benedict Cumberbatch moves between savage wit and barely contained anguish as an aristocrat confronts addiction and childhood abuse. These five episodes make privilege look less like protection than another trap.