The 10 best limited series on Max, ranked
It’s a vicious cycle: You find a series you love, only to be left waiting a year for the next season to come out. How are you supposed to remember a show that happened last year when you can’t even remember what you had for breakfast? Try one of these limited series instead.
10. Station Eleven
Station Eleven does the end of the world story different. It’s not about people racing to find a cure for an undead plague or fight off roving bands of marauders. It’s about a group of people attempting to survive in a post-apocalyptic world … by doing theatre. Switching between pre and post disaster times, Station Eleven is a tender and introspective tale about humanity’s bare essentials: our relationships and our need for artistic expression. But don’t worry, this series still has plenty of end of the world thrills too. The survivors run into a guy who thinks he’s the literal messiah, and is ushering people into his cult at gunpoint. Some people have no taste.
9. We Own This City
We Own This City is The Wire but in real life. It centers around one of the most corrupt police tasks forces ever created: the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force. Remember, the guys who planted guns and drugs on Baltimore’s most vulnerable citizens in order to frame them for crimes they didn’t commit? The guys who shook down poor people for money and then pocketed it? The guys who filed reams and reams of false paperwork, lied to investigators, and logged hours of “overtime” they never actually worked? We Own This City is a deep dive into the systemic corruption that plagues a city whose government and police force have failed it time and time again.
8. Mare of Easttown
Detective Mare Sheehan is a hard boiled investigator in a small Pennsylvania town, and a grisly new case just fell into her lap. A young mother is found dead, and Mare must search for answers about the brutal murder, all the while trying to keep her own life from disintegrating. If you’re a fan of gritty crime thrillers with plenty of messy human drama a la True Detective, this limited series is unmissable.
7. Band of Brothers
Building off the foundations laid by Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers recounts the story of Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry and their experiences during major World War II battles like Normandy and the brutal Battle of the Bulge. It’s a story of the real life struggles that soldiers and civilians experienced during the Second World War, and no, it doesn’t pull any punches. Charming, thought-provoking, and deeply disturbing, Band of Brothers is a must watch for any history fan.
6. From Earth to the Moon
From Earth to the Moon is a documentary about that one time when the people of Earth went to, spoiler alert, the moon! It’s a comprehensive look at the Apollo space program, and details the painstaking efforts that engineers, scientists, and astronauts took to ensure that the program ended with success. From the first moon landing to the near-disaster of Apollo 13, From Earth to the Moon has all the space bases covered. Stanley Kubrick was not involved.
5. Watchmen
Alan Moore’s superhero opus Watchmen is hailed by many as the greatest graphic novel ever penned. Penciled. Whatever. Rather than try to recreate lightning in a bottle and retell the OG tale, HBO’s Watchmen picks up where the novel left off. A new generation of masked crime fighters has arisen. Their target? White supremacists. Made in 2019 in response to the rising wave of far-right rhetoric in the American political discourse, this is series is just as necessary now as it was then.
4. The Night Of
The Night Of is the story of Nasir “Naz” Khan, a college student who becomes the prime suspect of a young woman’s murder. He doesn’t remember what happened the night of her death – except for doing a lot of drugs with her – and he also doesn’t remember not killing her. It’s a harrowing series about how the justice system has a way of turning even the innocent and naive into hardened criminals by treating them as such regardless of innocence or guilt.
3. I May Destroy You
I May Destroy You was written by Michaela Coel, who also plays the lead role. The series centers around a young writer named Arabella whose life is upended after she is raped in a nightclub. Reeling from her experience, Arabella is forced to reevaluate everything. Her career, her friends, and her relationship with intimacy. This show is a hard watch, and it doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the subject matter. Poignant, devastating, and surprisingly funny, I May Destroy You is a must watch.
2. Angels In America
An adaptation of Tony Kushner’s eight hour Pultizer Prize winning megaplay, Angels In America is a sweeping epic covering everything from the AIDS crisis, Reaganism, and the nature of the divine. After an interior designer named Prior Walter is diagnosed with AIDS, his entire life falls into disarray. His health is declining rapidly, his boyfriend leaves him for a married Mormon man, and an angel from Heaven just broke through the roof of his apartment and told him that he is a prophet. That’s a lot to deal with at once. Subtitled by the author himself as a Gay Fantasia On National Themes, Angels In America is one of the most important works of queer art ever made.
1. Chernobyl
Chernobyl is a harrowing account of the real-life nuclear disaster that nearly blanketed all of Europe with radiation. In 1986 the unthinkable happened, a Soviet nuclear reactor in Ukraine exploded, spilling out tons of contaminants into the surrounding area and leaving thousands dead and poisoned. The five episode series gets into the nitty gritty of the event – the freak circumstances that led to the explosion, the human lives that lost attempting to deal with it, and the Soviet government’s attempt to cover up what would become known as the worst nuclear disaster in human history.
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