The 10 Best Limited Series of 2018
Header photo: Aidan Monaghan/AMC
In an increasingly overwhelming landscape, the limited series is a respite: When there are 495 scripted programs on TV, watching a self-contained story in six to 10 episodes feels positively manageable. It also means that this category gets tougher every year: Among the series that received votes in our poll of Paste staff and TV contributors but still missed the cut are Howards End, Maniac, and Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story. That means the 10 titles below are the cream of a highly competitive crop—and we can only expect that 2019 will bring more limited series than ever.
Here are the 10 best limited series of 2018:
10. The Little Drummer Girl
Network: AMC
In The Little Drummer Girl, Florence Pugh plays Charlie, a young actress whose predilection for storytelling and deception makes her the perfect candidate for espionage work. Director Park Chan-wook, the mastermind behind The Handmaiden, Oldboy, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, is an equally perfect candidate for putting it together: The South Korean filmmaker makes his TV debut by engaging his powerful grip on the viewer’s sympathetic eye across different perspectives, layers, and schemes, both narrative and visual. What kicks off with a bombing, investigated by spy leader Kurtz (Michael Shannon, whose gruff brilliance finds an amplifying admirer in Park), soon becomes a viney erotic thriller between Charlie and an Israeli spy named Becker (Alexander Skarsgård), who is Kurtz’s weapon of choice for pulling the new recruit into their anti-terrorist work. —Jacob Oller (Photo: Jonathan Olley/AMC/Ink Factory)
9. The Looming Tower
Network: Hulu
Disrupting the conventions of the counterterrorism drama—the narrative structure, the hard-charging hero, the constant sense of panic—The Looming Tower, based on Lawrence Wright’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, goes back to basics; it is, like the staff of bombastic FBI agent John O’Neill (Jeff Daniels), careful and competent, if sometimes hamstrung by circumstance. Most of all, though, it is pungently, horrifyingly alive to the roads not taken, the paths not pursued, to the cascade of decisions we might trace from first actions to future events. To treat 9/11 as an accident of history, an act of war absent context, has been, in politics as in popular culture, the most damaging consequence of the urge to commemorate it, the one that continues to propel us into the blunders of a collapsing empire, and The Looming Tower, imperfect though it may be, is a vital corrective. For all its relative sedateness, after all, the series’ most lacerating edge might be its existence: The conflict we’re in is so interminable it’s become the subject of a period piece. —Matt Brennan (Photo: Hulu)
8. Bodyguard
Network: Netflix
In Jed Mercurio’s exquisite actioner, there are no rooftop chases, no ticking clocks, no fisticuffs with the villain’s henchmen. Instead, the six-part series finds suspense in watchful camerawork and careful pacing, and it’s this thorough control that makes Bodyguard worthy of your next TV obsession: It refuses shortcuts, rejects ellipses, until it approaches the effect of real time. Rather than treat this as a gimmick, though, Mercurio, star Richard Madden, and directors Thomas Vincent and John Strickland use the technique to create potent echoes of protagonist David Budd’s torturous vigilance, and indeed the nation’s. A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, David receives an assignment to protect Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes), a rising political star with her eye on 10 Downing Street—and a reputation as a national security hardliner. The result is an ingenious layering of form atop function, all within the context of a taut political thriller: The series is less 24 or House of Cards than Homeland at its most momentous, stripped of all but its hero’s ability to see what others miss. —Matt Brennan (Photo: Sophie Mutevelian/World Productions/Netflix)
7. Trial & Error: Lady, Killer
Network: NBC
Oh, viewers, this is a calamity! NBC passed on its option to renew this brilliant series for a third season. Whatever are we to do? Throw ourselves down a rum hole? Sing a never-ending song? See what Mickey Moose has to say about it? The jokes came fast and the laughs were well earned as the second season introduced us to Kristin Chenoweth as defendant Lavinia Peck-Foster. Her performance was an inspired delight and a master class in what can happen when an artist holds nothing back. Sherri Shepherd nearly stole the show as Anne, the hapless secretary plagued with a litany of little-known illnesses. (My personal favorite: she joined the Marines for three years because of a disease that caused her to spontaneously raise her hand.) The show just made me giggle and savor its clever sight gags, quick turns of phrase and terrific performances. All this, plus Chenoweth sang! The second season was a self-contained joy. —Amy Amatangelo (Photo: NBC)
6. Escape at Dannemora
Network: Showtime