Since the dawn of television’s golden era in the late ’90s and early 2000s, HBO has been intrinsically affiliated with the very fabric of small-screen brilliance, with such series as The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and Succession compelling viewers year after year and season after season. However, it is easy to forget that some of the premium network’s best productions didn’t necessarily need (or get) expansive runs to present their stories.
Ranging from universally acclaimed miniseries that stand among the greatest productions in the history of the medium to criminally underrated titles that were canceled years before their due, each of these TV shows exhibits HBO’s trademark excellence with no more than 20 episodes. Spanning from war zone dramas to post-apocalyptic dystopias, period crime thrillers, and even to the awkwardness and charm of real-world romance, these 10 series highlight both the brilliance and the vastness of HBO.
10
‘Raised by Wolves’ (2020–2022)
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Image via HBO Max</figure>
Abruptly canceled following its second season — falling victim to the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc — Raised by Wolves never got the chance to truly thrive the way many wished it would, but the series still holds an enthralling thematic might within its high-concept sci-fi premise. After Earth is decimated by war, two androids are tasked with raising humanity’s children on a foreign planet. They find their assignment growing increasingly complex and treacherous when the colony begins to fray due to religious differences.
Buoyed by the creative involvement of Ridley Scott as both executive producer and occasional director, the series delivers an arresting mixture of bold world-building, unsettling atmospheric minimalism, and thought-provoking storytelling. It aired just 18 episodes across its two-season tenure, and yet it has only grown in relevance since it was axed in 2022 courtesy of its attention to A.I.’s limited view of humanity and the at-time destructive role religion plays in society.
9
‘Perry Mason’ (2020–2023)
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Image via HBO</figure>
Ever since beginning as a crime novel series penned by Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason has been a cult figure of the genre, appearing in radio shows and television films, and, most notably, a CBS series that ran for nine seasons through the ’50s and ’60s. Unfortunately, HBO’s bold re-imaging of said series didn’t fare quite so well, lasting just two seasons and a total of 16 episodes before being canceled by the network in 2023.
Spearheaded by Matthew Rhys’ typically sublime lead performance, it follows the origin story of the famous criminal defense attorney, Perry Mason, focusing on his humble beginnings as a low-fee private eye scouring 1930s L.A. while struggling to overcome trauma tied to his service in WWI and a recent divorce. While Season 1 occasionally feels as though it is being torn between different ideas, Season 2 finds more clarity in its storytelling, which in turn allows for the detail of the period production and the power of the performances to thrive.
8
‘The Night Of’ (2016)
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A major candidate for being the single most underrated miniseries HBO has ever produced, The Night Of evolves with magnetic precision over the course of its eight-episode run to encompass everything from murder mystery angst to courtroom suspense and prison drama. It is chiefly a scorching deconstruction of the American justice system, revolving around the trial of Nasir (Riz Ahmed), who stands accused of murdering a woman he was partying with after waking up to find her stabbed to death.
From the claustrophobic intensity of its first episode, The Night Of absorbs viewers as a relentless yet agonizingly patient descent into the darker side of the legal system, from the overwhelming power of the police department to the terrifying environment in Rikers Island. Powered by great performances from Ahmed and John Turturro, an astonishing script, and viscerally immersive direction, The Night Of endures as one of HBO’s finest ever crime productions.
7
‘Looking’ (2014–2016)
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Image via HBO</figure>
It feels as though romantic-dramedy entertainment is having a niche moment in pop culture, with the genre’s ability to switch between awkward and confronting home truths and outrageous, resonant hilarity giving it a distinct appeal. It is a shame, then, that Looking either pre-dated this trend, or simply wasn’t picked up by it, with the grounded HBO production following video game designer Patrick (Jonathan Groff) as he navigates life and the gay dating scene with his two friends in San Francisco.
The series received high praise for its performances and its intimate mumblecore approach, both of which imbue it with a sense of unvarnished realism that is honest, nuanced, and clever enough to find the imperfect beauty in life’s ugly moments. While it does celebrate gay love, it isn’t about making a fantastical and contrived illustration of it. Instead, characters struggle with rent, job opportunities, dating mishaps, and social pressures while trying to find their own place in the world, making it a tenderly human drama, and one that deserved to go beyond its two-season, 18-episode tenure.
6
‘Tokyo Vice’ (2022–2024)
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Image via HBO Max</figure>
Running as a biographical descent into an American reporter’s time in Japanese newsrooms in the late 1990s, Tokyo Vice is a fascinating mixture of neo-noir crime, journalism drama, and culture-clash intrigue that delivered two compelling seasons before being canceled in 2024. Ansel Elgort stars as Jake Adelstein, an investigative journalist who relocates from Missouri to Tokyo, where he is taken in by Hiroto Katagiri (Kan Watanabe), a veteran of the newspaper’s organized crime squad. From there, Adelstein begins a disturbing descent into the city’s neon-lit underbelly.
Filmed entirely on location in Tokyo, the series holds a certain authenticity that is quite palpable, especially with executive producer and pilot episode director Michael Mann establishing a simmering, slow-burn mood that revels in looming shadows and reflective glass. Both seasons received widespread praise for their setting, storylines, aesthetic, and characters, and the fact that Season 2 was a strong expansion on what the series achieved in Season 1 makes it all the more unfortunate that HBO did cancel it prematurely.
- He reads ground the way other people read a room.
- He will stand between you and the worst of it without discussing it.
- He says almost nothing, and never the wrong thing.
- The 1982 original came from David Morrell’s 1972 novel, which ends very differently.
- Stallone cut most of his own dialogue in the edit to make the character nearly silent.
- Five films across thirty-seven years, from 1982 to the fifth in 2019.
- He is better in the room than he is on paper, and he is excellent on paper.
- He will not explain the plan, and the plan will work.
- He treats charm as a tool, and it is a remarkably effective one.
- Eon has made twenty-five Bond films since Dr. No in 1962, across six actors.
- Denis Villeneuve is directing the next one for Amazon MGM, which took creative control in
2025. - The search for the new 007 was still running through 2026, with screen tests under way.
- He has read the thing nobody else thought to read.
- He will risk the whole plan for the artifact, and be right about half the time.
- He improvises better than most people prepare.
- The Cairo swordsman scene was improvised on the day because Harrison Ford had dysentery.
- Raiders was filmed in about 73 days, which was fast even in 1981.
- Dial of Destiny in 2023 was Ford’s fifth and last outing, at the age of eighty.
- He turns whatever is in the room to his advantage.
- He is funniest when things are at their worst.
- He has never once agreed that it is over.
- Die Hard came from Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever, a sequel to a book
filmed in 1968. - Nakatomi Plaza is Fox Plaza, which was the studio’s own headquarters at the time.
- Bruce Willis was a television comedy actor then, and a long way down the casting list.
- He takes the risk himself rather than assigning it.
- He is three moves ahead and will not say which three.
- He treats your survival as the actual objective.
- Cruise hung off the side of an Airbus A400M at a thousand feet for the opening of Rogue
Nation. - The HALO jump in Fallout took 106 takes, filmed at dusk for the light.
- The Final Reckoning in 2025 was the eighth film, and was sold as the last.
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‘Generation Kill’ (2007)
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Image via HBO</figure>
A stunning depiction of modern warfare, Generation Kill finds its dramatic pull in the realism of bureaucracy and miscommunication in combat. Based on Evan Wright‘s non-fiction book of the same name, it unfolds as an embedded reporter with Rolling Stone joins the US Marine Corps’ 1st Reconnaissance Battalion on the eve of the Invasion of Iraq in 2003. Handled by the creative team behind The Wire, the war miniseries flaunts no patriotic agenda as it immerses viewers in the disorganized chaos of the battlefield.
Prying beneath the genre’s surface-level action intrigue, Generation Kill revels in the long-winded boredom that plagues soldiers between assignments. The battalion’s cynical humor and crude antics are as much an escape from inactivity as they are a coping mechanism for the horrors they witness. Featuring an impressive ensemble cast, incisive thematic ideas, and a compelling sense of ground-level intimacy, Generation Kill delivers seven episodes of eye-opening war drama that eschews Hollywood sensationalism in favor of unvarnished, unflattering reality.
4
‘Station Eleven’ (2021)
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Yet another underrated masterpiece from HBO, Station Eleven is perhaps a victim of unfortunate timing more so than anything else. The post-apocalyptic miniseries is a hauntingly beautiful meditation on artistic enrichment, humanity’s values, and the power of community, but its setting—the ruins of civilization 20 years after a devastating flu virus decimates mankind—wasn’t what many viewers were looking for at the height of pandemic anxieties in 2021. The shame is that Station Eleven is one of the most compelling and deftly brilliant miniseries of all time.
Based on Emily St. John Mandel‘s novel of the same name, it revolves around a group of traveling actors who venture between settlements to perform Shakespeare for the survivors. Between flashbacks to the outbreak and some confronting encounters with a violent cult, Station Eleven is firmly grounded in the sense of optimism and good faith that Kirsten (Mackenzie Davis) and her troupe both present to the surviving world and receive in kind from people wanting to believe in goodness. Complimented by a procession of layered performances, rich character-focused drama, and eerily gorgeous production design, Station Eleven presents 10 episodes of post-apocalyptic intrigue in a manner that it has never been seen before.
3
‘We Own This City’ (2022)
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Given its style, themes, and the creative duo of David Simon and George Pelecanos, We Own This City is easy to view as a spiritual sequel to The Wire, one that combines the classic HBO crime series’ unflinching rawness with a terrible true story of police corruption and institutional rot. Jon Bernthal is exceptional as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, the golden boy of the Boston Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force whose leadership is a rotten mixture of swaggering charisma, moral corrosion, and predatory enabling of his colleagues’ unlawful actions.
The six-part series is mercilessly complex, with the near 20-year span of Jenkins’ career being explored in non-linear flashbacks in the form of an FBI investigation into the GTTF’s illegal conduct. The decision to frame the story in such a way is ingenious, allowing not only for seamless transitions between different chapters of Jenkins’ career, but for an all-encompassing examination of police corruption, the cultural reasons why it thrives, and the helplessness of people who want to combat it being stranded in inefficient and failed bureaucratic systems. Furthermore, it explores how the ill-fated “War on Drugs” impacted police work and political pressures, analyses how corrupt cops can be brought to justice, and yet it covers every major character with a sense of humanity, refusing to delve into heroes and villains.
2
‘Chernobyl’ (2019)
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Not only the greatest miniseries of recent years, Chernobyl also stands tall among HBO’s finest achievements of all time. With just five episodes, the faultless limited series explores the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster of 1986, ranging from the trauma endured by the unsuspected first responders to the sacrificial heroics of many who did their part to contain the radioactive fallout, the enormity of the operation required to ensure the incident didn’t grow even more catastrophic, and the corruption and ineptitude of the Soviet leaders who tried to conceal the truth from the world.
The miniseries is laced with a visceral, horror-like tension that combines the awful historical event with an unrelenting sense of stomach-churning dread. Both the precision and the astonishing scope of the screenwriting play a hand in that, but so do the mesmerizing period production design, the thematic emphasis on truth and accountability, and the incredible ensemble cast led by Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, and Emily Watson. The end result is an unblemished masterpiece of television drama, a harrowing and eye-opening examination of a horrendous tragedy and the leadership that brought it to fruition, and a truly iconic triumph from HBO.
1
‘Band of Brothers’ (2001)
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2026 marks the 25th anniversary of Band of Brothers‘ premiere on the small screen, and even with how drastically television as an entertainment medium has changed in that time, the 10-part war drama has endured as a timeless masterpiece. Created by Hollywood titans Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, it follows “Easy” Company through their campaign in WWII, beginning with their training regimen and their drop into Normandy, covering the many battlefields they fought on the front lines, and ending with their uneasy stay in Austria as the war comes to a close.
Imposing with the sheer scale and might of its production, Band of Brothers excels at realizing each of the battles it depicts with gravitas, instilling a sense of terrible awe in viewers as it combines the horrific brutality of combat with the deeply humane, character-driven emotions of the soldiers’ journey. It is often heartbreaking, oddly humorous, and always harrowing, especially with the real Easy Company veterans giving their own testimonies about their experiences in the war. It delivers 10 outstanding episodes of war drama, and it remains one of the finest feats in the history of television.
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