The 100 “best” English-language, live-action limited series of all time: A weighted Borda count aggregation

It is not easy to determine what constitutes a limited series. They typically have stories that span more than one episode, as compared with a single-episode special or movie or as compared with an anthology series with a different story and characters for each episode. But the stories in a limited series are typically fully resolved within one season, as compared with a continuing series. It is more difficult to classify programs when another story starts from the prior conclusion or when some of the same characters continue in a new story.

The current Emmy awards rules define a limited series as a program with two or more episodes with a total running time of at least 150 minutes that completely resolves its story arc within the season, with no ongoing storyline or main characters in subsequent seasons. The rules add that subsequent seasons must cover completely new ground and require no knowledge of the previous seasons. Of course, that definition is somewhat arbitrary, as a long program would be a limited series if it were split over two episodes but would be a movie or special if it were shown in one episode. Also, shows that begin as limited series sometimes turn into continuing series; if the initial series was successful, the producers may find a way to continue the story or to use some of the characters in a different story.

Recent series that are difficult to classify include Fargo and The White Lotus, which have a self-contained story and mostly new characters in each season, but some common characters across multiple seasons and a shared universe across all seasons These series could be described as anthologies of limited series, where each season could be considered a separate limited series. That is the approach taken by the Emmy awards. We think they are better classified as continuing series; it may not be necessary to watch the seasons in order, but most viewers will do so.

For our list of movies, we considered four categories of rankings: aggregate rankings across many critics, aggregate rankings across many individuals, box office receipts, and awards. Information on three of those categories is available for limited series:

• 1.         Lists that aggregate ratings across many critics
• 2.         Lists that aggregate ratings across many individuals
• 3.         Lists of limited series winning the most Emmy awards

We provide here a list that aggregates information from these three categories. We limited our consideration to English-language, live-action series. We also limited our consideration to limited series with at least three episodes. As discussed above, the Emmy awards consider series with only two episodes to be limited series, but we believe those series are more similar to a movie or special that is typically watched in a single day than to a limited series that is typically watched over multiple days. As discussed above, we also limited our consideration to limited series that did not have any continuing characters or a shared universe across seasons. Therefore, we included series like Planet Earth and American Crime Story, but we excluded series like Fargo and The White Lotus.

We again use a weighted Borda count aggregation that generally ranks the top 100 shows within each category, assigning 100 points for the highest ranked limited series and 1 point for the 100th ranked limited series. As with our ranking of TV shows, we decided again to give 40% of the weight to critic ratings, 40% to audience ratings, and 20% to awards.

With respect to the first category of aggregate critic ratings, Metacritic does not provide a moderated list of the best limited series, as it does for movies. However, it does include a list of the highest rated TV shows of all time by Metascore, from which one can obtain a list of the highest rated limited series. Rotten Tomatoes does not provide a list of either the best limited series or the best TV shows. One could attempt to create a list using either the Tomatometer (for critics’ rankings) and the Popcornmeter (for individuals’ rankings), but there would be some arbitrariness in deciding the minimum number of rankings needed for each and a method for breaking ties. Therefore, we did not use data from Rotten Tomatoes.

With respect to the second category of aggregate individual ratings, IMDb also does not provide a moderated list of the highest rated limited series. However, one can create a list of the highest rated limited series using IMDB’s advanced search feature; it is important to include both TV miniseries and TV series in the search, because some limited series are incorrectly listed as the latter. It is also necessary to decide on the minimum number of individual ratings; we used a minimum of 10,000 ratings.

For awards, as with TV shows, we considered only Emmy Awards and considered the same seven categories: outstanding series, outstanding lead actor, outstanding lead actress, outstanding directing, outstanding writing, outstanding supporting actor, and outstanding supporting actress. The names for these awards have changed over time, as limited series have sometimes been considered together with continuing series, movies, specials, or anthology series. We again decided to award 5 points for outstanding series, 3 points for outstanding lead actor, lead actress, directing, or writing, and 2 points for outstanding supporting actor or supporting actress.

Following is our list of the 100 best English-language, live-action limited series of all time. A total of 199 shows were represented on our list, ranking in the top 100 limited series on at least one of the sources described above.

The oldest show on our list is The World at War, which first aired in 1973 and 1974. The newest show on our list is Bait, which aired in 2026. By decade, based on when the shows first aired, our list includes 5 shows from the 1970s, 4 from the 1980s, 5 from the 1990s, 14 from the 2000s, 37 from the 2010s, and 36 from the 2020s. That result is not surprising, as many more limited series have been released each year in recent decades.