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If you need a TV show that is short and sweet, these three TV shows are 10 out of 10 and only have five or fewer episodes. A show doesn’t need to go on forever to be considered one of the greatest of all time. If that were true, why would miniseries consistently be some of the most critically acclaimed series ever?
In fact, with no data to prove it, I would theorize that there is a direct correlation between the number of episodes and Rotten Tomatoes score. As episodes go down, scores go up. It makes sense, doesn’t it? One of the critical mistakes you hear about shows and movies is that they drag. With fewer episodes, there’s less room to drag.
[Miniseries often feel like the perfect …
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If you need a TV show that is short and sweet, these three TV shows are 10 out of 10 and only have five or fewer episodes. A show doesn’t need to go on forever to be considered one of the greatest of all time. If that were true, why would miniseries consistently be some of the most critically acclaimed series ever?
In fact, with no data to prove it, I would theorize that there is a direct correlation between the number of episodes and Rotten Tomatoes score. As episodes go down, scores go up. It makes sense, doesn’t it? One of the critical mistakes you hear about shows and movies is that they drag. With fewer episodes, there’s less room to drag.
Miniseries often feel like the perfect length. They allow time for the story to breathe across multiple episodes, but they don’t take so long that you begin to lose a sense of the story. If my theory about episodes and acclaim holds true, then these three series with fewer than five episodes are great data points.
YuYu Hakusho (2023)
5 Episodes
YuYu Hakusho is the live-action adaptation of the 1990-1994 manga series of the same name, which also received an anime adaptation in 1992. The action fantasy adventure stars Takumi Kitamura as Yusuke Urameshi, a delinquent junior high school student who spends his free time getting into fights with everyone and anyone.
After Yusuke dies in a car accident while saving a child, he’s resurrected and becomes an investigator of the supernatural. Yusuke ends up using his formidable martial arts knowledge to save the living from encroaching demonic entities. It’s a condensed version of the manga, but it makes sense for the live-action format.
YuYu Hakusho is able to recreate the incredible action sequences from the manga in a live-action format that manages to keep all the momentum and choreography of the manga. The series only takes some of the plot points of the manga, which may make readers balk, but allows the show to feel light and agile, much like its main character.
When They See Us (2019)
4 Episodes
When They See Us is a 2019 crime drama based on the events of the 1989 Central Park jogger case and the “Central Park Five”, the five Black and Latino male suspects who were falsely accused of a terrible rape and assault and eventually exonerated. It’s a powerful and disturbing look at the U.S. justice system.
The series follows the five juveniles, exploring what happened in the lead-up to the events of April 19, 1989, when a young woman was raped and brutalized while jogging alone in Central Park. Five young defendants were quickly arrested and, after a very public trial, were all convicted of the charges and sent to prison.
Their convictions were vacated in 2002 when serial rapist Matias Reyes confessed to the crimes, and the Central Park Five received a settlement in 2014. When They See Us shows none of the lurid details that fans of true-crime shows may be looking for, instead holding the camera on an epic legal failure that is unbelievably shocking.
Olive Kitteridge (2014)
4 Episodes
Olive Kitteridge
Release Date 2014 - 2014-00-00
Directors Lisa Cholodenko
Richard Jenkins
Zoe Kazan
Though there are only four episodes in Olive Kitteridge, but the show covers 25 years of the title character’s life. Played by Frances McDormand, Olive Kitteridge is a misanthropic but well-meaning retired schoolteacher living in a fictional seaside town in Maine with her husband Henry (Richard Jenkins), a kind pharmacist.
The pair has a troubled son named Christopher (John Gallagher Jr.), and Olive has long lived with problems of depression, jealousy, grief, and low-frequency agitation with her friends and family. It’s a tremendously sad story, on one hand, but also an amazingly inspiring one in how it shows the fortitude of humanity.
Olive Kitteridge brilliantly shows how the disconnect between friends and family isn’t always the result of one inciting incident, but sometimes the microscopic fraying that comes from decades of angst, taking people for granted, and refusal to make amends. You’ll feel like you’ve lived multiple lives after just four episodes of this TV show.