Ranking Every HBO Miniseries From Worst To Best
HBO's limited runs from trash to triumph.
No one does the miniseries quite like HBO. With its ambition, scope, brand name awareness, and sheer amount of money, the premium cable network has time and again produced limited run series that can compete simultaneously with the very best of episodic drama and major motion pictures.
With the limited series, everything is up for grabs. You know you’re not coming back next year, so you can kill off whoever you want, focus on a niche interest that might not support series upon series of content, and throw every bit of your budget into four to 10 episodes in order to create something truly great.
Over the years, HBO miniseries have covered war, history, comedy, and religion. They’ve taken works from the stage and from books, and brought in voices from across the globe to tell amazing stories. They’ve featured incredible actors, Oscar winners, superstars, and unknowns, and aimed for the heights every time.
It’s not all been rosy, as we’ll soon see. HBO are nothing if not daring, and sometimes that leads them to fall flat on their face, but you can’t have the good without the odd bit of bad.
45. Jonah From Tonga
The nadir of the once-revered Chris Lilley came in his attempt to base a full limited series around one of his most beloved creations. On the seminal Summer Heights High, Jonah Takalua was the breakout character, a rebellious teenager of Polynesian descent played with humour and genuine empathy by Lilley.
The problem came when Jonah went from a featured player to the main attraction, and it quickly became a little queasy watching Chris Lilley cavorting in brownface make up and attempting to satirise the racism experienced by Polynesian-Australians in an incredibly clumsy manner.
Lilley’s heart was most likely in the right place and the affection he has for the character is clear, but the show was heavily criticised for failing to define its purpose, and leaning into, rather than challenging, the stereotypes of Pacific people.
A ratings disaster, this spelled the end for Lilley’s lucrative relationship with HBO; he’d go on to produce Lunatics for Netflix, which went on to replace Jonah From Tonga as the worst project of the comedian’s professional life.