Ranking Every HBO Miniseries From Worst To Best

37. Mosaic

I May Destroy You
HBO

As a director, Steven Soderbergh has always been about pushing the envelope of format. His first film kickstarted an inde cinema revolution, and he’s made experimental movies with adult film stars, surreal, nonlinear dramas, and straightforward Hollywood blockbusters in a relentlessly inventive career.

His murder mystery Mosaic was one of his most fascinating moves yet. A miniseries designed to be watched on an app, this was a choose your own adventure-style story centred around the death of Sharon Stone’s character. The viewer followed a path with possible diversions at the end of each “episode”; while the story couldn’t be influenced as such, the way it unfolded was variable.

The app worked well for the gimmick, but really that’s what it was: a gimmick. The version released on TV a little while later didn’t gather nearly the attention Soderbergh’s app did, because it was ultimately a pretty standard story.

It didn’t help that Black Mirror: Bandersnatch came out less than a year later with genuinely interactive features, though that wasn’t especially good either.

Contributor
Contributor

Yorkshire-based writer of screenplays, essays, and fiction. Big fan of having a laugh. Read more of my stuff @ www.twotownsover.com (if you want!)