The Top Ten returning or classic miniseries I watched in 2020

 The Top Ten returning or classic miniseries I watched in 2020 

Babylon Berlin 

This series emulates The Crown, as we can only wonder at the amount of money and the creative energy to replicate Berlin in 1929 down to the smallest detail, but in other ways this is its own series entirely, particularly in Season 3, as the Communists face off against the National Socialist Party.

Berlin Alexanderplatz 

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 13-part series was ground-breaking in 1980 and has been hugely influential in charting the course for long-form, character-driven dramas such as The Sopranos, The Wire, House of Cards - the list could go on. 

The Crown

I will join in the universal praise for Season 4 of Peter Morgan’s monumental series, which deserves commendation on every level and aspect, starting perhaps with the spare-no-expense sets and settings for the royal family, all reconstructed and resurrected it seems in perfect period detail.

Fauda 

Like its predecessors, Season 3 of this Israeli series about team of agents assigned to undercover, anti-terrorism work against radical Islamists and Palestinian activists is as tense and gripping as anything on TV or streaming, start to finish - and of course it leaves the door open to a 4th season. 

Last Chance U 

Football is the vehicle but the show itself, which concluded this year with Season 5, is about so much more than football; it’s about communities, leadership, poverty, inequity, and the “collision of forces” inevitable in any high-pressure sports enterprise that is part of an academic setting. 

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Season 3 of this series was a definite step up from Season 2, which seemed to drift away from what gives the series its strength and its life: Rachel Brosnahan’s portrayal of the eponymous rising-star standup comedian.

Ozark 

The 3rd season continues with the great storytelling, writing, and ensemble acting (Jason Bateman, Laura Linney, Julia Garner) of the first 2 seasons, as we watch the Byrde family sink ever deeper into world of money laundering, corrupt gambling, the heroin trade, and an outright war between two Mexican cartels. 

Rectify 

This highly intelligent and moving socio-drama about a man released from prison after 20 years on death row, which never really found its audience, was not only a personal drama focusing on the now severely traumatized man but it was also a family drama, a legal thriller, and, to a lesser extent, an issue film about the rights of prisoners and of ex-prisoners trying to make the best of what's left of their lives post-incarceration.

Schitt’s Creek 

There’s no doubt that this excellent series, which is both hilarious and completely engaging, is one of the few comedy-miniseries of our time in which the show gets better with each passing season and ended, this year with Season 6, on the right note at the right time.

Succession

As we continue to watch the members of the Roy family engage in a dynastic fight to control their corporate enterprise and in Oedipal struggles to unseat or deracinate the family patriarch, the strengths remain the great ensemble performances, with every cast member in and out of the family holding up the standard set by the occasionally hilarious and demanding script.