The Top Ten (new) streaming miniseries I watched in 2020

 The Top Ten (new) streaming miniseries I watched in 2020:

Derry Girls 

This series for Ireland series stands simply as one of the funniest and most endearing comedies streaming today.

The Eddy

This series about a jazz nightclub club is a study in character and in group interaction, the development over time of life/work/family relationships that bind the lead characters to one another, and an homage to the ex-pat jazz scene still alive in Paris.

Giri/Haji

This British-Japanese co-production has some eye-closing scenes of violence and many shootouts – plus some surprisingly tender and thoughtful scenes, including a final episode with one of the most unusual surreal sequences I’ve ever seen in a crime show.

The Last Dance

This isn’t a series for basketball fans only; all viewers can watch with amazement and wonder at Michael Jordan’s dominant skills in every facet of the game, physical and mental. 

Lenox Hill

This series should be on everyone's list, a terrific documentary that follows over the course of a year or so the professional (and personal) lives of four doctors (2 brain surgeons, 1 ER doc, 1 (pregnant) OB-GYN doc) in the Manhattan hospital.

The Queen’s Gambit 

This highly acclaimed series is well worth watching regardless of your knowledge of or even interest in chess, in particular for Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance in the lead role as a chess prodigy with many troubles in her life. 

The Spy 

This British series is another in the long run of high-quality suspenseful espionage shows, though this one has a particular plaudit: The often hard-to-believe series of events is in fact based closely on an actual case of Israeli espionage.

Unorthodox 

This popular series depicts the bravery and the struggle of the 19-year-old Etsy Shapiro (Shira Haas), who flees from her ultra-orthodox community in Brooklyn to seek freedom and a new life in, of all places, Berlin. 

Waco

This series provides a surprisingly thoughtful and multifaceted re-creation of the horrendous 1993 ATF/FBI raid on the Branch Davidian complex - as seen from perspectives both inside and outside of the complex under siege. 

Who Killed Malcolm X?

This under-the-radar series presents a taut account of the 1965 assassination of the  black leader, the shoddy if not corrupt NY police investigation of the killings, the imprisonment for 20 years of 2 men who had nothing to do with the killings, and the suspicious indifference of the police and the FBI regarding the most likely assassin.

Note: And I will add one more that I watched after compiling this list: Trial 4, about the unjust imprisonment of a Boston man convicted of the murder of a Boston police detective.