The four best limited series coming your way this week
Netflix has always been home to a unique catalogue of limited series, which is growing by the minute. However, in the arrival arc of December, the platform surprised viewers with a select few titles, not just from its original slate of content, but also from the outside.
The best part about short-format releases, such as miniseries/limited series, is that they don’t demand years of commitment.
Since they come with a complete package, there’s also no need to wonder what’s next and whether there’ll be a renewal or cancellation. While there are a few Netflix series that were originally conceived as a miniseries, only to be expanded eventually with unexpected renewals, those are few in number.
But now that Netflix has decided to welcome shows from streaming counterparts as well, here are four limited series you cannot keep your eyes off this week.
The four best limited series coming your way this week
Love & Death (Lesli Linka Glatter and Clark Johnson, 2023)
Love & Death is a biographical crime drama, originally aired on HBO Max, which landed on Netflix on December 1st. Starring Elizabeth Olsen, the limited series revolves around Candy Montgomery, a 1970s housewife from Texas, who initiates an extramarital affair with her neighbour, Allan Gore, which escalates in ways neither party imagined.
Although the affair initially concludes with Allan recoiling in an effort to look after his family, the controversy unfolds into a crime when his wife, Betty, goes to confront Candy about the affair, which could have potentially ended her dreams of a happy family once and for all. But the confrontation goes haywire when one of them takes a violent resort, completely leaving both families in a nightmare-esque procedure of investigation and trial.
The Staircase (Antonio Campos, 2022)
Like Love & Death, The Staircase is also a biographical crime drama, which revolves around author Michael Peterson, accused of killing his wife Kathleen, who was discovered dead at the bottom of a staircase in 2001. It serves as the updated continuation of the documentary series that began two decades earlier.
The Staircase is adapted from a 2004 docuseries of the same name, which captures the ensuing investigation followed by a tedious 16-year legal battle. Through dramatisation, the miniseries examines the conflicting accounts of events, the true story, the influence of the media and documentary team on the case, along with features including the defence’s tactics, the prosecution, and the family’s reaction to the trial.
Dispatches from Elsewhere (Jason Segel, 2020)
Originally aired on AMC, Dispatches from Elsewhere is an American limited series which is about to land on Netflix on December 4th. Based on The Institute, a docufilm about the alternate reality game The Jejune Institute, the AMC series revolves around four ordinary people who are brought together by a chance encounter as they stumble across a city-spanning puzzle woven in equal parts mystery and intrigue.
Fascinated at once with the alternate reality game, they soon find themselves digging deeper, until the game sets a clear-sighted goal for the four: find the missing girl, Clara. While everyone gets hooked on the game as an escape from their mundane lives, the game soon begins to blur the line between fiction and reality.
Sicily Express (Salvatore Ficarra and Valentino Picone, 2025)
The limited series marathon finally ends with a title right from the home, Sicily Express. This is a holiday miniseries from Netflix, scheduled to be released on December 5th. The comedy series tells the story of two Sicilian nurses, who go the extra mile to maintain work-life balance as their jobs require them to be in Milan while their families reside in Sicily.
To their surprise, just a few days before Christmas, this hardworking duo comes across a magic portal in a dumpster that has the ability to transport them back to their families within seconds. But whether that’s a welcome discovery is actually for you to find.