The world of streaming and television has opened the door for some of the most notable filmmaking talents. They tried their turn at writing and directing episodes of television series that feel as gripping and masterful as any of their movies. Filmmakers like M. Night Shyamalan, David Fincher, Park Chan-wook, and Guillermo del Toro are now behind some of the highest-rated shows you can watch.
Whether it be adaptations of novels, original stories, or something more surreal and horror-adjacent, it’s pretty spectacular to see these names below attaching themselves to TV and streaming projects. You can immediately feel how the vibe and filmmaking styles are elevated, and the performances by the cast can make every episode feel like a feature film.
Where To Stream
Park Chan-wook and Don McKellar
Hoa Xuande, Robert Downey Jr., Toan Le, Fred Nguyen Khan, Vy Le, Phan Gia Nhat Linh (Phanxinê), Tom Dang, Tien Pham, Duy Nguyen, Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen, Scott Ly, Alan Trong, Kieu Chinh, and Sandra Oh
89%
6.8
1
HBO Max
Known for his legendary Korean thrillers such as Oldboy, The Handmaiden, and Decision to Leave, Park Chan-wookpartnered with A24and HBO Max to adapt Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel The Sympathizer into a seven-episode miniseries. One of The Sympathizer’s most amazing weapons is Robert Downey Jr., fresh off his Oscar-winning role in Oppenheimer and playing four radically different and entertaining lookalike characters.
The Sympathizer is about a communist North Vietnamese spy within the South Vietnamese military, who also has ties to the CIA, and he’s forced to flee with his South Vietnamese general to America during the Fall of Saigon, a harrowing moment that concludes the first episode. In the US, the protagonist continues to spy for the communist regime in Vietnam (hence the title), and the narrative is told through narration as a reflection on his life, with excellent editing and cinematography.
The Strain
Guillermo del Toro, Chuck Hogan, and Carlton Cuse (Showrunner)
Corey Stoll, David Bradley, Kevin Durand, Richard Sammel, Jonathan Hyde, Max Charles, Ruta Gedmintas, Miguel Gomez, Natalie Brown, Mía Maestro, and Sean Astin
79%
7.3
4
Cabinet of Curiosities
Guillermo del Toro
Various, including Lize Johnston, Kevin Keppy, Tim Blake Nelson, Essie Davis, Ben Barnes, Rupert Grint, Andrew Lincoln, David Hewlett, Kate Micucci, F. Murray Abraham, Peter Weller, Crispin Glover, Oriana Leman, Ismael Cruz Cordova, DJ Qualls, Nia Vardalos, Glynn Turman, Luke Roberts, and Martin Starr
93%
7
Netflix
The Oscar-winning horror-fantasy auteur behind The Shape of Water, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pinocchio, and Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro,delivers two amazing pieces of horror television. The Strain is based on his book series with co-author Chuck Hogan and follows a group of survivors, including CDC doctor Ephraim Goodweather, as they battle a vampire outbreak that hits New York.
There’s some compelling family drama, excellent villains, scary and unsettling vampire creature design (especially The Master), and a historical fiction narrative linking back to WW2. Cabinet of Curiosities is del Toro’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents-style show. At the start of each episode, he gives a monologue about the horror themes in store for the audience, and each episode highlights a different story and horror director, featuring talents such as Jennifer Kent, Ana Lily Amirpour, and David Prior.
Alfonso Cuarón
Cate Blanchett, Sacha Baron Cohen, Kevin Kline, Lesley Manville, Louis Partridge, Leila George, Indira Varma, and Kodi Smit-McPhee
76%
7.5
Apple TV+
Alfonso Cuarón is a four-time Oscar-winning director with movies like Children of Men, Gravity, Roma, and Y tu mamá también. Disclaimer is a psychological thriller miniseries following a journalist whose past comes back to haunt her when a man named Stephen Brigstocke writes a revealing novel about her own transgressions, and scenes shift from her younger self to her older self, with Cate Blanchett playing protagonist Catherine Ravenscroft and Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen her husband.
Disclaimer is adapted from the novel by Renée Knight and all episodes are written and directed by Cuarón. The cinematography here is also just as compelling, unlike any other television series, because it’s achieved by the Oscar-winning cinematographer and frequent Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñártitu collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki of Gravity, The Revenant, Birdman, and Children of Men, as well as Amélie and Darkest Hour cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel.
Jane Campion and Gerard Lee
Elizabeth Moss, Holly Hunter, David Wenham, Peter Mullan, Nicole Kidman, Alice Englert, Thomas M. Wright, Robyn Nevon, Skye Wansey, Genviève Lemon, Robyn Malcolm, Kip Chapman, Jacqueline Joe, Ewen Leslie, Gwendoline Christie, and David Dencik
83%
7.4
2
Hulu, Disney+
Jane Campion isthe Oscar-winning director of The Power of the Dog, who also made the Oscar-winning film The Piano, along with An Angel at My Table and The Portrait of a Lady. She went on to create the TV series Top of the Lake, starring Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale actress Elisabeth Moss. Moss plays New Zealand detective Robin Griffin, who will solve two chilling cases involving murdered or missing girls.
If you enjoy dark and twisty murder-mystery detective storieslike The Killing, The Sinner, Luther, and Broadchurch, Top of the Lake is another top dramatic quality one set in Sydney. The first season is about the disappearance of a pregnant 12-year-old girl found submerged in a freezing lake. The second season is about the case of a woman whose body washes up in a suitcase and also features the likes of Nicole Kidman and Gwendoline Christie.
Alex Garland
Sonoya Mizuno, Karl Glusman, Nick Offerman, Alison Pill, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jin Ha, Zach Grenier, Amaya Mizuno-André, Jefferson Hall, Georgia King, Linnea Berthelsen, Aimee Mullins, Alejandro De Mesa, Akshay Kumar, and Janet Mock
82%
7.6
Alex Garland is the screenwriter behind 28 Days Later, its sequel 28 Years Later, Dredd, and also the writer-director of Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men, Civil War, and Warfare. In 2020, he fully wrote and directed the eight-episode Hulu miniseries Devs. It’s a tech thriller mixed with deeply philosophical science fiction and set on the glorious Redwood UC Santa Cruz campus, with Sonoya Mizuno and Nick Offerman in the lead roles.
The story is based on a fictional tech company called Amaya, which has a quantum computer with an algorithm that can predict future events and seemingly determines all of humanity’s actions, past, present, and future. Mizuno plays a developer at the company whose boyfriend dies under mysterious circumstances. She’s up against Nick Offerman’s Forest, the shady leader of Amaya, with a complicated and tragic past.
Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski
Bae Doona, Jaime Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Reimelt, Miguel Ángel Silvestre, Brian J. Smith, Daryl Hannah, Freema Agyeman, Alfonso Herrera, Terrence Mann, Eréndira Ibarra, Naveen Andrews, and Purab Kohli
86%
8.2
You may be familiar with The Wachowskis for their sci-fi masterpiece The Matrix and also Cloud Atlas, Jupiter Ascending, and writing James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta, but do you know about their Netflix show, Sense8? In an original sci-fi premise, Sense8 follows eight individuals, or ‘sensates,’ who discover they are telepathically connected to one another and are being hunted down by an enemy sensate called Whispers, sent by the Biologic Preservation Organization.
The show only had a short-lived two seasons, but it’s still some of the peak adult sci-fi TV, as Sense8’s ratings run nearly as high as Netflix’s mind-bending series Dark and sci-fi horror Stranger Things. The storyline shows all the sensates' lives as they try to survive and understand more about themselves, with Lost’s Naveen Andrews among the cast and some episodes even directed by Tom Tykwer (director of Run Lola Run and co-director of Cloud Atlas with The Wachowskis).
The Gentlemen
Guy Ritchie
Theo James, Kaya Scodelario, Daniel Ings, Joely Richardson, Giancarlo Esposito, Vinnie Jones, Michael Vu, Harry Goodwins, Stephane Fichet, Logan Dean, Chanel Cresswell, Ray Winstone, Mason Antonio Fardowe, and Ruby Sear
75%
8
MobLand
Ronan Bennett and Guy Ritchie (Director, Executive Producer)
Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Anson Boon, Joanne Froggatt, Lara Pulver, Mandeep Dhillon, Luke Mably, Gemma Knight Jones, Bradley Turner, Florian Rafuna, Paddy Considine, and Daniel Betts
Paramount+
You’ll know Guy Ritchie for his fast-paced gangster films and action movies like Snatch, Wrath of Man, and The Gentlemen, as well as directing Disney’s live-action Aladdin and the Sherlock Holmes movies with RDJ. Speaking of The Gentlemen, Guy Ritchie transformed his 2019 movie starring Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam into a TV series spin-off of the same name for Netflix, starring a new cast.
Netflix’s The Gentlemen continues that same dark comedy crime route and now sees Theo James' character, Eddie Horniman, unknowingly inherit a cannabis empire left behind by his father’s death and must also help his brother with a debt. 2025’s MobLand is a collaboration between Ritchie and Ronan Bennett (creator of Top Boy) and sees Tom Hardy return to a gangster story after Peaky Blinders, working as a fixer for the Harrigan crime family, run by Pierce Brosnan’s Conrad Harrigan.
Tony Basgallop and M. Night Shyamalan (Showrunner, Director, Executive Producer)
Lauren Ambrose, Nell Tiger Free, Toby Kebbell, Rupert Grint, James Hoogerwerff, Jack Hoogerwerff, Tony Revolori, Phillip James Brannon, Boris McGiver, Molly Griggs, Mathilde Dehaye, Todd Waring, Barbara Sukowa, Caiden Ravenscroft, and Luka Ravenscroft
90%
M. Night Shyamalan takes his twisty horror-thriller expertise and brings it to the Apple TV+ exclusive Servant, a supernatural mystery series centered around an unbelievable miracle. When Dorothy and Sean Turner tragically lose their son Jericho to SIDS, they hire a strange nanny named Leanne Grayson to care for a lifelike doll Dorothy uses to cope with the loss. Suddenly, the doll manifests as Jericho and the Turners see their baby alive again.
Servant is filled with great dialogue and unexpected story moments, and it expands the lore and mystery of Leanne and Jericho with each new season. The show primarily takes place inside the Turners' apartment with Dorothy’s often hilarious brother, Julian, played by Rupert Grint, and Leanne’s relatives also coming into the fold. Shyamalan served as the showrunner who directed five of the episodes, and his daughter, Ishana Shyamalan, wrote and directed across multiple seasons.
Rian Johnson
Natasha Lyonne, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Helberg, Adrien Brody, Ron Perlman, Rowan Blanchard, Clea DuVall, Simon Rex, Jameela Jamil, Awkwafina, Corey Hawkins, Method Man, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nick Nolte, Tim Blake Nelson, Chloë Sevigny, Lil Rel Howery, Hong Chau, Ellen Barkin, and more
98%
7.8
Peacock
Here’s an unexpected name creating a TV series – Rian Johnson. Johnson is well-known for his murder-mystery film series Knives Out, starring Daniel Craig as Detective Benoit Blanc, his 2012 time travel movie Looper, starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt,and also the divisive Last Jedi installment of Star Wars. For Poker Face, he enlists Natasha Lyonne in the lead role of Charlie Cale and a stacked list of guest stars, like two-time Oscar winner Adrien Brody.
Poker Face continues Johnson’s amazing whodunnit mystery writing from Knives Out in an episodic format, with a non-supernatural Supernatural-esque premise of Lyonne’s character, Charlie, drifting from town to town in her car and finding new cases to solve. What’s special about Charlie is that she’s someone who can root out when you’re lying, which makes crime-solving much more efficient.
Mindhunter
Joe Penhall and David Fincher (Showrunner, Director, Executive Producer)
Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Anna Torv, Stacey Roca, Zachary Scott Ross, Joe Tuttle, Hannah Gross, Sonny Valicenti, Cotter Smith, Albert Jones, Lauren Glazier, Michael Cerveris, Dohn Norwood, Gareth Williams, and Cameron Britton
97%
8.6
Love, Death & Robots
Tim Miller and David Fincher (Executive Producer, Director)
Various, including Fred Tatasciore, Nolan North, Scott Whyte, Noshir Dalal, Caitlin McKenna, Josh Brener, Gary Anthony Williams, Emily O’Brien, Chris Parnell, Elodie Yung, and Jeff Schine
8.4
3
David Fincher, director of Se7en, Gone Girl, Zodiac, and Fight Club,developed a gripping series about serial killers for Netflix called Mindhunter, based on the true accounts of former FBI profiler John E. Douglas in his novel of the same name. The show follows fictional FBI agents Holden Ford and Bill Trench as they interview and study various real-life serial killers for the bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit.
Mindhunter is known for its chilling and realistic portrayals of serial killers like Ed Kemper, Charles Manson, and David Berkowitz. It’s incredibly dark and feels creatively driven by Fincher. He even directed seven of the episodes himself.
Then, Fincher teamed with Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate director Tim Miller for Love, Death & Robots,a CG anthology series of well-animated shortsthat range from sci-fi action to fantasy. Fincher co-directed the second episode of Season Three, Bad Travelling, which remains the highest-rated of the series.
The only drawback is that it wascanceled after only two seasons, with no hopes of a third season in the near future.
