8 Shortest HBO Shows to Binge, Ranked

Image via HBO Max Published Nov 12, 2026, 1:18 PM EST Jessica is a young writer from Brisbane, Australia. An avid consumer and lover of all things Film and TV, you will never tear her away from a screen. A tendency rooted from childhood, she once had dreams of becoming a member of the famed kids-band 'Hi-5'. Perhaps that's what pushed her to secure an education with a theater background. But now, as dreams evolved, her passions have turned to admiring performances from afar. Frankly, she's just grateful that she can put her binging skills to good use. Outside of work, Jessica recently completed her undergraduate double degree in Arts/Communications. Other than that, she spends most of her free time with family and friends, probably never forgetting to talk about the new movie or show she watched the day prior. Sign in to your Collider account Sometimes, you want great TV without having to commit the next several weeks (or months) of your life to it. Thankfully, HBO has plenty of well-made shows that tell their stories in just a handful of episodes, from gripping true-crime dramas and devastating historical tales to sharp comedies and intimate character studies. So, whether you're looking for something you can finish in a single day, weekend, or simply want a satisfying story without endless seasons that run way overtime, these are eight short HBO shows that are well worth adding to your watchlist. 8 'The Sympathizer' (2024) Total Runtime: 7 hours Image via HBO Based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, a half-French, half-Vietnamese communist spy (Hoa Xuande) embeds himself within the South Vietnamese community in Los Angeles after the fall of Saigon. But while secretly reporting back to his communist handlers, he becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of those around him, including his former general (Toan Le) and an eccentric American filmmaker (Robert Downey Jr.). The Sympathizer is a miniseries that offers a sharp and often darkly funny look at identity, loyalty, and the lingering consequences of war. Its shifting tone is part of the appeal, as it moves between espionage thriller, political satire, and absurdist comedy without losing sight of its central internal conflict. Downey Jr. is particularly entertaining in multiple roles, but Xuande becomes the emotional anchor in a story about belonging to two worlds and feeling entirely at home in none. 7 'I May Destroy You' (2020) Total Runtime: 6 hours Image via HBO Arabella (Michaela Coel) is a young writer whose life is thrown into complete disarray after she's sexually assaulted during a night out in London. But as she tries to piece together what happened, she navigates the aftermath of the attack alongside her friends Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), who are also dealing with their own complicated experiences of sex, relationships, and consent. Across just 12 half-hour episodes, Coel delivers one of television's most thoughtful and uncompromising explorations of consent, sexual violence, and its aftermath. Moving between dark comedy, drama, and moments of surrealism, I May Destroy You makes sure to never settle for easy answers or neat resolutions. It's a challenging but hugely rewarding watch, anchored by a phenomenal central performance and a refreshingly nuanced perspective of the digital age. 6 'Chernobyl' (2019) Total Runtime: 5.5 hours Image via HBO In 1986, a nuclear disaster occurs in Soviet Ukraine after Reactor Number Four at the Chernobyl Power Plant explodes. As a result, physicist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) are tasked with understanding the catastrophe and containing the radiation. Meanwhile, authorities struggle to control the truth about what happened as ordinary people get caught in its devastating aftermath. With just five episodes, this gripping historical miniseries wastes absolutely no time. Its meticulous attention to detail and unnerving atmosphere make the disaster feel horrifyingly immediate, while its exploration of institutional denial and the human cost of political deception gives it a relevance that goes beyond its historical setting. Add in some excellent ensemble performances, and Chernobyl is a masterpiece that makes scientific and bureaucratic failures feel genuinely terrifying. And that makes it unforgettable. Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To? Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Tyrell Your drink, your weapon, your seat at the table, what you do to somebody who wrongs you. Eight quick calls and we will tell you whose banner you should actually be standing under. Four houses are still in this: the cold one, the rich one, the one with the dragons, and the one that has never needed a sword to get its way. 🐺Stark(Game of Thrones) 🦁Lannister(Game of Thrones) 🐉Targaryen(House of the Dragon) 🌹Tyrell(Game of Thrones) CLAIM YOUR HOUSE → 01 What is your go-to at the feast? Everybody has one, and everybody's says something. ADark ale by the fire, nothing fancy. BWhatever costs the most in the cellar. CWhatever gets poured, drunk far too fast. DOne cup, slowly, while I watch the room. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Pick a weapon off the wall. You get one. Choose quickly. AA greatsword, heavy and honest. BA dagger, plus a second one nobody knows about. CFire, obviously. DNothing sharper than the things I can say. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Where do you end up sitting? The seating plan is the politics. AHigh table, quietly wishing I was outside. BNext to whoever actually matters. CWherever I like, because people move. DA corner seat with a view of everyone. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What do people get wrong about you? Reputation arrives about a week before you do. AThat I am cold, when I am only quiet. BThat I say what I mean the first time. CThat I might be bluffing. DThat I am harmless. NEXT QUESTION → 05 One free evening in King's Landing. Where do you go? Nobody plots every single night. AOut of the city entirely, heading home. BSomewhere expensive, with people who owe me. CWherever it is loud and slightly dangerous. DA long dinner where everybody talks too much. NEXT QUESTION → 06 Somebody wrongs you. What happens next? This is the real personality test in Westeros. AI say it to their face, once. BI wait, because they will need me eventually. CEverybody hears about it before morning. DThey never find out it was me. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Your people are in trouble. What is your first move? No time to think about this one. AI turn up, even when it is a terrible idea. BI pay for the problem to go away. CI go after whoever caused it. DI already called in that favour last week. NEXT QUESTION → 08 Be honest. What do you actually want? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your house. ATo go home, and then to stay there. BTo own the room without sitting at the head of it. CThe crown, with everybody watching. DTo be the one everybody genuinely likes. REVEAL MY HOUSE → The Banner Is Raised Your House Is…Four houses, four completely different theories about how you survive a world like this one. Here is where your banner belongs, what the name would cost you, and what it would buy. House StarkYou belong in the North, where the weather does most of the arguing and nobody is impressed by a title. The Starks are the only great house on this list who genuinely believe that being right matters more than winning, which is exactly why the show spent eight years punishing them for it. Your loyalty runs to people rather than to crowns, and you would rather lose a war honestly than win one by doing something you would have to hide. The Stark tragedy is a simple one, since a family raised to keep its word ended up surrounded by people who treat a promise as an opening bid. You are the one who thinks about the winter while everybody else is still enjoying the summer, and the realm never thanks anybody for that. What saves the Starks in the end is not swords. It is the fact that the children grew up and became four completely different kinds of dangerous. House LannisterYou belong to the house that worked out early on that gold moves faster than armies. Casterly Rock runs on leverage, reputation and the certainty that everybody at the table owes you something, and you are perfectly comfortable with all three. You play a longer game than the people around you, and you would rather own the outcome quietly than be seen winning in public. Family is the thing you would burn the realm for, which is both the best and the very worst quality this house has. Tyrion, Jaime and Cersei are three of the most compelling characters on television precisely because they were raised with everything except the ability to be simple about it. You are not the villain of your own story. You are simply the one who read the rules properly and decided to use them. House TargaryenYou belong to the house that conquered a continent and never quite got over it. Targaryens do not ask for a seat at the table, because in their version of events the table was theirs to begin with, and that certainty is either magnificent or catastrophic depending on the week. You feel things at full volume, and nobody who has ever met a Targaryen has described one as measured. House of the Dragon made the family far more interesting than the original show could, because here the enemy is not some other house. It is the rest of the bloodline. Season 3 landed on HBO in June 2026 and pushed the civil war into the part everybody who read the book has been dreading for years. Your great strength and your great problem are the same thing, which is that you genuinely believe the story was always going to end with you. House TyrellYou belong to Highgarden, where nobody raises their voice and everybody gets exactly what they came for. The Tyrells feed the realm, charm the realm and quietly steer the realm, and they have never once needed to win a battle to get their way. You understand that being liked is a weapon, and you are genuinely better at it than the people who spend their lives trying to be feared. Olenna is the most quietly ruthless character in the entire series, and she does all of it from a chair with a bowl of fruit in front of her. Your house wins by being useful, since a kingdom that cannot eat without you will forgive you almost anything. The risk of being a Tyrell is simple enough. Charm works beautifully on everybody except the one person who has stopped caring what anyone thinks. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 5 'Scenes From A Marriage' (2021) Total Runtime: 5 hours Image by HBO Hagai Levi's Scenes From a Marriage reimagines Ingmar Bergman's classic miniseries through the relationship of Mira (Jessica Chastain) and Jonathan (Oscar Isaac), a married couple whose seemingly stable life begins to significantly unravel. Across a series of intimate conversations and confrontations, the pair navigate infidelity, resentment, and the complicated feelings that remain long after a relationship has broken down. With only five episodes, this show is a concentrated, emotionally demanding watch that gives its two leads plenty of room to shine. Chastain and Isaac have extraordinary chemistry, making even the smallest exchanges feel loaded with history and unspoken frustration. Better still, rather than offering a straightforward portrait of a marriage falling apart, the show explores how love can survive in unexpected forms, even when faced with a gross misunderstanding of what each other wants. 4 'I Love LA' (2025–Present) Total Runtime: 4.5 hours Image via HBO Maia (Rachel Sennott) is an ambitious talent manager whose carefully curated life in Los Angeles is disrupted when her former best friend, Tallulah (Odessa A'zion), suddenly reappears. But as the two navigate their complicated friendship and professional ambitions, they're soon joined by a close-knit group of friends — including Maia's boyfriend Dylan (Josh Hutcherson) and their friend Charlie (Jordan Firstman) — all of whom are also trying to find their footing in the city as well. As the brainchild of Sennott, this youthful comedy is a sharp, chaotic look at modern friendship, social climbing, and the particular absurdities of trying to make it in LA. Sennott brings the same awkward, cringe-inducing humor that made her other creative endeavors such standouts, while the ensemble adds plenty of personality to the show's messy dynamics. So, if you enjoy comedies about deeply flawed people making questionable decisions, I Love LA is an easy one to fly through. 3 'Olive Kitteridge' (2014) Total Runtime: 4 hours Image via HBO Based on Elizabeth Strout's novel, Olive Kitteridge centers on a sharp-tongued middle-school teacher (Frances McDormand) living in a small coastal town in Maine. Across 25 years, Olive navigates her complicated relationship with her gentle husband Henry (Richard Jenkins), their son Christopher (John Gallagher Jr.), and the people in their community, each of whom reveals the loneliness, disappointments, and unexpected kindnesses beneath everyday life. The show isn't driven by a single mystery or major dramatic twist. Instead, it finds its power in the small moments and difficult truths that accumulate over a lifetime. McDormand shines as a woman whose abrasive exterior often makes it difficult to see the vulnerability underneath. Quiet, beautifully acted, and deeply human, it's the kind of miniseries that rewards anyone willing to slow down and spend a little time with its characters. 2 'Landscapers' (2021) Total Runtime: 4 hours Image via HBO The seemingly ordinary life of British couple Susan (Olivia Colman) and Christopher Edwards (David Thewlis) is upended when a shocking discovery brings their decades-old crime to light. But as detectives investigate the disappearance of Susan's parents, the couple's version of events begins to unravel, revealing a strange world shaped by fantasy, obsession, and a deeply troubling devotion to one another. Across just four episodes, director Will Sharpe manages to turn a true-crime story into something wonderfully unconventional. Colman and Thewlis are mesmerizing as a tender yet deeply unsettling couple, while the show's imaginative shifts in style reflect the elaborate fantasies they've built around themselves. Plus, rather than simply reconstructing the crime, Landscapers explores the uncomfortable distance between love and delusion. 1 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' (2026–Present) Total Runtime: 3.5 hours Image via HBO Set roughly a century before the events of Game of Thrones, young hedge knight Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) takes a mysterious boy named Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell) as his squire. But as the pair travel through the land and arrive at a tournament in Ashford, Dunk finds himself caught up in the rivalries and dangerous politics of the Targaryen family. With just six half-hour episodes, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a much breezier and punchier visit to Westeros than its predecessors. Rather than juggling sprawling royal factions and multiple "continents," the show keeps its focus on the charming and often amusing partnership between the new knight and his spunky squire. Trust that there's still plenty of gruesome tournament action, political intrigue, and familiar Targaryen drama, but its smaller, intimate scale is what gives the story a refreshing new perspective on their wild fantasy adventures. It's an easy binge for anyone, so do it now before the next season comes in.