Enough time has passed now that I can settle in fairly comfortably and say Sharp Objects -- released in 2018 by HBO adapted from a Gillian Flynn book, starring Amy Adams, directed by Jean Marc Valee (RIP) -- is IMO the strongest in a long line of HBO limited series thrillers.
I think it got overcrowded at the time in the wake of huge cast things like Big Little Lies (another HBO adaptation that Valee directed, immensely improving on its source material) and later similarly premised shows like Mare of Easttown (a big-name actor plays a tragic character solving a murder in their hometown) so it feels sometimes like it's entangled in a larger cultural mass.
But the show is obviously on streaming wherever they do HBO shows where you live -- please watch or rewatch it. It is so, so good. On its own as a piece of filmed media, it's tremendous, and I think it encapsulates all the best parts of Vallee's directing and editing style (it's one of the final solo projects he did before his death), plus Gillian Flynn's style is still present.
Every performance is astounding, even characters who are in like 3 scene tops (eg. Jackie is a side character for most episodes but is engrossing in her one 'big' moment). It's conceptually quite sickening, with the borderline incestual aesthetic trappings + of course the way the 'mystery' unfolds. If you go in wanting to find satisfaction from a procedural mystery (like Flynn's other work, or Night Of or again Mare of Easttown) it will probably feel slow or badly paced, but as someone who'd read the book and knew the "ending" I was still engrossed week to week by the show as a window into it's protagonist.
The editing and production design working together is also what makes it so unique and astounding -- Vallee directs 'flashbacks' the way real memories work, in short sharp bursts that don't make literal sense most of the time; combined with the eerie way the show inserts words and phrases subliminally on-screen as Camille further self-destructs (eg a scene will show a billboard in the background, cut away; when it cuts back for just a few frames the billboard will now say "dirty" on it instead of the brand name). You'd never catch it all on a first watch, but it adds up to make the show's perspective really unnerving.
Maybe I'm feeling a weird mix of nostalgia or loss because I know Jean Marc Vallee will never release anything else, and this show (again IMO) is the most accurate example of his 'style' which I love, but I wanted to recommend it before it hits a decade gone.
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