Obi-Wan Kenobi

Marked essential as the bridge between the two trilogies, and it is the most uneven thing on this list. Six episodes, two of which are as good as anything in the franchise and three of which are not.

The premise is sound and slightly awkward. Obi-Wan is on Tatooine, broken by what happened on Mustafar, working in a meat-processing yard under a false name, and the series pulls him out for a rescue that the original trilogy's dialogue arguably precludes. Working around established films is the constraint the whole thing operates under, and it shows: nothing here can leave a mark that A New Hope would have mentioned.

What it has is Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen playing scenes the prequels never got to. The confrontation in the third episode, in which Obi-Wan discovers that his friend is alive inside the armour and is told plainly that the man he knew is dead, is the single best scene in any Star Wars television, and the rematch in the fifth hour is the correct answer to the Mustafar duel.

Between those are chases, a child being captured repeatedly, and an Inquisitor plot that strains. Watch it for two episodes and accept the rest. It sits ten years after Revenge of the Sith and nine before A New Hope.