There are few better ways to spend a half hour than with an episode of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Funny, scary, mysterious, cynical, sinister, and sometimes even sexy, the anthology series created and presented (and sometimes directed) by the Master of Suspense is the complete package. The show was indelible when it first aired in the 1950s, and it remains so today, with storylines that feel surprisingly modern, twists designed to leave you gasping, and an unrelenting fixation on the darkest corners of the human heart.

To choose the best episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" is a bit of a fool's errand, the kind of task Hitch himself would probably scoff at in one of his campy, sarcastic episode introductions. This is, after all, a show that multiple generations watched solely via linear TV, catching stray episodes in syndication rather than binge-watching it in its entirety. It's also a series with...