Black Mirror
Charlie Brooker turned his satirical lens to the dangers of ever-advancing technology in his smash-hit anthology series Black Mirror. Black Mirror is a modern-day Twilight Zone whose chilling stories are built solely around the threat of technologies like A.I., deepfakes, social media, and all the other digital monstrosities destroying society.
Black Mirror started off as a little British production on Channel 4, but Netflix has since acquired it and turned it into a global sensation. With blockbuster budgets and A-list casts, Black Mirror now has grand spectacle to match its grand social commentary.
For All Mankind
Set in an alternate history where the Space Race never ended, For All Mankind follows NASA’s desperate attempts to catch up with the Soviet Union when a Russian cosmonaut becomes the first man to walk on the Moon. It’s a fascinating look at how the history of space travel might’ve played out under different circumstances.
For All Mankind was created by Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica veteran Ronald D. Moore, so you know it’s in safe hands. Although it struggled to find its footing in season 1, For All Mankind has been one of the best sci-fi shows on the air since its universally acclaimed second season.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
Netflix expanded the world of the hit video game Cyberpunk 2077 into the anime space with its universally lauded series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Video game adaptations have been notoriously bad for years, but Edgerunners is one of the rare exceptions.
It has everything a good anime show needs: stunning animation, intriguing worldbuilding, and most importantly, characters worth investing in. Although it was conceived as a standalone story, it proved to be so popular that it’s getting a sequel.
Orphan Black
Tatiana Maslany gave one of the most impressive performances in television history as the lead character(s) in Orphan Black. It starts off with a drifter witnessing her doppelgänger’s death and promptly stealing her identity, but she soon meets a bunch of other doubles and uncovers a widespread cloning operation.
Maslany vanishes into every single one of her dozen roles, each one with their own distinctive personality. After a while, you forget you’re watching just one actor play all these characters. Orphan Black is a thrilling sci-fi mystery, but it’s also an ode to sisterhood. All these clones find a sense of belonging with each other, and build their own little community.
Rick & Morty
Dan Harmon and a now-disgraced Justin Roiland took the world by storm with an adult animated sci-fi comedy combining the hardest of hard sci-fi with the adult-est of Adult Swim humor. This gonzo cartoon about a grandpa-grandson duo with a horribly toxic relationship, surfing the multiverse on interdimensional adventures, became an unexpected global phenomenon in the mid-2010s.
Rick and Morty combines South Park-style shock humor, Hitchhiker’s Guide-style sci-fi satire, and surprisingly heart-wrenching emotional storytelling into an entirely unique creation. The series arrived as a breath of fresh air, and it’s still pumping out classic episodes semi-regularly after eight seasons.
Severance
Ben Stiller cooked up the perfect dystopian satire of the struggle for a good work-life balance in his game-changing sci-fi thriller Severance. Severance takes place in the drab, fluorescent-lit offices of a greedy corporation whose employees have had their minds “severed” between their work lives and their personal lives.
The “outies” enjoy the freedom of the outside world, but the “innies” don’t know any life outside the confines of their dull office environment. Severance is a pitch-perfect blend of quirky workplace comedy and chilling tech-noir mystery.
Arcane
Set in the League of Legends universe, Arcane revolves around two sisters — voiced by Hailee Steinfeld and Ella Purnell — who get swept up in a war between their native land and the city of Piltover. Arcane has plenty of Easter eggs for diehard League of Legends fans, but it’s just as accessible for non-fans.
The animation is gorgeous, the storytelling is razor-sharp, and Steinfeld and Purnell anchor the series with poignant voice performances. Arcane isn’t just one of the best sci-fi shows in recent memory; it’s one of the best shows, period.
Dark
Netflix’s supernatural thriller Dark is the closest thing I’ve seen to a worthy successor to Twin Peaks. Like Twin Peaks, it takes place in a sleepy town with a twisted paranormal underbelly. And, like Twin Peaks, it’s as much a small-town soap opera as it is a sci-fi series.
The time-traveling antics are meticulously plotted and devilishly intricate, demanding your full attention to understand every twist and payoff. But the characters are deeply human, and it’s easy to invest in this colorful ensemble.
Andor
A lot of modern Star Wars creators are essentially just playing with action figures on a grander scale, but Tony Gilroy couldn’t be less interested in fan service. He used the sprawling, familiar canvas of a galaxy far, far away to tell a timely tale about the fight against fascism.
The original trilogy followed the chosen one who was destined to lead the Rebellion to victory, but Andor followed the nameless revolutionaries who died to make it happen and were promptly forgotten by history. Andor might be the greatest Star Wars thing ever created.
The Expanse
Based on the novels of the same name by James S.A. Corey, The Expanse takes place in a future where humanity has colonized the Solar System. We follow a disparate group of protagonists, including a UN security chief, a grizzled detective, and a spaceship officer, as a conspiracy threatens the interstellar peace that the human race has cultivated.
The Expanse is sort of a Trojan Horse. Iron Man screenwriters Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby have used the framework of a pulpy space opera to explore a thought-provoking political narrative that only gets more compelling as the show goes on.
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