We are in a golden age of TV science fiction: every streaming service wants a big sci-fi show, and they’re prepared to pay to make them look as spectacular as possible. Many of the best shows of the 2020s take us away from our regular reality - here is our pick of the top ten, plus a guide on where to stream them. Enjoy the journey!
Severance
You don’t need rocket ships and two-headed aliens to qualify as science fiction: one simple concept can be enough. How about a company that wipes its employees’ memories of the outside world when they enter the building, then makes them forget all about work when they go home? Severance takes that idea and extrapolates it to create a stinging satire on office culture, which brims with odd characters and meticulously constructed, eerily beautiful shots courtesy of director Ben Stiller. Severance might not be the most spectacular show on this list, but it’s almost certainly the smartest.
Silo
Sci-fi loves a dystopia, especially if it’s life in the aftermath of a nuclear apocalypse. Here the survivors have taken refuge underground in a very narrow, very deep bunker, where the people in charge live on the upper floors and the ordinary working person has to slum it down below. The citizens of this society have been told that the only alternative is death: the air outside will kill them. But is that true? As myths crumble and the silo-dwellers on the lower floors wonder whether their rulers are really benign, Silo brings us sharp allegory and tough action with a nicely grubby steampunk vibe.
Dark Matter
Put your brain in top gear for a multiverse-driven drama that revels in the complexity of its story: Joel Edgerton plays Jason, a physicist who starts hopping between realities when he trades places with a different version of himself. When it gets to the point where numerous Jasons are helping and/or killing each other, it’s time to just let go and enjoy a highly imaginative ride: the scene where Jason - or rather, a Jason - runs down an infinite corridor, opening door after door and sampling an entirely different version of Earth behind each one, is a real mind-melter.
Invasion
There’s an old maxim in horror and sci-fi writing: don’t show too much of the monster too early. Invasion takes that to heart, since although it’s about an alien infiltration that threatens the future of humanity, it’s much more concerned with humanity itself and how people respond to the worst possible crisis. While ordinary citizens make decisions that reveal who they really were all along, and governments and the military show their true colours too, the threat of the invaders hangs in the corner of our eye, giving a classy series a constant feeling of menace.
Foundation
Dramatising the work of storied science-fiction novelist Isaac Asimov is a daunting task for any TV show, but this series is totally up to it. With Jared Harris leading a fantastic cast as Hari, the mathematician whose science of “psychohistory” enables him to predict the future and mess around with time, and Lee Pace putting in a corking turn as cloned emperor Brother Day, the sprawling story of a future universe where people are fighting for freedom from oppressive regimes is rendered as a truly spectacular epic. There’s something dazzling, thought-provoking or both in every episode.
3 Body Problem
This sophisticated drama has serious pedigree: it’s overseen by writers David Benioff and DB Weiss, and serves as their follow-up to Game of Thrones, so it knows how to tell a big story - which is just as well, because fans of Chinese novelist Liu Cixin and his Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy would not have tolerated a second-rate dramatisation. A tale that begins with physicists recording impossible results in their experiments ends up being an essay on the future of humanity itself, with big ideas pinging about like electrons - and some massive set pieces thrown in to keep our pulses racing.
Dune: Prophecy
Women rule the universe in this savvy Dune prequel, starring Emily Watson and Olivia Williams as two sisters heading up the Sisterhood, an organisation that will become what fans of the films know as the Bene Gesserit. The story is one of revolutions, rival factions and dreadful prophecies, set in worlds where the power of the mind is as important as any military weaponry - all this takes place against some of the most beautiful artificial landscapes on TV, with Watson and Williams lending it tons of extra class.
Upload
Do you feel like more and more of your mind, body and soul is gradually being uploaded to the internet? How about if you could actually just live online, cheating death into the bargain? That’s what’s available to the people who can pay to do it, in a sly comedy that takes aim both at all of us doomscrolling, and at big tech companies who may not be as cuddly and caring as they make out. It turns out that the digital utopia the characters here are promised may have the odd rather serious glitch…
Station Eleven
If you like a sci-fi show that gives you all the feels and leaves you with thoughts you could ponder on for days, check out this ambitious miniseries, based (quite loosely) on Emily St John Mandel’s novel and reminiscent of epic series such as The Leftovers. We are 20 years on from a pandemic that has upended society, but this isn’t your regular post-apocalyptic dystopia. Big concepts, rich characters and profound emotions are everywhere in a show that ultimately has a simple message: in the worst circumstances, humans will come together - helped by the art they create - and survive.
Fallout
At first glance you might think this is basically the same show as Silo: a nuclear bomb goes off, and two centuries later the characters we meet have only ever known life in their sealed underground bunker. But in a series based on the popular video game franchise, soon we are following Lucy (Ella Purnell) out of Vault 33 and into the world above ground, which is a retrofuturist maelstrom with danger around every corner. For those who like their sci-fi brash and energetic rather than pensive and allegorical, Fallout is a blast.
Where to Watch the Best Sci-Fi Shows Streaming Online
Discover where to stream the best shows the sci-fi genre has to offer below!
