The Best Sci-fi Shows Not On Netflix
You’re scrolling through your Netflix homepage, it’s delivering you the same old drivel it’s been showing you for years now. You briefly consider another streaming service but the idea of having yet another subscription turns you off almost immediately. But wait, let’s take a good look at all the excellent sci-fi television the other services are cranking out.
For All Mankind (Apple TV)
This alternate history show portrays a world in which Russia lands on the moon first and America is so salty about it they keep the Cold War going a couple extra decades. Each season takes place over a 10 year period and the tech marches along in an appropriately realistic fashion. As season two gets started, we get to see clunky astronauts on the moon march around with assault rifles. I’m a simple man, astronauts with guns? I’m sold.
Devs (Hulu)
From Alex Garland, the director of Ex Machina, this show plays with fate, free will, and all the drama that happens in between. Ostensibly a murder mystery taking place inside the bunker of an eccentric computer programming firm, this mystery show plays with theoretical physics and all sorts of sci-fi weirdness.
Undone (Amazon Prime)
Lead by Rosa Salazar and produced in a rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly style, this show is a fun head-trip. After almost dying in a car accident, Rosa’s character Alma becomes undone from time itself. Able to jump all over the place, she slowly uses this ability to solve the mystery behind her father’s death.
Foundation (Apple TV)
Foundation is a prestige piece as large and important as Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. While Dune is terrified of dropping into cinemas, Foundation can comfortably release onto Apple TV. Foundation is a pinnacle of science fiction written by Isaac Asimov. The books follow a civilisation as it grows out of the bones of the crumbling empire over the course of hundreds of years. The show is just as grand and sweeping, but ditches all the musty self-congratulatory talky bits of the books in order to make a story that’s more engaging for the screen.
Foundation drops on September 24th on Apple Tv.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgbPSA94Rqg
