--- title: "Sci-Fi & Fantasy series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/genre/sci-fi-and-fantasy" region: "US" total: 100 shown: 60 licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Sci-Fi & Fantasy series A strange premise is the cheapest thing in television. Anyone can split a mind in two, bring the dead home or park a station at the edge of known space; what we score is whether the people inside the idea still behave like people once the novelty has worn off. The good ones use the impossible thing to look harder at grief, work or power. The poor ones spend eight episodes explaining the rules. Our shelf leans towards the 2010s, and towards series that ask for patience: nearly everything we rate highly has a slow first season and a second that repays it. Start with [The Leftovers](/tv/the-leftovers), 87, hard going at first and then as good as television gets; [Severance](/tv/severance), 86, for an office built to unsettle; and [The Returned](/tv/the-returned), 85, dread without scares in a French mountain town. After those, [Star Trek: Deep Space Nine](/tv/star-trek-deep-space-nine) is the Star Trek that grew up, and [Over the Garden Wall](/tv/over-the-garden-wall) is done in two hours. For US. 100 titles; 60 listed here. Add `?region=XX` for another country. - [*Lanterns*](https://film.one/tv/lanterns.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 68 · TV-MA · Drama/Mystery · on HBO Max Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre are the best reason to watch a superhero programme in some time, and *Lanterns* keeps cutting away from them. A patient, well-acted crime drama with a plot that will not sit still. - [*Stuart Fails to Save the Universe*](https://film.one/tv/stuart-fails-to-save-the-universe.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 57 · TV-MA · 24m · Comedy/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on HBO Max The Big Bang Theory’s background players get their own multiverse, and the idea is better than the jokes. Kevin Sussman and Brian Posehn are good company for ten short episodes; the writing keeps reaching for a reference when it needs a laugh. - [*The Boroughs*](https://film.one/tv/the-boroughs.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 73 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Mystery · on Netflix *The Boroughs* earns its warmth by taking its older heroes seriously. Alfred Molina and Alfre Woodard make the adventure worth following, even when the monster mystery becomes a chore. - [*Bait*](https://film.one/tv/bait-2026.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 81 · TV-MA · Drama/Comedy · on Amazon Prime Video Riz Ahmed makes *Bait* a funny, uneasy comedy about an actor trying to win a job and please far too many people. Its family scenes cut deepest; some supporting characters deserve more attention. - [*The Beauty*](https://film.one/tv/the-beauty.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 65 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Hulu Ryan Murphy’s body-horror series delivers enough gruesome invention and committed acting to reward a strong stomach. Its beauty-industry satire is blunt, though, and an eleven-episode season gives the scattered storytelling too much space. - [*A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms*](https://film.one/tv/a-knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 73 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on HBO Max Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell make this small-scale fantasy good company. The friendship is worth following, even when the story stretches thin and the humour turns needlessly coarse. - [*Star Trek: Starfleet Academy*](https://film.one/tv/star-trek-starfleet-academy.md) — 2026 · Fi1m 76 · TV-14 · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Action & Adventure · on Paramount+ Holly Hunter steadies a warm, occasionally awkward *Star Trek* school drama whose young ensemble deserves more equal attention. The familiar adolescent troubles mostly earn their place beside the diplomacy, though some visual effects need work. - [*Pluribus*](https://film.one/tv/pluribus.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 82 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Apple TV Vince Gilligan’s science-fiction series makes compulsory happiness an unsettling prospect, with Rhea Seehorn giving its questions a stubborn human centre. We recommend it, though the slow pace sometimes outlasts the pleasure of thinking things through. - [*Alien: Earth*](https://film.one/tv/alien-earth.md) — 2025 · Fi1m 76 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Disney+, Hulu Noah Hawley’s eight-part prequel is the most confident thing done with these monsters in years, with new creatures that horrified us and a cast that takes the strangeness seriously. It also talks at length about what makes a person, and it slackens whenever it does. - [*Fantasmas*](https://film.one/tv/fantasmas.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 84 · TV-MA · 30m · Comedy/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on HBO Max Julio Torres turns housing anxiety and bureaucracy into funny, peculiar television. *Fantasmas* gives its sketches more freedom than they always deserve, but the detours are usually worth taking, and the anger beneath them is well placed. - [*Dark Matter*](https://film.one/tv/dark-matter.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 61 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV Blake Crouch adapts his own novel into nine handsome, glum hours in which Joel Edgerton plays two versions of one man. The idea is good and the first two episodes grip; after that the series keeps opening doors onto rooms we have already seen. - [*Fallout*](https://film.one/tv/fallout.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 80 · TV-MA · Action & Adventure/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Amazon Prime Video Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins give *Fallout* people worth following through its grotesque wasteland. It is funny, carefully made television, with a wandering plot that sometimes tests the goodwill its cast has earned. - [*3 Body Problem*](https://film.one/tv/3-body-problem.md) — 2024 · Fi1m 65 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Mystery · on Netflix Benioff, Weiss and Woo have made Liu Cixin’s supposedly unfilmable novel into eight lucid, handsome episodes. The 1960s scenes and the game inside the headset are superb; the present-day scientists are thin, and they get most of the screen. - [*Silo*](https://film.one/tv/silo.md) — 2023 · Fi1m 75 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Apple TV Rebecca Ferguson makes *Silo* worth the patience it demands. This is a good underground mystery with a persuasive setting, though its wandering plot too often delays the discoveries we have come for. - [*Wednesday*](https://film.one/tv/wednesday.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 71 · TV-14 · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Mystery · on Netflix Jenna Ortega makes *Wednesday* worth the evening, finding real comedy in its heroine’s severity. The supernatural school mystery is less distinctive, but the cast supplies enough warmth and mischief to carry it. - [*Andor*](https://film.one/tv/andor.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 86 · TV-14 · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Action & Adventure · on Disney+ *Andor* is a gripping political thriller built around ordinary lives under the Empire. Its patience pays off in performances and places worth caring about, though the opening takes too long to find its shape. - [*The Lazarus Project*](https://film.one/tv/the-lazarus-project.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 78 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama *The Lazarus Project* is a good science-fiction thriller with an unusually persuasive lead in Paapa Essiedu. Its complicated plotting and familiar espionage business can be wearing, but the decisions behind its time resets give it something worth arguing about. - [*Star Trek: Strange New Worlds*](https://film.one/tv/star-trek-strange-new-worlds.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 77 · TV-14 · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Paramount+ The Enterprise is back to one adventure a week, with a captain who listens and a bridge you would want to work on. Warm, handsome and good company; a little too fond of the old tunes to find many new ones. - [*FROM*](https://film.one/tv/from.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 65 · TV-MA · Mystery/Drama A family drives into a town no road leads out of, and after dark the neighbours come knocking. Harold Perrineau holds the whole thing together, the nights are properly frightening, and the days are spent having the same argument twice. - [*Severance*](https://film.one/tv/severance.md) — 2022 · Fi1m 86 · TV-MA · Drama/Mystery · on Apple TV *Severance* makes its divided-memory premise frightening through Adam Scott’s performance and an office built to unsettle. The first season takes too long to gather pace, but its workplace satire earns the patience it asks for. - [*Foundation*](https://film.one/tv/foundation.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 61 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Apple TV David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman’s adaptation of Asimov is built on a scale television rarely attempts and lit like a cathedral. It is also slow, solemn and short of people to care about, though Lee Pace’s cloned emperor is worth the wait. - [*Loki*](https://film.one/tv/loki.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 71 · TV-14 · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Disney+ Tom Hiddleston and Owen Wilson make a proper double act in a time-police office designed like a 1970s tax department. The show explains its rules in nearly every episode, and by the second season the explaining has taken over. - [*The Underground Railroad*](https://film.one/tv/the-underground-railroad.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 86 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Amazon Prime Video Barry Jenkins’s ten-part adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel is slow, exact and hard to watch. Thuso Mbedu carries it without asking to be liked; the middle drifts, but it is his most serious work. - [*INVINCIBLE*](https://film.one/tv/invincible-2021.md) — 2021 · Fi1m 74 · TV-MA · Animation/Drama · on Amazon Prime Video Robert Kirkman adapts his own comic into a bloody animated series about a boy whose father is the strongest hero on Earth. The talking scenes look cheap and the fights do not, and Sandra Oh and J.K. Simmons make the family worth caring about. - [*Lovecraft Country*](https://film.one/tv/lovecraft-country.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 74 · TV-MA · 1h 00m · Drama/Mystery · on HBO Max Misha Green’s adaptation of Matt Ruff’s novel starts as the most frightening hour of horror television in years and ends as ten of the busiest. We recommend it, with a warning: the first episode sets a standard the rest cannot keep. - [*Snowpiercer*](https://film.one/tv/snowpiercer-2020.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 63 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama *Snowpiercer* makes an uneven detective drama out of its class-divided train, with Jennifer Connelly supplying much of the interest. The first season becomes absorbing, but its solemn dialogue and slow start make that improvement harder work than it should be. - [*The Plot Against America*](https://film.one/tv/the-plot-against-america.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 76 · TV-MA · 1h 01m · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on HBO Max Simon and Burns’s adaptation of Roth is slow, exact and quietly frightening, and Morgan Spector and Zoe Kazan give it the best marriage on screen in a good while. It is thin in the middle and hurried at the end, and worth six evenings anyway. - [*Devs*](https://film.one/tv/devs.md) — 2020 · Fi1m 68 · TV-MA · 52m · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Hulu Alex Garland’s first series is handsome, patient and slow, a tech thriller that stops every twenty minutes to explain free will. Nick Offerman and Alison Pill make the explaining bearable; Sonoya Mizuno, as the woman doing the investigating, is given too little to play. - [*The Witcher*](https://film.one/tv/the-witcher.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 61 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Netflix Lauren Schmidt Hissrich’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books has a first-rate Geralt in Henry Cavill, a bard worth the trip and a first season that hides its own structure. The seasons after it grow the map and lose the man. - [*The Mandalorian*](https://film.one/tv/the-mandalorian.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 76 · TV-14 · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Action & Adventure · on Disney+ Jon Favreau’s space western makes good television out of bounty hunting, brisk action and a welcome sense of humour. The masked lead remains underwritten, but these frontier adventures have enough character elsewhere to earn their place in an evening. - [*For All Mankind*](https://film.one/tv/for-all-mankind-2019.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 66 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Apple TV An alternate space race in which the Soviets land first, told with real feeling for hardware and a slow hand with people. The first season takes six episodes to find its footing; when it does, on the moon and in the women’s programme, it is worth the wait. - [*Watchmen*](https://film.one/tv/watchmen-2019.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 84 · TV-MA · Drama/Crime · on HBO Max Damon Lindelof’s nine-part sequel to the comic is nervy, strange and mostly gripping, with Regina King carrying it and Tim Blake Nelson stealing it. His habit of hoarding answers costs it something, but not enough to change our verdict. - [*The Boys*](https://film.one/tv/the-boys.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 72 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Action & Adventure · on Amazon Prime Video Eric Kripke’s adaptation of Garth Ennis’s comic puts superheroes on a corporate payroll and lets them behave accordingly. Antony Starr’s Homelander is a great television monster; the show around him is cruder than it is clever, and it runs long. - [*Years and Years*](https://film.one/tv/years-and-years.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 79 · TV-MA · 1h 00m · Drama/War & Politics · on HBO Max Russell T Davies makes an anxious, absorbing family drama out of political upheaval and technological change. The Lyons family is given too many issues to illustrate, but the performances keep us worrying about the people. - [*Ghosts*](https://film.one/tv/ghosts.md) — 2019 · Fi1m 80 · TV-14 · Comedy/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Paramount+ The Horrible Histories team’s haunted-house sitcom is gentle, quick and far better built than its silliness suggests, played by an ensemble who have been making each other laugh for years. The hotel plot goes nowhere, and it hardly matters. - [*The Terror*](https://film.one/tv/the-terror.md) — 2018 · Fi1m 82 · TV-14 · 44m · Mystery/Drama · on Amazon Prime Video, AMC+, The Roku Channel Ten hours of two ships frozen into the Arctic, and the most frightening period television we have sat through in a long while. The creature is the least of it; the cold, the dark and the men do the work. It goes slack in the middle. - [*Dark*](https://film.one/tv/dark.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 80 · TV-MA · Crime/Drama · on Netflix Friese and bo Odar’s time-travel mystery is gloomy, slow and merciless with your attention, and it is one of the few puzzle series that keeps every promise it makes. The people are pieces on a board, but the board is a wonder. - [*The Handmaid's Tale*](https://film.one/tv/the-handmaids-tale.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 75 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Hulu For ten episodes this is as frightening as anything television has done with tyranny, built on Elisabeth Moss’s face and Ane Crabtree’s red cloaks. Over six seasons the series keeps hurting June and letting her up again, and the repetition dulls it. - [*Legion*](https://film.one/tv/legion.md) — 2017 · Fi1m 77 · TV-MA · 50m · Action & Adventure/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Hulu Noah Hawley’s X-Men series is the strangest thing anyone has made from a comic, and its first eight episodes are among the best television made from one. The nineteen that follow do not know when to stop. Watch the first run; decide for yourself after that. - [*Westworld*](https://film.one/tv/westworld-2016.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 74 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Western Joy and Nolan’s remake of Crichton’s robot western has a first season as exact and unsettling as anything of its kind, with Evan Rachel Wood and Thandiwe Newton at their best. Then it falls in love with its puzzles and loses the people. - [*The Good Place*](https://film.one/tv/the-good-place.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 84 · TV-14 · 22m · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Comedy · on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock Michael Schur’s afterlife comedy is the rare sitcom with an idea it follows through, and a cast who can land a lecture on Kant as a punchline. It loses its way in the third season and finds it again in the fourth. - [*Stranger Things*](https://film.one/tv/stranger-things.md) — 2016 · Fi1m 77 · TV-14 · Action & Adventure/Mystery · on Netflix The first eight episodes are a well-built small-town horror story: children who can act, a two-note synthesiser score that does half the work, and Winona Ryder holding nothing back. The later runs get bigger, and not always in the right places. - [*The Expanse*](https://film.one/tv/the-expanse.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 64 · TV-14 · Drama/Mystery · on Amazon Prime Video *The Expanse* builds a convincing setting, then makes meeting its inhabitants needlessly difficult. The detail and cast reward an interest in political science fiction, but the tangled opening and heavy explanations are substantial obstacles. - [*Humans*](https://film.one/tv/humans.md) — 2015 · Fi1m 74 · TV-14 · 46m · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, The Roku Channel, Tubi *Humans* is thoughtful, unsettling science fiction about the people expected to serve us. Its familiar thriller plot needs patience, but the performances make the questions about work and personhood worth following. - [*Over the Garden Wall*](https://film.one/tv/over-the-garden-wall.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 86 · TV-PG · 12m · Mystery/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu McHale and Krentz’s ten-part fairy tale about two brothers lost in an autumn wood is a children’s cartoon that will frighten you and make you laugh in the same minute. The songs are uneven and one episode idles, but it is over in two hours. - [*Outlander*](https://film.one/tv/outlander.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 74 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Starz *Outlander* is worth settling into for Caitríona Balfe and Sam Heughan, and for a romance that takes its heroine seriously. The caveats are a slow start and narration that seldom knows when to stop. - [*The Leftovers*](https://film.one/tv/the-leftovers.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 87 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on HBO Max Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s drama about the people left behind is hard going for most of its first season. Stay with it: from the second year it is as good as television gets, and Carrie Coon is the reason. - [*Penny Dreadful*](https://film.one/tv/penny-dreadful.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 76 · TV-MA · 1h 00m · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Paramount+ John Logan’s gathering of Victorian monsters takes every one of them seriously, and Eva Green is remarkable as the medium at its centre. It moves slowly and it is sometimes daft, but it is made with more care than pulp usually gets. - [*Believe*](https://film.one/tv/believe.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 49 · TV-14 · 43m · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Tubi Alfonso Cuarón directs a pilot that opens like a film and settles within the hour into a chase anybody could run. Sequoyah and Lindo are worth watching; the thirteen episodes around them are not, and a series about wonder should not be this easy to predict. - [*Inside No. 9*](https://film.one/tv/inside-no-9.md) — 2014 · Fi1m 84 · TV-MA · 29m · Comedy/Mystery Shearsmith and Pemberton set themselves a hard brief, a new story every half hour, and meet it far more often than they miss. Tight, cruel, funny and unexpectedly sad; the weakest episodes are the ones that exist only to reach their final shot. - [*Rick and Morty*](https://film.one/tv/rick-and-morty.md) — 2013 · Fi1m 78 · TV-MA · Animation/Comedy · on HBO Max, Hulu Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s comedy about a drunk genius and his frightened grandson is fast, cruel and at first as clever as anything on television. Later it grows fond of its own reflection, but the good episodes earn an evening. - [*Attack on Titan*](https://film.one/tv/attack-on-titan.md) — 2013 · Fi1m 83 · TV-MA · Animation/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Crunchyroll, Hulu An anime about teenagers fighting man-eating giants grows, over four seasons and 87 episodes, into something larger and much bleaker. It is loud, sometimes exhausting, and for most of its run it is superb. - [*Orphan Black*](https://film.one/tv/orphan-black.md) — 2013 · Fi1m 74 · TV-MA · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy Tatiana Maslany’s several performances hold this clone thriller together for five seasons, and they are worth the time on their own. The conspiracy around them grows a new head every year, and somewhere in the fourth we stopped keeping notes. - [*Utopia*](https://film.one/tv/utopia.md) — 2013 · Fi1m 83 · TV-MA · 50m · Mystery/Drama · on BritBox Dennis Kelly’s conspiracy thriller is one of the strangest-looking things British television has made: flat, bright, acid yellow, and scored with breathing. It is cruel, funny and gripping across its first six episodes, and rather less sure of itself across the second six. - [*The Returned*](https://film.one/tv/the-returned.md) — 2012 · Fi1m 85 · TV-MA · 55m · Mystery/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Tubi Fabrice Gobert’s series about the dead walking home to a French mountain town has almost no scares and a great deal of dread. The first eight episodes are as fine as television of this kind gets; the second run, three years later, is not. - [*Gravity Falls*](https://film.one/tv/gravity-falls.md) — 2012 · Fi1m 84 · TV-Y7 · Action & Adventure/Animation · on Disney+ Alex Hirsch’s two series about twins spending a summer in a strange Oregon town are funnier, odder and better built than a children’s cartoon has any need to be. The first run takes a while to find its shape. Stay with it. - [*Black Mirror*](https://film.one/tv/black-mirror.md) — 2011 · Fi1m 81 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on Netflix We recommend *Black Mirror* for its straight-faced absurdity and performances that make the distress matter. Its weakness is a tendency to keep tightening the screws after the point is already clear. - [*Once Upon a Time*](https://film.one/tv/once-upon-a-time.md) — 2011 · Fi1m 65 · TV-PG · 43m · Drama/Sci-Fi & Fantasy · on Disney+, Hulu *Once Upon a Time* has an inviting premise and a cast able to make its sillier moments enjoyable. The tangled plotting and solemn fairy-tale flashbacks make this a qualified recommendation for fantasy enthusiasts. - [*Person of Interest*](https://film.one/tv/person-of-interest.md) — 2011 · Fi1m 78 · TV-14 · Action & Adventure/Crime · on Amazon Prime Video, Peacock Jonathan Nolan’s surveillance thriller starts as a tidy case-of-the-week procedural and turns, over five seasons, into something stranger and better about a machine that watches everyone. Michael Emerson is the reason to stay; the formula is the reason some will not. - [*Game of Thrones*](https://film.one/tv/game-of-thrones.md) — 2011 · Fi1m 82 · TV-MA · Sci-Fi & Fantasy/Drama · on HBO Max The biggest thing television has attempted, and for six seasons close to the best of it: a political drama in armour, with a cast that has no weak link. The last thirteen episodes hurry, and it shows, but not enough to keep you away. Next page: https://film.one/tv/genre/sci-fi-and-fantasy.md?page=2 --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/genre/sci-fi-and-fantasy