Apple TV+ has clearly decided to invest in top-shelf science fiction as a defining pillar of its offering – and overall, it's put together an impressive slate. Some shows have been outright successes, and where others have missed, there's at least been a refreshingly grand artistic swing.
We've been watching closely. Here's our ranking of the current Apple TV+ Sci-Fi Category, running from worst to best.
Honorable Mentions and coming soon
On top of the 11 shows listed, there's a bunch of others we'd certainly call sci-fi-adjacent. Sugar, Shining Girls, Calls, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey and The Changeling all have sci-fi or fantasy themes, and more importantly, all are very good.
And looking to the future, there are some more ambitious sci-fi productions on the way including a long-awaited adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer, an adaptation of the quirky android novel Murderbot, and another quantum universe thriller, Dark Matter.
11: Amazing Stories
One of the first Apple TV+ shows to drop, back in 2020. Frankly, it left us feeling like the company was unsure of the type of series it wanted to be making, so it tried to make something that would appeal to everyone.
So they made something that pretty much anyone could watch... But anyone that did would be left with a distinct feeling of “meh." It's hard to make an anthology-style series consistent at the best of times, and this brief five-episode season simply had no real strong stand-outs. This is what happens when a streamer tries to make "content" instead of storytelling.
10: Invasion
Making an ongoing alien invasion TV show is hard. Inevitably, the story will slow down to a frustrating degree and take its time hitting the same story beats we've seen a million times before: Army meet alien and shoot, scientists argue we must try to communicate, human rebellion slowly brews. Invasion, so far, has been unable to find a creative way out of this conundrum.
Its first season felt like a preamble - slow and trite. By the end of the second, things finally got to where you’d want to a show like this to start. Maybe the promised third season will get somewhere good and you could just start there?
If you like this kind of sci-fi story, Invasion is probably worth powering through but casual viewers may struggle with the pace.
9: See
Another early-era swing from Apple TV+, See initially felt to us like the company’s attempt at making a Game of Thrones-style epic.
Big money was thrown at spectacle, but much like Invasion, the story played too slow and safe in its first season. Things picked up significantly in the second season, and by the end of the third and final season, this became a decent grimy, violent, future fantasy show.
We wouldn't call See a 'classic' show by any means, but if you dig the first few episodes then you've definitely found a fun binge. For the rest of us there are probably better ways to spend our time.
8: Extrapolations
This is the type of big-swing artistic enterprise we love to see a massive streamer investing in: An eight-episode anthology examining the effect of climate change on the world over 50 years. Each episode takes place in a different future year and the cast is full of stars like Meryl Streep and Edward Norton.
Sadly, the series never really manages to coalesce into anything more than the sum of its parts, and many of the episodes feel frustratingly dry and dull. There are lots of compelling sci-fi concepts here but they rarely result in exciting drama.
Still, there are some incredible moments – episodes five and seven are stunning little self-contained experiences - but unlike something like Black Mirror, this series attempts to weave together characters and themes from different episodes, making it hard to just jump in and watch one without watching it all.
But all in all, I’ll take a hugely creative misfire like this any day over most generic TV out there.
7: Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
Can you take a gigantic monster movie and turn it into an ongoing TV series? This attempt at a blockbuster TV show featuring Godzilla suggests the answer is yes. It's tantalisingly good - not least because Kurt Russell is a legend who's always fantastic fun to watch.
Spanning multiple time frames (see clip above for a look at Kurt Russell’s son Wyatt playing his younger self in the 1950s) this show is often cheesy – but in the same ways its movie counterparts play up melodrama alongside fun spectacle.
At the time of writing, a second season is only rumored, but this is a show with great potential. If you ever enjoyed a Godzilla or Kong movie, then this is the weekend watch for you.
6: Dr Brain
Apple TV+’s attempt at a Squid Game-like South Korean hit is arguably better than its Netflix counterpart. Harnessing the skill of veteran filmmaker Kim Jee-Woon, the series follows the story of a scientist who hacks into the memories of dead people. Of course, things don't go too well for him, as evidenced in the trailer above.
Across six tightly packed episodes, the story rockets through genres, from action to horror, referencing Hollywood films such as Inception and Flatliners. It's one of those hidden gems to stumble upon as you scroll through endless menus on a streaming service.
5: Constellation
This show is all about the creep. Noomi Rapace is sensational as an astronaut who returns to Earth after an accident and things just aren't quite right. Jonathan Banks is even better as the scientist who knows what is going on and may have a twin that likes to cause trouble.
The mystery at the heart of Constellation isn't really that surprising. In fact, most viewers are likely to pick what's going on from the very beginning – but that doesn't hurt this show at all. The goal here isn't to be a mystery show; rather it's about establishing a super unsettling tone and surfing it for eight episodes.
The opening two episodes are a particular highlight forming a kind of self-contained disaster movie depicting chaos as some mysterious debris hits the International Space Station. Directed by legendary filmmaker Michelle McLaren, we'd highly recommend at least watching these first two episodes if you like intense space disaster stories.
4: Silo
Based on a trilogy of books, this series was in and out of pre-production for years before Apple picked it up and dropped a load of cash on it to make it happen. Set in a future where a community lives in a huge underground silo without any memory of what led to them living there, this is exactly the type of weird, mysterious sci-fi you want to see on TV.
Great casting and talented writers make this a perfectly paced mystery - playing a little like Lost on fast forward - and with a second season on the way, you don’t have to worry about things being left unanswered.
Anyone who's read the books knows just how ambitious this story is, and the crazy path that lies ahead as this series develops. I can't wait to see how far this show goes into loonytown.
3: Foundation
This is easily Apple TV+’s biggest swing into making something for the ages – adapting Isaac Asimov’s borderline unadaptable collection of novels chronicling a thousand-year Galactic war.
Obviously, major changes were needed to turn a novel series that read like future history books into an ongoing TV show – and of course, those changes have been controversial among hard sci-fi fans. However, this show is insanely ambitious, jumping 100 years between seasons and indulging in some pretty heady ideas.
This is serious sci-fi TV – and honestly unlike anything we've seen before. A third season has been commissioned, but it’s hard to know how long Apple will continue to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something that to be realistic, many viewers are going to find inaccessibly weird.
Enjoy it while it lasts, sci-fi fans – this already feels like a relic of the Peak TV era and would likely not be commissioned today.
2: For All Mankind
Starting off as a simple alternate history show, looking at what would’ve happened if the Soviets were first to land on the Moon in the 1960s, For All Mankind has spiralled out into an incredible piece of sci-fi storytelling.
Each consecutive season of the show has jumped about a decade in time, telling the story of a world that continued with the space race instead of descending into an expensive Cold War.
Let it be said, this is not a perfect show. The storytelling frequently focuses on frustrating, soapy, character-based melodramatics – but the overarching narrative is so fascinating that it’s easy to look past the flaws. And with super cool moments like the one in the above clip (from season 2) it's hard not to jump up out of your seat and cheer.
We’re four seasons into what the creators have envisioned as a seven-season arc spanning 70 years. C’mon Apple, do something good for once and keep this series going.
1: Severance
Severance appeared in early 2022, out of the blue, and smacked the world in the face with one of the most creative and exciting seasons of TV in a long time. Just check out the opening credit sequence above to get a taste of how strange and original this show is.
Seriously engaging with a great sci-fi premise – what would happen if you could literally separate the work you from the home you – this show built and built in intensity over nine episodes before climaxing with an all-time great finale.
An incredible cast (Christopher Walken, John Turturro, Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette) accompanies a perfectly calibrated mystery box of a story.
This is one of the few shows to capture that “WTF is going on?” vibe perfected by Lost. Can it sustain that tone over multiple seasons? Who knows – but if it can, we are watching an all-time great show play out in real time. Strike-related delays to production unfortunately mean we may be waiting until early 2025 for season two.
Source: Apple TV+
