Sci-Fi and Fantasy Series
Science fiction and fantasy are where television spends its biggest budgets and takes its biggest swings. These are the series that land them: big ideas with characters you care about, from space opera to dragons to one very strange office. Most are from the last five years, and a few older ones stay because nothing has bettered them.
The genre labels matter less than how much the show asks you to learn. Murderbot, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Fallout explain themselves as they go and are easy to start. The Expanse, Dark and Game of Thrones have big casts, invented politics and long memories, and reward people who don't mind keeping track. Severance, Pluribus and The Leftovers sit in between: one strange premise, followed with total seriousness.
Content runs from family-friendly (Avatar: The Last Airbender) to very adult: Game of Thrones has graphic sex and violence, and Alien: Earth and Fallout are gory. Several are still going, and the notes say which. If you want one show that shows the genre at its best right now, start with Andor or Pluribus. For films, see Sci-Fi Movies; for twistier picks, Mind-Bending Movies & Shows; for the frightening end of the genre, Scary Series to Binge.
Severance
Series · 2022Office workers have their memories surgically split between work and home, and the show follows that idea to deeply unsettling places. The production design alone, all endless white corridors and boxy retro computers, is worth the time. Two seasons so far, with a third on the way.
Andor
Series · 2022A thief becomes a rebel, and you don't need to care about Star Wars to love it: this is a slow, grown-up political thriller that happens to have spaceships. The first three episodes are slow; the heist that follows is superb. Two seasons, finished.
Pluribus
Series · 2025An apocalypse where nearly everyone becomes blissfully, eerily content, except a dozen or so holdouts, among them a cranky romance novelist in Albuquerque. Vince Gilligan builds it from small, precise scenes, so it's slow by design, and every answer opens another question. Only one season so far, though a second has been ordered.
The Last of Us
Series · 2023Twenty years after a fungal pandemic, a smuggler is hired to get a teenage girl across a ruined country. As science fiction it cares far more about people than monsters, and season one is the best video game adaptation yet made. Season two split viewers more, and a third is planned.
Arcane
Series · 2021Animated, but not for kids: two sisters torn apart by a war between a gleaming city and the undercity beneath it. The animation looks like moving oil paintings, and you don't need to know the League of Legends game it's based on. Two seasons, complete.
Fallout
Series · 2024A sheltered vault-dweller emerges into a nuclear wasteland two centuries after the bombs, and Walton Goggins steals every scene as a mutated gunslinger. Darkly funny, very violent and far better than video game adaptations usually manage. The second season moved to New Vegas, and more is coming.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Series · 2026A big, gentle hedge knight and his small, bald squire wander Westeros about ninety years before Game of Thrones. Funny, warm and short on dragons, it's the friendliest thing from George R.R. Martin's world yet. The first season is just six episodes, and none runs much past 40 minutes.
Station Eleven
Series · 2021Twenty years after a flu pandemic wipes out most of the world, a traveling troupe performs Shakespeare around the Great Lakes. Sad and hopeful despite bursts of sudden violence, it's an apocalypse about art and memory rather than survival. A complete limited series. Heavy going if pandemic stories still sting.
The Expanse
Series · 2015Hard-edged science fiction about a colonized solar system sliding toward war. The opening episodes are dense and it takes a few to click, but it grows into one of TV's best space operas. Six seasons; the last is short and rushed in places, but the story does end.
Stranger Things
Series · 2016Kids on bikes, a missing friend and a government lab in 1980s Indiana. The first season is a near-perfect blend of Spielberg and Stephen King; later seasons get bigger and messier. The final season wrapped it all up at the end of 2025, and its last episodes divided critics.
Game of Thrones
Series · 2011Noble families fight for a throne while an ancient threat gathers in the north. The first four seasons are among the best TV ever made; the last two rush, and the final season disappointed most viewers. Graphic sex and violence throughout. Still worth it, if you know the ending is the weak part.
Dark
Series · 2017German time travel at its most intricate: four families in one small town, tangled across decades by a cave in the woods. Watch it in German with subtitles rather than dubbed. Three seasons with a real ending, which in this genre is rarer than it should be.
Silo
Series · 2023The last of humanity lives in a giant underground silo, told the outside air is poison, and Rebecca Ferguson's engineer starts asking why. A mystery box that actually opens. Based on Hugh Howey's novels; the third season aired in 2026, and one more is planned to finish it.
The Leftovers
Series · 2014Two percent of the world's population vanishes without explanation, and the show is about the people left grieving. The first season is bleak; the second reinvents it, and the third is one of the best final seasons ever made. It never explains why the vanishing happened, on purpose.
Black Mirror
Series · 2011Standalone stories about technology going wrong, each with a different cast and premise. Quality varies a lot, so start with a celebrated episode like 'San Junipero' or 'USS Callister' rather than at the beginning. Some episodes are genuinely disturbing; check before watching with anyone squeamish.
Murderbot
Series · 2025A security robot that has hacked its own controls just wants to be left alone to watch soap operas, but its humans keep needing saving. Alexander Skarsgård is perfect as the deadpan, socially anxious machine. Half-hour episodes and very funny. A second season is coming.
Alien: Earth
Series · 2025Noah Hawley's take on Alien: a corporation is putting dying children's minds into synthetic adult bodies just as a research ship crash-lands with something nasty aboard. Smart, gory and properly scary in places. The first season ends on a cliffhanger, and a second is on the way.
Scavengers Reign
Series · 2023An animated survival story about a crew stranded on an alien planet where every plant and creature is part of an ecosystem that wants to use them. The most original-looking sci-fi in years. It was canceled after one season, so the story is unfinished. Some gruesome body horror.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Series · 2022Captain Pike's Enterprise, years before Kirk. Episodic like classic Trek, with a new planet and often a new tone each week, including a full musical episode. Optimistic, and the easiest Trek to start cold. Its fifth season will be the last.
For All Mankind
Series · 2019Alternate history: the Soviets land on the moon first and the space race never stops. Each season jumps roughly a decade ahead, so it covers a lot of ground, starting as period drama and growing into proper sci-fi. From Ronald D. Moore of Battlestar Galactica; one final season is still to come.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Series · 2005The pick for the whole family, from about eight up: a young monk who can master all four elements has to end a world war. The worldbuilding rivals any adult fantasy, and its three seasons end perfectly. Watch this original animated series before any of the live-action versions.
Battlestar Galactica (2004)
Series · 2004Humanity's last survivors flee machines that can pass as people. A gritty war drama in space, full of real political argument about what a society owes itself in a crisis. Start with the 2003 miniseries. The first two seasons are superb; the ending divides fans.
Still can't decide? Let us pick →
More lists like this
The Best Comedy Series to Start Now
Comedies worth starting tonight, mostly from the last decade, plus the classics nothing has replaced.
21 picksPrestige Drama Series
The serious, serialized dramas that made TV the main event, from The Sopranos to The Pitt.
20 picksReality and Competition Shows Worth Your Time
Competitions built on real skill or real scheming, and reality shows that treat their people kindly.
Picks are editorial recommendations. Streaming availability changes by region and over time — the “where to stream” links check current availability on JustWatch.