The Definitive Ranking of Apple TV+ Sci-Fi Shows

Creating any definitive ranking feels like navigating a minefield of subjective experience, especially when discussing science fiction – a genre that speaks to us on deeply personal levels. As I’ve immersed myself in Apple TV+’s growing constellation of sci-fi offerings, I’ve found myself repeatedly recalibrating my opinions, weighing narrative ambition against execution, visual splendor against thematic depth.

What follows isn’t merely a list but a personal odyssey through Apple’s science fiction landscape – from shows that missed their potential to those that have fundamentally altered my perception of what television can accomplish. I’ve ranked these series not just on production values or star power, but on how they’ve resonated with me as a lifelong devotee of speculative fiction.

Let’s begin our countdown to what I consider the best of Apple’s sci-fi universe.

12. Amazing Stories (2020)

There’s something particularly disappointing about unfulfilled potential, and “Amazing Stories” exemplifies this frustration. Despite the prestigious Spielberg connection and the anthology format that should have provided fertile ground for innovation, the series never found its footing during its brief five-episode run.

Each standalone tale offered glimpses of what might have been – moments of wonder interspersed with formulaic storytelling. The anthology format, which should have been liberating, somehow became constraining, with episodes that felt neither adventurous enough to captivate nor substantial enough to provoke deeper contemplation.

What remains most telling is how quickly the series vanished from cultural conversation – a shooting star that burned too briefly to leave a lasting impression on the sci-fi firmament.

11. Hello Tomorrow! (2023)

The retro-futuristic aesthetic of “Hello Tomorrow!” immediately seduced me with its 1950s chrome-and-optimism veneer layered over distinctly modern anxieties. Billy Crudup delivers a captivating performance as Jack Billings, a salesman peddling lunar timeshares with the slick conviction of a man who might believe his own fabrications.

Yet something about the execution never quite matched its conceptual promise. The series creates a visually sumptuous world where retrofuturism isn’t just aesthetic but thematic – exploring how past generations’ technological utopian dreams inevitably collide with human nature. Despite these strengths, the narrative momentum sometimes stalled, trapped between satire and sincerity.

I found myself admiring “Hello Tomorrow!” more than embracing it – appreciating its stylistic ambitions while remaining emotionally distanced from its characters’ journeys.

10. Circuit Breakers (2022)

“Circuit Breakers” is refreshingly unpretentious. It manages to explore complex technological ethics through the lens of younger protagonists without condescending to its audience. Each episode constructs a different moral labyrinth centered around speculative technology, creating compact parables about our relationship with innovation.

What particularly resonates with me is how the series refracts adult anxieties through younger perspectives, reminding us that technological ethics aren’t abstract philosophical concerns but deeply personal dilemmas that will shape future generations. The anthology format serves the concept perfectly, allowing for varied tones and approaches.

While perhaps lacking the production scale of Apple’s flagship sci-fi offerings, “Circuit Breakers” compensates with conceptual clarity and emotional directness. It understands that sometimes the most effective science fiction doesn’t require interplanetary stakes – just human hearts confronting technological change.

9. Dr. Brain (2021)

“Dr. Brain” represents Apple’s willingness to explore science fiction through non-Western cultural lenses, resulting in a psychological thriller that feels distinctly Korean in its sensibilities while addressing universal themes of grief, memory, and identity. Lee Sun-kyun’s performance anchors this mind-bending narrative with emotional authenticity that grounds even its most speculative elements.

The series’ premise – technology allowing access to the memories of the deceased – serves as a perfect metaphor for grief itself, that desperate desire to maintain connection with those we’ve lost. What distinguishes “Dr. Brain” from more conventional memory-exploration narratives is its unflinching examination of how memories become contaminated, unreliable, yet emotionally essential.

While sometimes uneven in pacing, the series’ visual inventiveness in representing subjective memory landscapes demonstrates how science fiction can visualize interior emotional states in ways no other genre can achieve.

8. Sunny (2024)

“Sunny” occupies a unique position in Apple’s sci-fi ecosystem – a series that uses its near-future Japanese setting not for spectacle but for intimate character exploration. Rashida Jones brings nuanced grief to her portrayal of an American woman whose devastating loss leads to an unexpected connection with an advanced domestic robot.

What fascinates me most about “Sunny” is its patient exploration of human-AI relationships not as existential threats but as complicated emotional entanglements. The series understands that the most profound technological changes often happen in domestic spaces, altering our most intimate relationships before we fully comprehend their implications.

The show’s vision of near-future Japan strikes a delicate balance – technologically advanced yet recognizably human, creating a setting where subtle technological shifts illuminate rather than overwhelm character development. “Sunny” reminds us that sometimes science fiction’s greatest power lies in small-scale personal narratives rather than civilization-threatening cataclysms.

7. Silo (2023-Present)

“Silo” presents a masterclass in environmental storytelling, where the massive underground structure transcends mere setting to become a potent metaphor for stratified society and controlled information. Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette embodies the perfect fusion of emotional vulnerability and analytical precision—her engineering mind methodically dismantling both mechanical systems and societal falsehoods with equal determination. The series’ visual language deserves particular praise, with director Morten Tyldum establishing a vertical grammar where lighting, space, and texture create a sensory experience that reinforces class divisions without requiring explicit exposition.

What ultimately relegates “Silo” to this position in my hierarchy is its occasional narrative timidity—moments where the adaptation retreats from the existential horror at the core of Hugh Howey’s literary vision. The television format sometimes demands conventional character beats that soften the relentless psychological claustrophobia that made the source material so distinctive. Despite these compromises, the series stands as compelling evidence of Apple’s commitment to science fiction that prizes conceptual integrity and atmospheric immersion over empty spectacle.

6. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023)

“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” occupies fascinating territory as both Monsterverse extension and multi-generational family saga exploring institutional secrecy and inherited trauma. The inspired casting of Kurt Russell alongside his son Wyatt Russell creates a visual hereditary link that reinforces the series’ exploration of how catastrophe echoes across decades, with each timeline representing a different stage of collective psychological response to existential threat. Rather than attempting to match blockbuster spectacle, the series embraces strategic minimalism in its monster presentations—using shadow, suggestion, and environmental aftermath to create a more psychologically effective kaiju presence than constant CGI bombardment could achieve.

Where “Monarch” occasionally falters is in balancing its dual identity as franchise obligation and character study—storylines sometimes bend awkwardly to accommodate connections to the broader Monsterverse at the expense of the more compelling family dynamics. Nevertheless, the series demonstrates remarkable ambition in its temporal structure and thematic complexity, treating established monster mythology as worthy of genuine philosophical examination rather than mere exploitation. Its willingness to prioritize the human psychological aftermath of titan encounters over spectacle itself marks it as one of the more thoughtful entries in the broader kaiju renaissance.

5. Invasion (2021-Present)

“Invasion” might be Apple’s most divisive sci-fi offering – a series that deliberately subverts almost every convention of alien invasion narratives. Rather than focusing on military responses or governmental crisis management, the series stubbornly maintains its intimate focus on ordinary people across different continents, creating a fragmented global mosaic of confusion, fear, and resilience.

This fragmented approach initially frustrated me, as it deliberately withholds the spectacular alien encounters that genre conventions have trained us to expect. But this frustration eventually transformed into appreciation for how the series captures something often missing from invasion narratives – the disorienting experience of global events filtered through limited personal perspectives.

The international scope creates a uniquely global perspective rarely seen in American science fiction television, though this ambition sometimes results in uneven character development. Despite occasional pacing issues, “Invasion” represents one of Apple’s most conceptually daring approaches to science fiction storytelling.

4. Strange Planet (2023)

Animation offers unique opportunities for science fiction, allowing creators to visualize completely alien perspectives without the constraints of practical effects. “Strange Planet” leverages this freedom brilliantly, using deceptively simple visuals and deliberately stilted dialogue to create something genuinely unique in the science fiction landscape.

Based on Nathan W. Pyle’s beloved webcomic and co-created with “Rick and Morty” mastermind Dan Harmon, the series presents blue aliens observing and describing human behaviors with clinical detachment and linguistic peculiarity. What emerges is a form of anthropological science fiction that defamiliarizes our most common social rituals, relationships, and emotional patterns.

The genius of “Strange Planet” lies in how it uses comedy to achieve what the best science fiction always strives for – making us see our own humanity through alien eyes. Each episode transforms mundane human activities into bizarre, inexplicable rituals, creating both laughter and genuine philosophical inquiry about why we live as we do.

3. Foundation (2021-Present)

Adapting Isaac Asimov’s seminal “Foundation” series has long been considered one of science fiction’s impossible tasks – a narrative spanning centuries, focused more on sociological concepts than individual characters. Apple’s audacious approach doesn’t always succeed, but its ambition alone commands respect.

The series leverages its substantial budget to create genuinely breath-taking visualizations of a galactic empire in decline, with production design that rivals major feature films. Lee Pace’s performance as the genetically identical emperors – Brother Day, Dawn, and Dusk – provides a mesmerizing center to the sprawling narrative, exploring how power perpetuates itself through biological and psychological manipulation.

What fascinates me most about “Foundation” is how it grapples with Asimov’s central concept – psychohistory, the mathematical prediction of mass human behavior – in an era where algorithmic prediction has become commonplace. The series transforms Asimov’s midcentury scientific optimism into something more ambiguous and contemporary, questioning whether human freedom can exist alongside predictive mathematics.

Though sometimes struggling under the weight of its source material’s complexity, “Foundation” represents Apple’s willingness to tackle science fiction’s most challenging literary adaptations with appropriate scale and intellectual seriousness.

2. For All Mankind (2019-Present)

Science fiction’s greatest strength has always been its ability to recontextualize our own history, helping us understand the contingent nature of technological development and social change. “For All Mankind” exemplifies this approach, creating an alternate history where the Soviet Union’s first moon landing extends and intensifies the space race, pushing human space exploration decades ahead of our actual timeline.

What elevates the series beyond mere historical speculation is its meticulous character development across decades, showing how altered historical circumstances shape both individual lives and broader social movements. The show’s commitment to realistic physics and engineering challenges creates a form of hard science fiction rarely seen on television, where technological advancement requires genuine sacrifice and innovation.

The series’ expansive timeline, now spanning four seasons across multiple decades, allows it to explore how technological developments ripple through society, altering everything from geopolitics to gender dynamics. “For All Mankind” understands something fundamental about science fiction – that the most compelling speculation often emerges not from imagining completely alien futures but from examining the fragile contingency of our own historical path.

1. Severance (2022-Present)

Some works of science fiction fundamentally alter our relationship with the genre itself, creating conceptual frameworks that feel both revelatory and inevitable. “Severance” accomplishes this rare feat, using its central premise – technology that surgically separates work memories from personal life – to create a perfect metaphor for late-capitalist alienation.

Adam Scott’s dual performance as both his “innie” and “outie” selves explores the fragmentation of identity under corporate control with devastating precision. The supporting cast, including John Turturro, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, and Christopher Walken, creates a workplace ensemble that feels simultaneously familiar and utterly strange – colleagues whose entire existence is constrained within sterile corporate spaces.

What particularly distinguishes “Severance” is its visual grammar – the clinical white corridors, the brutalist architecture, the deliberately antiquated technology – creating a disorienting timescape that feels simultaneously retro and futuristic. This aesthetic disorientation perfectly mirrors the psychological disorientation of the severed workers themselves, trapped in a perpetual present without personal history.

The series poses profound questions about personhood, identity, and autonomy without ever sacrificing narrative tension or character development. Each episode peels back another layer of mystery while adding new complications, creating a perfectly calibrated balance between philosophical inquiry and psychological thriller.

“Severance” represents science fiction television at its absolute pinnacle – conceptually daring, visually distinctive, emotionally resonant, and thematically profound. It uses speculative technology not as window dressing but as a powerful metaphorical system for exploring contemporary anxieties about work, identity, and corporate power. In a streaming landscape increasingly cluttered with science fiction content, “Severance” stands as a singular achievement – proof that the genre continues to evolve in ways that challenge and transform our understanding of both technology and humanity.

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As Apple TV+ continues expanding its science fiction catalog with upcoming series like “Murderbot” (starring Alexander Skarsgård as a partly-human security cyborg hiding its capacity for independent thought), the platform increasingly positions itself as essential viewing for serious genre enthusiasts.

What elevates Apple’s approach isn’t merely production values or star power, but a willingness to engage with science fiction as a literature of ideas – stories that use speculative concepts to illuminate our present condition rather than merely entertain. In prioritizing conceptual rigor alongside visual innovation, Apple has crafted a science fiction lineup that doesn’t just rival its streaming competitors but often exceeds them in ambition and sophistication.

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