The second season of “Dark Matter” has been a huge step-up from the first, expanding upon its ideas as it delves deeper into its alternate realities. However, the end is in sight, with only a small handful of episodes left to air at the time we’re writing this, meaning you’re now likely looking for the next thought-provoking sci-fi series to binge watch.
Luckily, we have you covered, and we’ve handpicked five cult shows that are worth seeking out if you like complex, idea-driven science-fiction. The series we’ve chosen below all have dense mysteries and raise just as many questions as they answer, and if you like “Dark Matter,” you’ll be primed to love these shows which also invite audiences to fall deeper down the rabbit hole with them.
Some of these shows were cancelled ahead of their time; others are strong one-season wonders or miniseries which offer extensive food for thought for adventurous viewers. They’re all essential viewing for fans of the genre, so prioritize catching up with these after the “Dark Matter” finale.
Awake
This fresh twist on the alternate reality conceit that was unceremoniously cancelled after just one season in 2012. After a tragic car accident, the dreams of police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) became indistinguishable from reality, and he had no idea whether he was awake at any given time as the two timelines blurred into a messy whole. The only thing separating them is that in one, his wife is alive as his son died in the accident, and the opposite is true in the other. To navigate this lucid soup of a headspace and find out the truth behind this traumatic incident he’s created an entire narrative to deal with as a coping mechanism. He must use clues from cases in one timeline to gain a greater understanding of the other.
An immediate critical darling, the concept of “Awake” seemed to prove too complex for NBC viewers expecting a lightly surreal twist on the tried-and-tested crime procedural formula. A primetime network slot was probably the worst place to premiere a series this dense and intricately plotted. As expected, it plummeted in the ratings after a well-received pilot and went off the air after just 13 episodes. We’d argue it’s a show better suited to science-fiction fans — even though nothing explicitly within the genre can be found onscreen — than the casual crime show audience, especially because its unique, challenging approach to the family drama feels like a key precursor to “Dark Matter.” If you’re on the wavelength of the Apple TV series, you’ll be invested in this mystery.
Constellation
Another 2024 Apple TV premiere navigating the slippery nature of objective reality, the sci-fi series “Constellation” was largely swept under the rug by the more successful premiere “Dark Matter” and was cancelled after a single season. It’s one of the most underrated shows you can stream on the platform.
Noomi Rapace starred as Jo Ericcson, a Swedish astronaut left behind after her teammates evacuated to Earth. A corpse in a USSR space suit had collided with the International Space Station, claiming several lives, and she was staying behind to repair an evacuation ship after her other teammates fled in the only functional one. Returning to Earth with some of the victims’ bodies in tow, she soon discovers that her memories don’t match those of her friends, family members and family. They don’t understand her speaking Swedish, and doubt she saw a floating corpse, as no cosmonaut has ever died in space.
As “Constellation” progresses, Jo’s hallucinations continue, and the viewers’ perception of concrete reality is further warped by the introduction of dual timelines. As she’s being treated by medical experts upon her return, all but diagnosing her with a mental condition linked to burnout after landing back on Earth, the show’s twists and turns are treated as hallucinatory nightmares, with the series maintaining its creepy atmosphere all the way through to the finale. The show will leave you with some nagging questions that go unanswered — there are obvious signs the writers weren’t expecting this to end after one season — but if you prepare for that open ending going in, you’ll be rewarded with an effectively slippery mystery.
Counterpart
If you put “Dark Matter” and “Severance” together in a blender, the result would look a lot like this Starz series that ran for two seasons between 2017 and 2019. J.K Simmons stars as the mild-mannered office worker Howard Silk, who has been working a low-level role for the UN agency Office of Interchange in Berlin for 30 years without ever learning what the purpose of his mysterious job is. It turns out he’s been tasked with the responsibility of sending messages to a parallel Earth discovered by a scientist at this location several decades earlier, although this research co-operation soon turned deadly. It’s rumored that our world, the Alpha Earth, had purposefully started pandemics in the Prime World, amongst other planet-shifting incidents to better learn how to prepare for them on our own.
As we’re introduced to Howard, we’re also in a reality-bending cold war that he’s soon implicated in, with spies on the other side targeting his comatose wife in retaliation against agency employees. He’s told the true meaning of his role and must work with his alternate reality self to help stop future assassination attempts, but he still isn’t being told everything; in the other world, his wife is still living, for example.
The result is one of the best reviewed sci-fi series you might have never heard of, with both seasons receiving rare 100% fresh ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, although the positive reviews do skew slightly more critical for the second outing as the timelines get increasingly complex. If you can get on its wavelength, you’ll be rewarded with some Orwellian world-building and a rich alternate history, driven by a unique, tense approach to a surveillance thriller.
Alex Garland already explored the themes of free-will through the lens of artificial intelligence in his 2015 directorial debut “Ex Machina,” but the creator expanded upon those ideas in his 2020 miniseries “Devs,” which premiered to rave reviews. Sonoya Mizuno, who appeared in a smaller role as an AI assistant in that movie, plays software engineer Lily Chan, whose boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman) has just been promoted to the secretive Devs team at Amaya Technology, a company run by the quietly cold Forest (Nick Offerman). Lily doesn’t know what his job will entail, but red flags are raised when he doesn’t return home that evening, with conflicting reports that he’s either committed suicide, or was engaging in espionage to tell the Russians about this powerful tech.
Lily had previously had intense battles with mental illness, which means that she can’t actively share her suspicions about the company — and Forest’s assertion that she will die in the next two days suggests a wider conspiracy that will be swept under the rug alongside her. Garland is one of the most divisive directors currently working, with just as many of his big swings failing to hit their target as living up to their ambitions, but “Devs” is easily his greatest success, satisfying as a slow-burning conspiracy thriller and hard sci-fi about determinism, maintaining its momentum throughout all 8 episodes. If “Dark Matter” has warmed you up to series which tackle weighty, existential concepts in the body of a propulsive thriller, this will be to your tastes.
The OA
Cancelled before its time, with a meta second season cliffhanger that goes unresolved, “The OA” still stands as one of the century’s defining science-fiction series. Co-creator Brit Marling starred as Prairie Johnson, a young woman who returned to her family home seven years after going missing. She left blind and could see upon her return but refuses to say where she’s been in that time.
She also insists on being referred to by her new moniker, the OA, or Original Angel, and quickly assembles a team of local teens to whom she tells her real story — their help is what she needs to open a portal to rescue other missing people. The genre-bending story made it divisive amongst critics during the first season, but those who did love it were rapturous. Variety’s critic said the season one finale had the most effective ending he’d ever seen in a TV series, and those who did get on the show’s wavelength were equally as passionate.
The second and final season didn’t arrive for another three years but was received far more positively by critics. Unfortunately the second installment of what Marling and co-creator Zal Batmanglij intended to be a five-season arc offers cryptic developments as the OA travels to other dimensions (and characters from the first season continue to try and track her movements in ours) that leave more food for thought than intended, with mysteries forever unanswered. Much like the original run of “Twin Peaks,” however, the unrevealed secrets are as likely for why the series has continued to endure as much as its moments of emotional melodrama.
