10 TV Shows Like Paradise That You Should Watch in the Future.
In Dan Fogelman’s Paradise, we’re seemingly in a wealthy suburb where everything seems pretty neat. It’s the home of Xavier Collins, played by Sterling K. Brown, a widower and Secret Service agent—which would be more impressive if the president he served (James Marsden) hadn’t been assassinated (much of the narrative is revealed in flashbacks). Oh, and that cute little town? It turns out it’s… something else. These 10 shows also approach their dystopian plots in unusual ways, using science fiction in unexpected ways. Watch Paradise on Hulu , then head out into these other dark places.
Silo (2023 – )
Rebecca Ferguson plays Juliet Nichols, an engineer who becomes embroiled in an investigation involving the local sheriff (David Oyelowo). It’s a typical procedural detective story, except all the characters inhabit a massive bunker, 144 levels deep, protecting the remaining 10,000 people from a supposedly poisoned world above. Those who control the bunker have convinced everyone remaining that only strict adherence to rules and procedures will protect them from the dangers outside. It’s a darker, less graphic apocalypse than Fallout —a prestige drama that incorporates elements of horror, detective fiction, and sci-fi to tell human stories about fear and control. With a third and final fourth seasons coming soon, the series has the increasingly rare advantage of a planned ending. Watch Silo on Apple TV+ .
Ascension (2014)
This clever but not particularly well-remembered miniseries creates an alternate timeline in the vein of For All Mankind : the Kennedy administration sends a (supposedly) generation ship into space to ensure humanity’s survival during the Cold War; by the time the series begins, just over 50 years have passed since the launch (2014, as it turns out). The first murder committed on the Ascension raises many questions, as does the fact that no one on Earth seems to have ever heard of this massive project. Expect some shocking revelations and unexpected plot twists. Watch Ascension on Tubi .
Snowpiercer (2020–2024)
While Snowpiercer initially feels like a needless sequel to Bong Joon-ho’s allegorical post-apocalyptic film, it ultimately takes on a life of its own as a clever sci-fi melodrama that cleverly acknowledges that at the end of the world, there are no heroes and few true villains—mostly just people doing their best to survive. In a frozen future, humanity survives on an extremely long train traveling around the world. If it stops, the power will go out, and everyone (literally everyone) will die. Those who arrived on the train with wealth live in relative luxury at the front, while the poor subsist on scraps (or worse) at the rear. Daveed Diggs plays former detective Andre Layton, a “tailman” whom Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly), the train’s engineer and head of hospitality, assigns to solve a series of murders. The inevitable uprising that follows places them on opposite sides of a brutal conflict, before each ultimately realizes they are mere pawns of the elite—as always. The film is far less subtle about its sci-fi setting than Paradise , but lives up to its hype as a similar apocalyptic political thriller. Watch Snowpiercer on Prime Video and Tubi .
Sugar (2024 – )
Sugar makes no attempt to hide or downplay its reliance on old Hollywood noir tropes: its characters strive to emulate the style of antiheroes of the past, and clips from old films are even used alongside the action to underscore this idea. The central mystery is that detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) is called to the mansion of a wealthy film producer (James Cromwell), whose granddaughter has gone missing. The first few episodes are intriguing, with a unique premise that Sugar is a kind of anti-antihero: a genuinely good guy in a world where he’s expected to be a tough guy. However, episode six delivers a completely unbelievable, either provocative or delightful, twist that sets the course of the remainder of the episode and, presumably, the entire second season—and it’s here that the series crosses into “Paradise” territory as a kind of sly, stealthy sci-fi. The series was created by screenwriter Mark Protosevich ( The Cell, I Am Legend ) and skillfully directed by Fernando Meirelles, director of City of God , so it’s clearly lacking in style. Watch Sugar on Apple TV .
Wayward Pines (2015–2016)
Speaking of high-concept sci-fi, let’s take a trip to Wayward Pines, where you can never leave. Based on a trilogy of novels by Blake Crouch, this film follows a secret agent, played by Matt Dillon, investigating the disappearances of two of his colleagues in the town of Wayward Pines, Idaho. Things go awry almost immediately, and after waking up from a car accident, he discovers that one of the agents (Carla Gugino), his ex-girlfriend, has settled into this seemingly idyllic town—and is 12 years older than when he saw her just weeks earlier. Even more dramatic, the local sheriff (Terrence Howard) enforces a strict “no one ever leaves” policy, under penalty of death. From there, the mysteries mount. Watch Wayward Pines on Hulu and Disney+ .
Aftermath (2024–)
In the video game-inspired world of Fallout , the aesthetics of the 1950s have persisted far longer than in our own world, so the similarities in the plots partly lead to a unique style. The backstory is somewhat complex, but the series itself doesn’t elaborate: the year is 2296, and Earth has been devastated by a nuclear war between the United States and China two centuries earlier. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) emerges from the underground shelter where she has lived her entire life to find her father, who has been kidnapped by raiders. The aboveground wasteland is under the control of warring factions, each considering the others cults and believing that only they know the right path for humanity. In the midst of this conflict, the landscape has also become overrun by ghouls, devourers, and other feral radiation monsters, and Lucy seems to be the only one left with faith in humanity. Watch Fallout on Prime Video .
The Silent Sea (2021)
Bae Doona (known for films like Cloud Atlas , Sense8 , and Rebel Moon ) stars in this twisted sci-fi drama set on a near-future, arid, and nearly waterless Earth. The plot centers on a team of astronauts and scientists sent on a mission to an abandoned lunar base. Tasked with retrieving a mysterious sample, it soon becomes clear that Earth’s bureaucrats know far more about it than they’re letting on. Suffice it to say, things don’t go well—deaths, betrayals, and the emergence of something deadly that could spell the future of humanity, but it could also just as easily be its end.Watch The Silent Seaon Netflix.
Heaven’s Delusion (Tengoku Daimakyō) (2023)
In this (extremely strange) post-apocalyptic anime, we follow two parallel storylines: in one, a group of children live in a closed, sterile, strictly controlled school environment called “Heaven,” protected from what we quickly learn is the destruction beyond; in the other, bodyguard Kiruko and her companion Maru navigate a devastated Japan. These relatively straightforward dystopian plotlines soon take unexpected turns, as the plotlines intertwine into a story that explores gender and sexual politics, as well as many dark secrets. Watch “Heaven’s Delusion” on Hulu .
Class of 2009 (2023)
Just as Paradise transports us to a sci-fi world for a political thriller, Class of 2009 plays like a crime thriller until it isn’t: Brian Tyree Henry and Kate Mara play two FBI trainees in 2009, who we follow simultaneously in two different timelines: the present, circa 2023, and the future, 2034. The central theme is the rise of artificial intelligence as a tool for predicting crime and the dangers of pursuing people who are only hypothetically likely to commit a crime. Prescient just a couple of years ago, the series is impressively and disturbingly relevant in our age of AI, whether you like it or not. Watch Class of 2009 on Disney+ and Hulu .
Separation (2022 – )
Late-stage capitalism encourages “work-life balance” while simultaneously making it impossible and making us feel guilty. In the series “Breakdown,” biotech giant Lumon Industries offers a solution: they split your consciousness into a life at work and a life outside of it. For the main characters (including Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, and Britt Lower), their work- and home-based identities become so distant that they become different people. The series combines elements of dark office comedies with films like “Brazil” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” exploring the perils of contemporary American totalitarian capitalism and reminding us that technology often promises to improve our lives only to make them worse. Watch “Breakdown” on Apple TV+ .