From galaxies far, far away to apocalypse-ravaged wastelands and underground bunkers, these chilling dystopian TV shows transport us to another world – while amplifying our darkest, real-life fears. These are some of the best.
Paradise
Series two of “Paradise” is “better than ever”, said Tim Glanfield in The Times. With its “smart interwoven plotting” and “standout lead performances”, this dystopian political thriller might just be your “new favourite show”. Set in what appears to be an idyllic American town, the first instalment introduces Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown). “Cracks in the seemingly perfect community” begin to show when the president is murdered and Collins is framed. The first episode of series two “answers long-held questions while raising even more”, introducing interesting new characters while weaving in flashbacks to deepen backstories. As the new series “unfolds, the secrets deep below the surface grow darker” and the “tension ratchets to new levels at each revelation”. It’s a must watch.
Disney+
The Testaments
“Brace yourselves,” said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian: Margaret Atwood’s sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale”, published in 2019, “has come for us”. Set in the totalitarian regime of Gilead a few years after the TV series ended, “The Testaments” is focused not on the “handmaids” – who provide children to powerful men – but on the daughters of the elite, who are groomed from birth to become wives. The structure of the series departs radically from that of the book, but the show is so “consumingly brilliant” that I reckon even purists will forgive this, said Charlotte Ivers in The Sunday Times. Chase Infiniti plays Agnes MacKenzie, the adopted daughter of a high-ranking commander, who attends an elite school run by the fearsome Aunt Lydia (a returning Ann Dowd). There, she meets Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a Canadian who has come to Gilead voluntarily. At the school, “lucky” girls who get their period are paired off with much older men in a social process in which the “tea parties, balls and fripperies of Jane Austen” are mixed with Orwellian totalitarianism. It’s a “deeply uneasy combination”, but it makes for “spectacular television”.
Disney +
Westworld
The fourth season of Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan’s “knotty sci-fi thriller” proved “far more gripping” than the third instalment, said Richard Lawson in GQ. Set in Westworld, a futuristic Wild West-themed amusement park where sophisticated robots cater to the demands of wealthy guests, the final season feels like a cross between an “elegant” “Terminator” movie and “Bladerunner”. As ever it looks “mind-bogglingly expensive” (“all gleaming buildings and haunted desert”), and the excellent cast are back in “peak snarling, purring, quipping form”.
Amazon Prime
Andor
The second season of this “Star Wars” spin-off is “as thrilling as ever”, said Jack Seale in The Guardian. Exploring the events that lead up to the 2016 film, “Rogue One”, the action follows thief-turned-rebel-spy Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). Like everything in the franchise, the series is about an “underdog rebel movement fighting against a totalitarian empire in space”. But writer Tony Gilroy swaps the “magic and myth” for the realities of the “anti-fascist struggle”. This is “Star Wars” for grown-ups.
Disney+
The Walking Dead
One of the most “successful” dystopian TV series ever made, “The Walking Dead” follows a group of survivors during a zombie apocalypse, said Tim Glanfield in The Times. It’s an “epic, sprawling” show that takes you on a “rollercoaster ride through a dystopian America”, where staying alive hinges on the relationships forged, and even the smallest mistake can have fatal consequences.
Now
The Last of Us
Based on the 2013 video game, this “superb” post-apocalyptic drama combines “epic” action with “breathtaking emotional swerves”, said Ed Power in The Telegraph. Season one saw hardened survivor Joel (Pedro Pascal) and teenager Ellie (Bella Ramsey) trek through a desolate America overrun by “fungus-ridden” infected creatures to deliver the uniquely immune Ellie to a group of rebels who believed she may hold the key to a cure that could “save all of humanity”. Things didn’t go to plan and the second instalment picks up five years later when the pair are “uneasily getting on with life” in Jackson, Wyoming. Expect “gobsmacking set pieces” including a battle scene to “rival ‘Game of Thrones’”, and “reliably forceful” performances from Pascal and Ramsey. In all, season two takes everything that was good about the first series and “cranks it up to the absolute maximum”.
Apple TV+
Silo
The first season of “Silo” laid out some “captivating foundations”, said Nicola Austin in Empire. Based on the best-selling trilogy of novels by Hugh Howey, it “charted the aftermath of an apocalyptic event” that saw thousands of people forced underground to live in a giant bunker known as the silo. No one knows who built it or why, but they do know one thing: the outside world is toxic and leaving will result in almost certain death. Season two picks up after the “doozy of a cliffhanger” at the end of the first instalment, and “turns the temperature up on this pressure-cooker of a dystopia”.
Apple TV+
Severance
Following a “fantastically stylish, clever, trippy and compelling” first series, “Severance” is back on the small screen, and somehow it’s even better than before, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. The first instalment follows Mark Scout (Adam Scott), an employee at the sinister Lumon Industries corporation, who has opted into the severance procedure to have his non-work memories separated from his work memories, giving him an “innie” and “outie” life. In the second season, “mysteries and revelations, clues and new enigmas are rolled out in perfect syncopation, getting wilder and weirder” as the show goes on.
Apple TV+
Fallout
The “bouncy, eye-popping energy” of this “post-apocalyptic action-comedy” makes for “perfect bingeing”, said Ed Power in The Telegraph. Based on the video game of the same name, “Fallout” is set in the year 2296, two centuries after the “downfall of humanity”, in a postwar America “devastated by a nuclear conflagration”. Wealthy survivors have taken refuge in subterranean Vaults but they are eventually forced to emerge into the “Californian wasteland”: a “hellscape, teeming with zombie-like mutants”. Delivering the “perfect payload of OTT action and childish humour”, it makes for a surprisingly “fun” watch.
Amazon Prime