The 20 best sci-fi and fantasy TV shows on Netflix right now

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By Richard Edwards

Dec 11 2025

By Richard Edwards

Dec 11 2025

Netflix has some of the best sci-fi and fantasy TV shows on streaming, whether it’s homegrown hits like Stranger Things, all-time classics like the Star Trek franchise, as well as Rick and Morty and The Good Place.

Of course, the menu screen is a portal to so much quality entertainment that it can be hard for a genre fan to know where to start with the best shows on Netflix.

That’s why we’ve assembled this list of the 20 greatest sci-fi and fantasy TV shows on Netflix, listed in order from the most recent release – you’ll find everything from space opera to haunted houses and dystopian visions of the future.

The best sci-fi and fantasy TV shows on Netflix UK

20. Supacell

• Year: 2024 – present
• Cast: Tosin Cole, Nadine Mills, Eric Kofi-Abrefa Eddie Marsan
• Creator: Rapman
• Length: 1 season, 6 episodes (season 2 confirmed)

With the likes of Adolescence and Bodies, Netflix has a proven track record of taking a chance on British dramas that might once have found a home with a traditional broadcaster.

Supacell continues that trend, though – with the notable exception of E4’s Misfits and ITV2’s short-lived No Heroics – it’s not as if British channels are queuing up to take a punt on Marvel-style action.

This London-set series (created by Blue Story director Rapman) gives five ordinary people superpowers. The twist with Supacell, however, is that it feels grounded in a believable version of reality, where the protagonists use their new gifts to negotiate a world of street gangs, blue-collar jobs and ordinary family life rather than getting delusions of grandeur and trying to save the planet.

In fact, this series would probably work as a solid drama even if you removed the fantastical parts of the equation. A second season is currently in production.

19. 3 Body Problem

• Year: 2024 – present
• Cast: Benedict Wong, Eiza González, Jess Hong, Liam Cunningham, Jonathan Pryce
• Creator: David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, Alexander Woo
• Length: 1 season, 8 episodes (two more seasons announced)

When Game of Thrones wrapped up in 2019, showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss would have been forgiven for putting their feet up and taking a few years off.

Instead, they moved on to an adaptation of a similarly complex series of novels: Chinese author Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem. Though, this time, the setting was outer space rather than the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

It’s an ambitious blend of virtual reality, sinister cults and investigations into the unexplained deaths of leading scientists, all tied together by a Chinese astrophysicist’s world-changing discovery.

At times, it feels like This Life Goes Sci-Fi, with a group of attractive young Oxford physics graduates providing the show’s emotional core. But 3 Body Problem also offers ambitious storytelling on the biggest possible scale.

18. Bodies

• Year: 2023
• Cast: Stephen Graham, Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Shira Haas, Kyle Soller
• Creator: Paul Tomalin
• Length: 1 season, 8 episodes

The Netflix navigation screen can be a daunting place. As well as the sheer volume of content available, any viewing choice is accompanied by questions about the time commitment you’re about to undertake.

The good thing about Bodies, however, is that it’s a one-off, eight-part drama conceived as a one-off eight-part drama. It’s also a tricksy, unashamedly brainy piece of time-hopping drama.

Not to be confused with Jed Mercurio’s medical drama of the same name, Bodies unfolds across four distinct timelines, after the same corpse appears in an identical Whitechapel location in four separate years. Expect the unexpected as investigators in the 1890s, 1940s, 2020s and 2050s try get their heads around an impossible case.

17. Wednesday

• Year: 2022 – present
• Cast: Jenna Ortega, Emma Myers, Gwendoline Christie, Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Creator: Alfred Gough, Miles Millar
• Length: 2 seasons, 16 episodes (season 3 confirmed)

When executive producer Tim Burton signed up to work on this high school-set Addams Family update, the most obvious question was, “Hasn’t he been here before?”

Indeed, the Beetlejuice director is such a logical fit for the material that it’s weird to think this is his first dalliance with Charles Addams’ endearingly macabre creations.

But the hit show’s smartest move is shifting the focus to daughter Wednesday. Christina Ricci (who turns up as a Nevermore Academy teacher here) stole the show in two early ’90s movies, and new Wednesday Jenna Ortega has a similar gift for unblinking deadpan.

There are undeniable Harry Potter vibes to the setting, but with a darker, American high-school edge. Meanwhile, the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones, Steve Buscemi, Billie Piper and Christopher Lloyd offer starry support. Unsurprisingly, a third season has already received the Netflix green light.

16. Arcane

• Year: 2021 – 2024
• Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell, Kevin Alejandro, Katie Leung
• Creator: Christian Linke, Alex Yee
• Length: 2 seasons, 18 episodes

Don’t let the fact it’s based on a videogame (Riot Games’ League of Legends) put you off. This mega-budget series is undoubtedly one of the best Netflix sci-fi shows, an eye-catching spectacle with a story to match.

As with the likes of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Mitchells vs the Machines and Nimona, it feels like you’re watching the possibilities of animation being stretched, thanks to the show’s striking mix of CG and hand-drawn animation.

It’s also set in a beautifully realised steampunk world, in which the wealthy city of Piltover scraps with the poorer Zaun for supremacy, with a pair of sisters (voiced by Hawkeye’s Hailee Steinfeld and Yellowjackets’ Ella Purnell) stuck on opposing sides.

15. Sweet Tooth

• Year: 2021 – 2024
• Cast: Christian Convery, Nonso Anozie, Stefania LaVie Owen, Adeel Akhtar
• Creator: Jim Mickle
• Length: 3 seasons, 24 episodes

Based on Jeff Lemire’s DC/Vertigo comic series, Sweet Tooth is set in the aftermath of a lethal virus (known as ‘the Sick’) that’s decimated the world’s population.

Nothing particularly original there, perhaps, aside from the fact that the outbreak coincided with the birth of a generation of human/animal hybrid kids. The two things may or may not be connected…

The story centres on the titular ‘Sweet Tooth’, a kid with antlers and a love of confectionery (Christian Convery) who’s suddenly thrust into a vicious world after the death of his dad.

Gus ends up in the care of reluctant former footballer Tommy ‘Big Man’ Jepperd (Nonso Anozie), as the sinister General (Neil Sandilands) pursues a cure for the Sick with extreme prejudice. An improbable mix of whimsy and bleak, post-apocalyptic drama.

14. Squid Game

• Year: 2021 – present
• Cast: Lee Jung-jae, Lee Byung-hung, Wi Ha-joon
• Creator: Hwang Dong-hyuk
• Length: 3 seasons, 22 episodes

Even if you’ve never seen an episode of Squid Game, chances are you’ve heard of it. Netflix’s South Korean hit came from nowhere to become one of the most viewed shows in the platform’s history, its iconography making a significant impact on pop culture along the way.

Occupying the plausible end of the sci-fi spectrum, its premise — 456 players take part in a deadly contest, playing souped-up versions of kids’ games to win a life-changing cash prize — comes pre-loaded with 2020s cynicism and satire.

It’s also the only show on this list of the best Netflix sci-fi TV shows to have spawned its own spin-off game show.

The third season, which debuted earlier this year, will be the last, and that has to be good news for creator Hwang Dong-hyuk — seeing as he’s written and directed every single episode, the creative process could easily have developed into an ordeal to rival the challenges in the series.

13. The Witcher

• Year: 2019 – present
• Cast: Henry Cavill, Anya Chalotra, Freya Allan, Joey Batey, Liam Hemsworth
• Creator: Lauren Schmidt Hissrich
• Length: 4 seasons, 32 episodes

Before Game of Thrones, nobody thought epic fantasy and TV were natural bedfellows. Then HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s sprawling book series became a smash hit, and every other broadcaster and streamer wanted their own piece of the action.

While Amazon opted to invest in Middle-earth with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Netflix opted to explore the so-called ‘Continent’, the setting of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher novels.

Although there’s no shortage of magic and monsters, this occupies a very different universe from its genre rivals. The titular Geralt of Rivia (a wonderfully gruff Henry Cavill) is a solitary beast hunter, forced into a battle he doesn’t want to fight when fugitive princess Ciri (Freya Allan) comes under his protection.

The timelines of the first season are, admittedly, a little hard to follow, but rest assured that The Witcher does eventually find its feet. The story resumed (and finished) with season 4 this year, with Liam Hemsworth replacing Cavill in the title role.

12. Love, Death + Robots

• Year: 2019 – present
• Cast: Joe Manganiello, Rosario Dawson, Seth Green, Michael B. Jordan, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
• Creator: Tim Miller
• Length: 4 seasons, 45 episodes

Anthology series clearly work with Netflix’s algorithms, seeing as Black Mirror, Oats Studios and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities are all available on the platform. One of the most varied and ambitious offerings, however, is the animated, adults-only Love, Death + Robots.

Created by Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate director Tim Miller (and co-produced by Seven/Fight Club helmer David Fincher), it’s a mix of original tales and adaptations of stories by top science fiction authors like JG Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Peter F Hamilton and Ken Liu.

Utilising a broad spectrum of visual styles from numerous animation studios, the 45 episodes to date tackle themes as varied as vampires, interplanetary war and robots contemplating life after humans.

There’s also some big-name voice talent, including Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael B Jordan, Dan Stevens, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and YouTube star MrBeast.

11. The Umbrella Academy

• Year: 2019 – 2024
• Cast: Elliot Page, Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Robert Sheehan
• Creator: Jeremy Slater, Steve Blackman
• Length: 4 seasons, 36 episodes

With Marvel owner Disney on the cusp of launching its own streaming service in 2019, Netflix pulled the plug on Daredevil, Jessica Jones and its other superpowered dramas.

That left a superhero-shaped hole on the platform, which was hastily filled with this adaptation of Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá’s Dark Horse comic about a gifted – but equally dysfunctional – family.

With every family member having their own specific ability (super strength, immortality, giant multidimensional squid tentacles emerging from their midriff etc), the story has elements of both the Fantastic Four and the X-Men.

It’s also considerably weirder than both – the Hargreeves’ in-house assistant is a talking chimpanzee – but it’s the hilariously combustible family dynamics that really set it apart, particularly in its superior first two seasons.

10. Russian Doll

• Year: 2019 – 2022
• Cast: Natasha Lyonne, Greta Lee, Yul Vazquez, Chloë Sevigny
• Creator: Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, Amy Poehler
• Length: 2 seasons, 15 episodes

It’s Groundhog Day all over again (and again) in this excellent time-loop comedy-drama. Game developer Nadia Vulvokov (a pre-Poker Face Natasha Lyonne) dies on the night of her 36th birthday party, is quickly resurrected, and doomed to a perpetual live/die/repeat cycle until she works out what’s going on.

The brainchild of Lyonne, Star Wars: The Acolyte creator Leslye Headland and Parks and Recreation star Amy Poehler, it’s smart, funny and suitably twisty. It’s also hard to imagine a more suitable protagonist for this bizarre scenario than the sardonic, chain-smoking Nadia.

Season 2 mixes things up by sending Nadia back to 1982 to inhabit the body of her pregnant mum, Nora (Chloë Sevigny). The follow-up is entertaining enough but struggles to live up to its more streamlined predecessor.

9. The Haunting of Hill House

• Year: 2018
• Cast: Michiel Huisman, Carla Gugino, Timothy Hutton, Henry Thomas, Elizabeth Reaser, Kate Siegel, Victoria Pedretti
• Creator: Mike Flanagan
• Length: 1 season, 10 episodes

Mike Flanagan has built something of a Netflix cottage industry, transforming classics of the gothic horror genre into psychologically intense TV shows.

He’s gone on to tackle Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (The Haunting of Bly Manor) and assorted works of Edgar Allan Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher), but this contemporary spin on Shirley Jackson’s classic 1959 novel is the best of the bunch.

Making the most of a strong ensemble cast (many of whom have become Flanagan repertory players), The Haunting of Hill House flips between two timelines as five adult siblings recall tragic events in the eponymous mansion 26 years earlier, and reopen the psychological wounds it left behind. It’s a gripping, highly emotional family drama that also happens to be as scary as hell.

8. Dark

• Year: 2017 – 2020
• Cast: Louis Hofmann, Oliver Masucci, Jördis Triebel, Andreas Pietschmann
• Creator: Baran bo Odar, Jantje Friese
• Length: 3 seasons, 26 episodes

If there’s a certainty in the world of movies and TV, it’s that one success will prompt studios to look for something similar so they can jump on the bandwagon. Hence German series Dark was quickly hailed as the “new Stranger Things” when it landed the following year.

To be fair, those comparisons are justified, seeing as both shows focus on teens trying to a find a local boy who’s gone missing, and also feature a mysterious scientific institution in the neighbourhood (Hawkins has a creepy laboratory, Winden has a freaky nuclear power plant).

Nonetheless, Dark is very much its own beast, less pop culture literate than its American counterpart, but also more emotionally complex. And once time travel, dark matter and the threat of armageddon have entered the mix, it’s clear we’re a long, long way from Indiana.

7. The Good Place

• Year: 2016 – 2020
• Cast: Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil, Manny Jacinto, Ted Danson
• Creator: Michael Schur
• Length: 4 seasons, 53 episodes

By the time he created The Good Place, Michael Schur had already worked on a triple bill of beloved US sitcoms with The Office, Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

But while this is also, technically, a series about people at work, this hilarious afterlife comedy also tackles some of the biggest existential questions imaginable.

It’s a genuine ensemble piece about a quartet of recently deceased people (Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil and Manny Jacinto) who – thanks to an administrative error – are mistakenly sent to the eponymous secular heaven.

Comedy legend Ted Danson may just steal the show as the kindly architect of their new home, but the real star is the writing, in a series that regularly reinvents itself to keep itself as fresh as the frozen yogurt in a Good Place café.

6. Stranger Things

• Year: 2016 – present (Volume 2 premieres December 26, finale drops New Year’s Day)
• Cast: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo
• Creator: The Duffer Brothers
• Length: 5 seasons (planned total of 42 episodes)

When Stranger Things debuted in the summer of 2016, nobody had any idea that the small town of Hawkins was about to turn the whole world Upside Down.

After all, nobody had heard of its creators, pop culture-literate twins Matt and Ross Duffer, while Netflix – despite the success of homegrown hits House of Cards and Orange is the New Black – was still best known as a video library for other studios’ content.

But there was something about this ’80s-set ode to the films of Steven Spielberg and John Carpenter that captured the zeitgeist. Beyond the nostalgia, this story of telekinetic Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and her geeky friends fighting spooky creatures from a parallel dimension rapidly became the ultimate binge-watch.

As the kids have grown up, the saga has become darker, more complex and even more gripping. The first volume of the fifth and final season broke viewership records, and it won’t be long until Stranger Things season 5 volume 2 hits Netflix.

5. Orphan Black

• Year: 2013 – 2017
• Cast: Tatiana Maslany, Dylan Bruce, Jordan Gavaris, Kevin Hanchard,
• Creator: Graeme Manson, John Fawcett
• Length: 5 seasons, 50 episodes

Four seasons of Orphan Black had aired by the time its star, Tatiana Maslany, won a Best Actress Emmy in 2016. Not only was the award long overdue, a single trophy short-changed the actor’s performance(s) somewhat – after all, she’d taken on more than a dozen roles over the course of the Canadian series’ run.

Aside from playing nominal lead Sarah Manning, Maslany had to don numerous wigs and accents to play multiple clones conceived in the Project Leda programme. Beyond Maslany’s tour de force turn, Orphan Black also develops into a tense, intelligent and thought-provoking thriller as the characters attempt to uncover their origin story.

Spin-off series Orphan Black: Echoes (starring Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones) and Keeley Hawes) ran for one season in 2024, and is currently one of the best ITVX dramas.

4. Rick and Morty

• Year: 2013 – present
• Cast: Justin Roiland, Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammer, Sarah Chalke
• Creator: Justin Roiland, Dan Harmon
• Length: 8 seasons, 81 episodes

Did you hear the one about the genius scientist who travels through the space-time continuum with his teen sidekick? Yes, the punchline could also be Back to the Future, but that would possibly be underselling an adult-oriented cartoon comedy that’s consistently one of the weirdest and hard-to-define shows on telly.

Ticking off sci-fi ideas at ludicrous speed – concepts that would sustain entire seasons of other shows are often thrown away on a single gag – Rick and Morty’s adventures across the multiverse occupy the sweet spot of the Venn diagram where funny and intelligent collide.

There’s also an episode where Rick turns himself into a pickle – just because. For all the silliness, however, there’s a human side to the hijinks, as Rick’s family do their best to keep up with the smartest man in the universe.

The show’s eighth season, which debuted earlier this year, is yet to find its way on to Netflix UK.

3. Black Mirror

• Year: 2011 – present
• Cast: Cristin Milioti, Jesse Plemons, Hayley Atwell, Bryce Dallas Howard
• Creator: Charlie Brooker
• Length: 7 seasons, 33 episodes

Black Mirror started out as a relatively small-scale Channel 4 anthology show, whose most talked about moment came when the (fictional) British prime minister had a very close encounter with a pig. Netflix saw something bigger in Charlie Brooker’s technological Twilight Zone, however, and bankrolled a more ambitious version of the show from season 3 onwards.

It now attracts A-list stars from both sides of the Atlantic, telling eclectic, (mostly) one-off stories about the perils of the modern world. While it has a reputation for exploring the darker sides of human nature, it does have its upbeat moments (most notably ’80s-set love story ‘San Junipero’), and whether it’s riffing on Star Trek (‘USS Callister’), satirising modern dating (‘Hang the DJ’) or skewering social media (‘Nosedive’) it tends to be essential viewing.

2. Batman: The Animated Series

• Year: 1992 – 1995
• Cast: Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Loren Lester
• Creator: Eric Radomski, Bruce W. Timm
• Length: 2 seasons, 85 episodes (only 65 episodes on Netflix)

Of all the big-name superheroes, the Caped Crusader is probably the most versatile – whether he’s wisecracking as Adam West or brooding as Christian Bale, Batman is still fundamentally the same playboy vigilante dressing up as a bat to play vigilante.

Even so, few screen adaptations have done more to cement the Dark Knight’s pop culture image than this groundbreaking cartoon.

Commissioned to capitalise on the box office success of Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, the show rattles through the most famous faces in Gotham City’s rogues’ gallery, while also creating some of its own – fan-favourite Harley Quinn made her first ever appearance here.

But it also stands out for Bruce Timm’s iconic character designs, and the late Kevin Conroy’s masterful voice performance as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

1. Star Trek: The Next Generation

• Year: 1987 – 1994
• Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton
• Creator: Gene Roddenberry
• Length: 7 seasons, 178 episodes

Paramount+ may be the de facto streaming home of Star Trek – most notably for the current crop of shows, such as Picard and Strange New Worlds – but Netflix also has an impressive selection of classic series from the final frontier.

Fans have been debating which is best for decades, but we’re going to plump for The Next Generation, the voyages of the starship Enterprise that famously made it so in the late-’80s and early ’90s.

While the original series really did go where no one had gone before, and Deep Space Nine leans fully into its multi-season arc plot (a first for the franchise), TNG nails the basics.

Its seven-year run is full of episodes whose invention and smart sci-fi plotting laid down a blueprint for the shows that followed. Meanwhile, its crew – led by the unequalled Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) – is arguably Trek’s greatest.

Read more: The best films on Netflix you should watch right now