10 Wild Sci-fi Shows to Watch if You're Missing Mrs. Davis
Last week marked the season finale of Mrs. Davis (now streaming in its entirety on Peacock!), the inventive, ambitious, and very strange new sci-fi series from creators Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof that pitted one intrepid nun (Betty Gilpin) against the world's most powerful and beloved artificial intelligence. This show has everything, from nuns trying to root out criminal magicians to rocket fuel made from cat poop to a quest for the Holy Grail, and now that it's wrapped up its initial eight-episode run, you might not know what to do with yourself.
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Fortunately, we're here to help. If you're missing Mrs. Davis, and you want more silly, strange, and just plain crazy sci-fi TV to binge, check out any one of these 10 shows.
Fun sci-fi shows to watch after you've binged Mrs. Davis:
3rd Rock from the Sun
If you enjoyed the comedy of Mrs. Davis and want to go even further into the silly department, check out this beloved sitcom about a family of aliens (John Lithgow, Kristen Johnson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and French Stewart) who arrive on Earth for what's supposed to be a research expedition, and find themselves at turns entranced and confused by the humans around them. Lithgow and Johnson both won multiple Emmys for their performances, and 3rd Rock remains both thoroughly funny and sometimes surprisingly...well, human.
Better Off Ted
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If you like the satirical elements of Mrs. Davis and the way it tackles the modern corporate/tech landscape, check out this short-lived workplace comedy with loads of sci-fi ideas thrown in for extra fun. Better Off Ted follows the title character (Jay Harrington) as he navigates life and work at a fictional megacorporation where the often amoral employees work on everything from lab-grown meats to cryogenic freezing to killer robots. It's a very fun dive into corporate satire that often feels ahead of its time.
Doctor Who
Wanna watch a weird sci-fi series about time travel, aliens, weird creatures, and even weirder science fictional concepts? Pick just about any era of Doctor Who and start watching. Whether you're a fan of the classic stuff starring Tom Baker or the new era that launched with Christopher Eccleston, or you've just never given the show a try at all, its combination of whimsy and raw emotional power is always worth dipping into.
Eureka
Much of Mrs. Davis concerns itself with the consequences of human invention, whether we're talking about the title algorithm or the machinations of Simone's parents throughout the show. If you'd like to continue along that thread, head back to the acclaimed SYFY original series Eureka (now streaming on Peacock!), about a town full of inventors, the sheriff (Colin Ferguson) who has to keep them all in line, and wild tales of future technology gone very wrong.
Fringe
Named for the "fringe science" investigated by its stars, Fringe started as a kind of new take on The X-Files, complete with monster-of-the-week-style storytelling early on and a blend of skeptics and believers. Then, the show became something else entirely. With the introduction of alternate universes to its tale, and the constant exploration of an overarching mythology that just kept getting weirder, Fringe grew into a sci-fi epic all its own, and its still very much worth checking out.
Legends of Tomorrow
We've never had another network superhero show quite like Legends of Tomorrow. Given that the Arrowverse was already pretty well-established over on The CW when the series debuted, you might have thought you knew what to expect from this blend of superheroes and time travel. Well, no matter what it was that we expected, over the course of its constantly surprising run, Legends just kept proving us wrong, and kept proving endearing week after week.
Lost
The show that made Damon Lindelof a household name among sci-fi fans, Lost proved divisive in the way it wrapped up its epic story of a group of survivors stranded on a mysterious island, but that doesn't dampen its impact on the larger pop culture landscape. The show's mystery-laden plotting and long-running serialized story changed genre television forever, as well as the way we react to genre television, and its inherent strangeness and inventiveness still hits home years after it ended.
Resident Alien
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A little bit sitcom, a little bit serialized saga about an alien trying to navigate life on Earth as he finds he might actually like some of these humans, Resident Alien (now streaming on Peacock!) is a show that begins its weirdness with pure character dynamics. Alan Tudyk is predictably great in the leading role, and somehow manages to appear both remarkably relatable and, well, completely alien to the audience. It's a dynamic that extends to the rest of the show, imbuing the series with heart as well as endless humor.
The Umbrella Academy
The story of a group of gifted kids who turn into very strange adults and face all manner of supernatural and human conspiracies along the way, The Umbrella Academy had a flavor all its own when it debuted as a comic, and it retains that uniqueness as a streaming series. From the daring performances of the ensemble cast to the sheer ambition of its storytelling, its like no other genre show of the past decade.
Watchmen
If you want another show in which Lindelof just got really, really weird with it, look no further than this HBO sequel to the beloved comic book miniseries of the same name by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. It starts by expanding out from the world left behind by the comic, then goes deeper, digging far into the past of the Watchmen world, then extrapolating out the story's stranger elements to reveal more of a present forever changed by the events of the book. It's weird, it's compelling, and at times it feels completely and beautifully unpredictable.