My Top 10 Scifi & Mystery TV Shows

My TV habits are similar to my reading habits and I mainly watch scifi, mystery, and fantasy shows. Give me mystery! Give me wonders! Give me action!

1- Lost (2004-2010)

Source: IMDB.

You have no idea how passionate (obsessed?) I was about that show. I got into it right away, started googling it frantically, completely drawn into the many mysteries of the island. A plane crashes on a mysterious tropical island where a distress radio signal has been playing on loop for 17 years, where miracles happen, where old scientific stations are buried, and a murderous smoke monster lives. Oh, and the island is also populated by mysterious 'Others' and polar bears. This show has it all: deep mysteries, science, miracles, action, humor (Sawyer nicknames and Hurley's debonair attitude!). The A-list actors are extremely talented and let's be honest, many are ridiculously hot. However, it's the back stories and character development that really get to you. The characters' stories are deep tales of loss, love, hope, and redemption. I also loved the diversity of actors and accents: British, Iraqi, Korean, Australian, etc. But... and there is a but, the finale was rather disappointing. At first, I did not even understand it and as millions of others, I was left confused and angry. When I finally got it (years later) I still thought this series did not get the brilliant finale it deserved. Still, IT IS A MUST WATCH! Six seasons available on Disney+.


2- Severance (2022-)

Source: Apple TV.

I recently heard a famous Youtuber say that he had not been that excited about a show since Lost and I can see why. The set up is very different but with this one too, the showrunners will not make it easy for you to understand and will take you down a very deep rabbit hole fueling wacko theories. Like Lost, the show is also very funny at times. Severance features the stories of employees working at a mysterious company called Lumon, which produces...eh...I don't know what. The show is called Severance because Lumon employees undergo a procedure that allows them to completely separate/severe their brain between their work self and personal self. The employees, referred to as "innies", have no idea of what their "outies" life consists of and in return, the "outies" do not know what they do at work all day. As a result, they kind of have two different personalities. Weird, right? But that's not the weirdest. The whole office complex is bizarre (sensual waffle parties? Mammalians Nurturable department?) and the company looks more like a cult than a corporation. However, the most puzzling to me is the nature of their work. The main (very likable) characters' task is to look at vintage computer screens with defiling numbers and try to identify the ones that are 'scary'. The actors also offer stellar performances (Milchik's defiant jazz dance!) Very cool retro aesthetic too. Two seasons available on Apple TV.

3- Altered Carbon (2018-2020)

Source: IMDB.

This show is based on a steam-punk scifi novel written by Richard K. Morgan. Normally, I find that books are richer than TV adaptations but, in that case, the TV series had more appeal than the novel since some of the most iconic characters, for instance, the AI butler in the form of Edgar Allan Poe, are better developed on TV than on paper. The show takes place in a future in which humans reached quasi-immortality by being able to transfer consciousnesses between bodies, a process called re-sleeving. However, only the richest can afford to be re-sleeved in their own bodies/clones while ordinary people have to buy or rent random bodies. It offers a few funny moments when a Latina grandma is re-sleeved into the body of a giant tattooed drug dealer when her family wants her back to celebrate Día de los Muertos! The story follows Takeshi Kovacs, an ex-military turned rebel hired by an immortal oligarch in order to solve...his own murder. The investigation will reveal dark secrets and the dirty doings of the powerful immortals. The show can be pretty violent at times, with lots of torture and scenes depicting sexual violence, but it challenges our conception of time, the value of life, religious beliefs, and love. The aesthetics is also on-point. The only minus is that acting is unequal but it remains a very compelling watch. Two seasons available on Netflix but season 2 was not as exciting.

4- The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-2025)

Source: Rotten Tomatoes.

This dystopian tale depicting a USA turned into a fundamentalist dictatorship is brutal and powerful, and to my great regret, it resonates a bit too much with the current political situation in the USA. The story is based on a novel by the brilliant Canadian author Margaret Atwood who recently claimed that her story was meant to be a dystopia, not a textbook… The story takes place in a not-so-distant future in which the USA has turned into a religious and environmentalist dictatorship (now called Gilead) after ecological degradation has made most women infertile. When a fundamentalist, pro-natalist political faction manages to violently overthrow the government, society is divided into strict social classes and women are confined to a domestic role and prevented from working and receiving any form of education, at the exception of a religious one. Because most women cannot bear children, the ruling class enslaves fertile lower-class women called "handmaids" who are raped and used as proxy mothers for infertile elite women and their husbands. The story follows June, one of the handmaids, whose children and husband were taken away from her and who now serves as the slave of a powerful Commander and his wife. June’s story is the ‘Tale’ as she tries to escape and reunite with her family who now live as refugees in Canada. Again, that kind of rings a bell with the current USA-Canada dynamics. Stellar performances from the actors and great aesthetics. The story line was greatly expanded from the initial book story and some of twists in the later seasons are a bit over-the-top but still worth watching. Six seasons available on Hulu.

5- True Blood (2008-2014)

Source: IMDB.

Oh man, how much I enjoyed watching this over-the-top vampire show! Based on a series of novels written by Charlaine Harris, the series takes place in Louisiana in a world where vampires came out of the closet after a vampire chemist synthesized human blood (product branded as True Blood) and freed them from the obligation of drinking fresh human blood. Yet, vampires are far from being socially accepted, and communities are deeply divided over this issue. Those who befriend and/or date vampires are called 'fang-bangers' and the social dynamics are fairly similar to the end of the racial segregation in the US south. It's no coincidence that the action takes places in the 'deep south'. The characters' heavy southern accents, the southern comfort feel, accentuated by the epic theme song added a touch to the storyline and is something I really enjoyed. The show follows the adventures of Sookie, a small-town waitress with special psychic abilities who falls in love with Bill, a local vampire. There are so many great characters in this show: Lafayette, the flamboyant cook, Jason, Sookie's not-so-smart womanizer brother, Pam, the glamorous, yet ruthless Swedish ancient vampire. This irreverent show contains a lot of humor, gore, and sex, including lots of gay sex, which is unusual for mainstream TV. That being said, it could be worth watching just to see Alexander Skarsgard as a super hot 1000-year-old vampire. Seven seasons available on HBO.

6- The Leftovers (2014-2017)

Source: IMDB.

After an inexplicable event makes 2% of the Earth's population vanish in one instant, those remaining, the 'leftovers', are left broken and in search for answers. Coming from the imagination of the creators of Lost, this shows offers a very intriguing and compelling premise, but it has been greatly underrated. The show follows members of a community in the state of New York where tensions are high. Among the many cults that emerged are the Guilty Remnants, a nihilist group whose members dress in white, chain-smoke and do not speak to anyone, not even their fellow members, whose growing popularity is destabilizing the community. The characters' journey to find meaning in life following this supernatural 'rapture' is a tumultuous journey marked by despair, doubts, illuminations, feelings of guilt, hope for redemption and answers. However, the creators do not give us many answers, and the ending is cryptic at best. The actors' performances are outstanding and the theme song is hauntingly beautiful. It is tragic, deep, and meaningful. Prepare your tissues. Three seasons available on HBO.

 

7- The Walking Dead (2010-2022)

Source: IMDB.

This show, adapted from a hugely popular graphic novel created by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard, needs little introduction. After a zombie apocalypse, civilization has collapsed and remaining healthy humans find themselves living in a state of nature, vulnerable to elements, diseases, flesh-eating zombies, but most significantly, other humans. In this world, "man is a wolf to man", and communities that form offer a form of safety but most of them are violent, predatory, despotic, and even cannibalistic. The story spans over years and shows how the characters deal with living in constant fear, process trauma, try to make the world safer, and find hope in a hopeless place. It's an action-packed show with lots of fighting scenes and very badass characters but also moments of great sadness and despair (Think Carole and the little girl Lizzie in Season 4). By nature, the show is pretty gore and violent, so this is not for the faint of heart. Don't get too attached to characters because the death rate is really high! 11 seasons and other related off-shoot projects available on AMC.

 

8- Black mirror (2011-2025)

Source: IMDB.

This is not a regular TV show and it's impossible to offer a proper description of the plot. Episodes' lengths vary and each one is a standalone story but invariably, watching the show feels like a big punch in the face that warns us of the dangers of technology. Some episodes are humorous—like the wedding crasher fiasco in Season 3—or deeply moving, such as the story of lovers in a virtual paradise from the same season. However, the majority are starkly dramatic, highlighting how our dependence on technology can erode human relationships, fuel abuse, and drive radicalization. What I especially value is that these stories unfold in a world much like our own, not in some distant dystopian future, which makes them all the more relatable—and unsettling. Seven seasons available on Netflix.

 

9- Silo (2023- )

Source: IMDB.

Based on a trilogy of novels written by author Hugh Howey, this post-apocalyptic thriller depicts a world in which humans live in gigantic silos underground after an ecological catastrophe has made the outside uninhabitable. However, people don't actually know what happened since all history has been erased during the failed "rebellion" which took place 140 years ago. The silo is home to 10,000 humans and is governed by an elected Mayor but we quickly understand that the real power lies in the hands of the IT Department which relies on relatively low-tech methods to oversee production, manage food planning, and birth control. We follow the story of an engineer who starts asking questions about the Silo's past and governance and uncovers too many secrets. Great premise, fantastic actors, lots of action. This is the kind of show has something for everyone. Two seasons available on Apple TV.

 

Source: IMDB.

10- Snowpiercer (2020-2024)

Initially published as a graphic novel by French illustrators in 1982, the Snowpiercer was adapted to the cinema in 2013, and then on TV in 2020. Here too, a catastrophic climate event, which was actually an attempt to stop global warning, has frozen earth and made life impossible. The very few humans still alive are all onboard a train, the Snowpiercer, which was built as a lifeboat when the cataclysm became imminent and which is now perpetually circling the globe. The train's population is strictly divided into four classes and is profoundly unequal. While the 1st class people enjoy luxury goods (caviar and apples) and leisure activities, the 4th class people "the tailers" do the dirty work to keep the train moving while living in very poor conditions and eating exclusively protein bars made from ground-up insects. The status quo will be challenged by a series of murders that will force the collaboration between the privileged and the tailers. This show explores issues of survival, class warfare, and social justice. The distribution of actors if great and the action keep rolling. You won't be bored. Four seasons available on Netflix.

 

Honorable mentions

Stargate Universe (2009)
Very different from the rest of the Stargate Series and much more engaging. Scientists find themselves stranded on an ancient ship over which they have no control but the ship appears to take them on a journey to the edge of the universe. A real shame the show was cancelled after only one season.

1899 (2022)
From the German creators of the Netflix success' Dark, this show was very enigmatic from the start. Set in 1899, the show follows a group of European emigrants travelling from the UK on a steamship to start new lives in the United States. Quickly, strange events will start destabilizing the passengers and the crew. Like Dark, the show has a very oppressive atmosphere, heightened by the fact that it takes place on the confined space of a ship where nothing is like it seems. It was going to be a wild ride, but it was cancelled after one season.

Firefly (2002)
This show has a big core of supporters out there who were very upset that Fox cancelled the show after only one season. It has 8,9/10 rating on IMDB! The series takes place in the year 2517 in a world governed by an alliance of the USA and China. The story follows a group of rebels who travel from one solar system to the other, either trading or smuggling. It's funny, witty, and full of action. As a consolation price, you can watch the movie that was released in 2005. It's pretty good.

My Top 5 sci-fi novels →

Since childhood, I have been drawn to science-fiction and adventure. Blame in on Tintin and Les Mystérieuses cités d’or. As an adult, I continue to be fascinated by mystery, outer worlds, dystopian futures, and multiverse theory even if my understanding of physics is limited. In my spare time, I almost exclusively read science-fiction literature and the ordinary world disappears. Here is my Top 5.

1-     The Three-Body Problem trilogy, Cixin Liu (2008)

This is the front cover art for the book Remembrance of Earth's Past written by Liu Cixin. The book cover art copyright is believed to belong to the publisher, Tor Books, or the cover artist, Stephen Martiniere.

This is the list’s most recent collection (trilogy) and one that metaphorically blew my mind. It’s colossal, extraordinary, educated. A must-read for sci-fi and science enthusiasts. One of my favorite genres in sci-fi could be described as ‘encounter of the third kind’, which tend to go wrong. The encounters depicted in these books are no exceptions. Here, Liu explores the concept of the ‘dark forest’, which posits that the universe is like a dark forest inhabited by suspicious and hostile species who prefer to hide and avoid alien contact to prevent the potential annihilation of their world. The trilogy’s story begins during the cultural revolution in China but spans over centuries, even millennia. Liu Cixin is Chinese and so are most of the main characters; it’s refreshing to move away from typical USA-centric stories. It is filled with compelling questions about human nature, alien life, the fabric of the universe, and the laws of physics. Awe guaranteed.

2-     The Nine Billion Names of God, Arthur C. Clarke (1967)

Clarke is my favorite sci-fi author, and he never fails to surprise his readers with stories in which humanity is changed forever after an alien encounter or a scientific discovery. One of the stories, The Star, literally made me gasp with astonishment. The title of the book is already intriguing, and some plots move away from the scientific-rational world of sci-fi to explore religious beliefs, fate, and alien contact. One of the stories, Sentinel, was used as a starting point for the 1968 novel and film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Another one that has a relatively humorous plot, Superiority, depicts an absurd interstellar arms race and was at one point required reading for an industrial design course at the MIT. Clarke’s stories constantly and skillfully put the human civilization to test.

 

3-     Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1932)

First edition cover art for Brave New World. Leslie Holland / Chatto and Windus (London).

Apart from ‘encounters of the third kind’, I love myself a good dystopia. Written almost a hundred years ago, the world depicted in Huxley’s novel has much in common with the world we live in today: decline of religious beliefs, obsession with youth and beauty, waning family bonds, reproduction of socio-economic hierarchies, widespread use of mood stabilizing drugs, etc. The novel depicts the World Space, a technologically accomplished but sterile and emotionless world that leaves some of its citizens unhappy, yet unable to change the system. The story also brings us to the ‘reserves’, areas in which old human habits live on. There, women give birth naturally (unlike in the World Space where babies are conceived and born in labs) and family structures and religious beliefs subsist. The book criticizes social conformity, servitude and the atomization of societies which is all the more relevant today.

4-     The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)

This beautifully titled novel is the only book on the list that was written by a female author. On the backdrop of political intrigues, the book explores themes of gender and foreignness. Le Guin’s novel was gender-bending before it was cool. The book depicts the voyage of an envoy of the Ekumen, a confederation of planets, who seeks to establish diplomatic relations with the inhabitants of a planet called Gethen. Gethenians are ambisexual humanoids, meaning that they do not have a specific gender but can be both female and male depending on the circumstances. Their sexual identity and organs are revealed only when they go through a hormonal cycle during which they are sexually active. Being a gendered man with visible sexual organs, the Envoy is perceived as a freak by the locals, which impedes mutual understanding while political rivalry further complicates his mission. Be prepared to be intellectually and emotionally challenged. I actually used this book in my one of my courses to teach about poststructuralist and feminist theories of International Relations.

5-     The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (1979)

It’s called a trilogy but there are 5 books. Adams is forever confusing us.

These are not your typical sci-fi books as they tell the hilarious and absurd adventures of a very average human, Arthur Dent, who embarks on a galactic journey after Earth is destroyed by bureaucratic aliens to build an intergalactic highway. Before its destruction, Earth was described in the Guide simply as ‘Mostly Harmless’. Arthur is accompanied by an eccentric researcher for the Guide called Ford Perfect (yeah, like the car), a paranoid depressed android called Marvin, and other erratic human companions. They will encounter countless bizarre life forms, one of which tortures captives by reading their bad poetry to them. Have you ever come across the sentence “The answer is 42” and wondered what was that about? Look no further. 42 is actually the very disappointing answer given by a supercomputer which took 7,5 million years to figure out the answer to: “The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”. You’ll laugh out loud.

 

Honorable mentions

The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006). A poignant, but oh so gloomy post-apocalyptic story!

The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1985). A feminist dystopia that reminds us that women’s rights should never be taken for granted.

Hyperion, Dan Simmons (1989). So beautifully written. Imaginative worlds and terrifying creatures.

The Passage, Justin Cronin (2010). An interesting and touching take on the zombie/vampire (both?) genre.

The Rama trilogy, Arthur C. Clarke. Humans rendezvous with a gigantic spatial object passing Earth. Who represents the biggest threat?

 

My top 5 academic books

1- Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing like a state. Yale University Press.

This book was very inspirational because it asks big, fundamental questions: Why so many well-intended schemes to improve the human condition failed? According to Scott, the main reason for the failures of those grandiose projects is the ignorance of local know-how. For Scott, the state is disconnected from social realities. I particularly like how Scott tells us how states attempt to control societies by using standardized administrative techniques, through forced settlement, the construction and imposition of surnames for instance. He has a chapter on the design of grandiose, modern cities that do not really serve the practical purposes of its inhabitants but are instrumental in consolidating the image of a strong state. I think Kazakhstanis can relate to that. :)

2- Keller, Shoshanna. 2001. To Moscow, Not Mecca: The Soviet Campaign Against Islam in Central Asia, 1917-1941. Greenwood Publishing Group.

While I was conducting my research about Islam in Tajikistan, I was greatly impressed with this book that details the secularization campaign in the early days of the Soviet Union, which led to profound social transformations and which consequences we still observe today. The author perfectly captured the dynamic at work: “Instead of creating a hard-headed atheist proletariat, the state would have to settle for close control over the “official” clergy while maintaining pressure against “unofficial” religious observance, a system that would survive into the post-Soviet period.” This ambivalent relationship between the state and religious communities is still present today in many post-Soviet countries where the presence of official clergies somehow contradicts the principle of secularity, which posits that separation of state and religion. In Central Asia in particular, states continue to co-opt the clergy.

3- Schatz, Edward. (Ed) 2009. Political ethnography: What immersion contributes to the study of power. University of Chicago Press.

Some of my professors at the University of Ottawa had chapters in this edited volume and it greatly inspired me prior to conducting my fieldwork in Tajikistan. Schatz describes ethnography as “a sensibility that goes beyond face-to-face contact. It is an approach that cares – with the possible emotional engagement that implies – to glean the meanings that the people under study attribute to their social and political reality.” For me, this was the most honest way to produce knowledge. This book also taught me that so-called objectivity in social science is hardly attainable, especially if one conducts fieldwork. Who you are and where you come from really impacts the way we do research: from the choice of topic to the interactions with informants.

4- Everything that Olivier Roy has written about Islam and/or Central Asia.

It was rumored that this French scholar was once a spy during the Afghan-Soviet war. He has a deep and extended knowledge of the region and of Islamic cultures. Olivier Roy’s work brings necessary nuances between different variations of Islamic political thinking. In the case of Central Asia, he argued that despite the fact that the Soviets perceived Sufism as a threat, it was a cultural marker which is not connected to militancy. Same dynamics are at work in Central Asia today too. In Globalized Islam, Roy describes the difficulties faced by Muslims in trying to assert their identity in a non-Muslim context. Roy suggests that uprooted Muslims, in search of new identities, are seduced by fundamentalist propositions to establish an imaginary Ummah. They are certainly extremely conservative, perhaps fundamentalist but not necessarily extremist nor violent. Finally, in his work about ISIS, Roy argued that the barbarity of Islamic State is quintessentially modern, they embraced “the esthetics of violence”. They could, a generation earlier, have been attracted to violent militant groups in Europe. For him, we now witness the “Islamization of radicality” instead of the “radicalization of Islam.”

5- Hirsch, Francine. 2005. Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union. Cornell University Press.

Hirsch poses the following questions: How did the Soviet Union come into existence? What was the role of ethnographers and local elites in this formation? Hirsch refers to the ethnographers who traveled all over the USSR in its early days to make censuses, create maps and museums. The categorization of the entire population according to “nationality” – including the ones without a national consciousness – redefined the ethnic composition of the region. But not all clans and tribes got a chance to create their nations and hundreds of languages, cultures and separate identities were wiped out. For instance, a citizen of Samarkand who would have answered “Samarkandi” when asked about his identity would have been asked to choose another category because it was not an option in the census. Therefore, he would have been classified as Uzbek or Tajik. It shows how cultural identities can be fluid and not fixed in time.