A list of the 15 best TV shows set in the future, from dystopian thrillers to big-scale space and AI sci-fi. These series turn tomorrow into drama, danger, and the occasional existential spiral.
Future TV has a special talent: it hands you a gleaming gadget, waits for you to smile, and then uses that same gadget to ruin someone’s life by episode two. These shows don’t just toss in flying cars for decoration, they build whole societies around surveillance, space-distance loneliness, synthetic people with inconvenient feelings, and “progress” that comes with fine print nobody read.
This list pulls together 15 series that actually do something with the future: worlds that feel engineered, not wallpapered, and stories where the tech changes the way people love, lie, work, and fall apart. Some are huge sci-fi playgrounds, some are tight little nightmares, and a few are uncomfortably close to your current notification settings.
15. 12 Monkeys (2015)
Time travel stories usually act like they’re a neat little puzzle; this one grabs the puzzle and throws it through a window, then dares you to keep up. The show starts with a mission to stop a plague and quickly escalates into identity crises, conspiracies, and timelines that behave like they have personal grudges. It’s messy in the best way: high-stakes, occasionally heartbreaking, and weirdly funny when it wants to be, without winking so hard it breaks the mood. The real hook isn’t the gadgets – it’s watching characters make impossible choices and then live with the emotional hangover across multiple “versions” of their lives. Some seasons are tighter than others, but when it hits, it hits with that rare “I can’t believe they pulled this off” momentum.
14. Snowpiercer (2020)
Imagine the future deciding the only safe real estate left is a train, and then deciding class warfare should be the on-board entertainment. Snowpiercer is basically a rolling society where every hallway is political, every meal is a message, and every door you open might start a riot. The premise is deliciously grim, and the show leans into it with power struggles, shifting alliances, and the kind of moral compromises that make you pause mid-episode like, “Okay, but would I do that too?” It can be melodramatic (sometimes proudly), but it’s also sharp about how systems keep recreating themselves – even at the end of the world. The train setting keeps things claustrophobic and tense, which is perfect when everyone’s one bad decision away from chaos.
13. Lost in Space (2018)
Space colonization sounds glamorous until you remember it’s mostly parenting, panic, and trying not to die in new and creative ways. Lost in Space takes the classic “family stranded far from home” setup and plays it as a survival adventure with real emotional stakes – because nothing bonds people like shared terror and limited oxygen. The show is glossy, big on spectacle, and surprisingly sincere about what it costs to keep a family together when the universe keeps throwing disasters at you. The Robinsons aren’t superheroes; they’re just stubborn, resourceful, and occasionally exhausting (which feels accurate). It’s not trying to reinvent sci-fi, but it does deliver that old-school thrill of cliffhangers, strange planets, and “please don’t touch that alien thing” decisions that never go well.
12. The 100 (2014)
Teenagers getting sent back to a ruined Earth sounds like a bad group project until the show makes it clear the syllabus is “survive, then regret everything.” The 100 starts with a simple premise and very quickly turns into a brutal, twisty saga about leadership, violence, loyalty, and how fast ideals crumble when the stakes get real. It’s dramatic, sometimes messy, and absolutely not shy about making characters do awful things for reasons that almost make sense in the moment. The future here isn’t sleek – it’s muddy, tribal, radiation-soaked, and constantly forcing everyone to choose between bad and worse. When the writing is firing, it’s addictively propulsive; when it stumbles, it still has enough ambition to keep you watching just to see what chaos comes next.
11. Brave New World (2020)
A “perfect” society is always suspicious, and this one doesn’t even bother hiding the fine print: no privacy, no monogamy, no mess, no suffering – just engineered happiness with a smile you’re not allowed to stop wearing. Brave New World goes for glossy, controlled beauty on the surface, then starts poking at what happens when humans aren’t permitted to feel inconvenient emotions. It’s sleek, provocative, and sometimes a little too pleased with its own polish, but the premise stays interesting because the cracks are the point. The show plays with pleasure as control, comfort as coercion, and rebellion as something that starts small, like a thought you weren’t supposed to have. Even in its weaker moments, it’s the kind of sci-fi that makes “utopia” feel like a horror genre.
10. The Expanse (2015)
Space in The Expanse isn’t a sparkly screensaver – it’s a cold, political mess where every faction has a grudge and every corridor feels one bad decision away from catastrophe. The future here runs on scarcity, propaganda, and people trying to survive in systems that were never designed to be kind, which makes the stakes feel uncomfortably real. It starts as a missing-person mystery and keeps mutating into something bigger: conspiracy, war, first contact, and the constant suspicion that the universe is about to change the rules on everyone. What makes it addictive is how seriously it treats its own worldbuilding – gravity matters, air matters, and so do the consequences of throwing a punch in the wrong room. It’s smart without being smug, intense without being joyless, and it earns its “best future TV shows” reputation by actually thinking through what living in space would do to society.
9. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
A starship crew walks onto the bridge like they’re heading to work, and somehow that simple vibe becomes the most comforting vision of the future ever broadcast. The Next Generation isn’t obsessed with doom; it’s obsessed with possibility – exploration, diplomacy, moral puzzles, and the occasional cosmic weirdness that shows up like an office email nobody wanted. The show’s future is sleek, sure, but the real appeal is the tone: competent adults solving problems with brains, empathy, and the occasional very polite argument in a conference room. It also gives you some of sci-fi TV’s most iconic characters, with stories that still hold up because they’re really about ethics, identity, and what “being human” even means when the universe keeps complicating it. Not every episode is a classic, but the highs are franchise-defining, and the overall optimism feels almost rebellious now.
8. The Mandalorian (2019)
Armor clinks, the bassline hums, and the future arrives looking like a space western with a side of “please don’t touch the baby.” The Mandalorian takes the Star Wars galaxy and zooms in on the grind: bounties, broken codes, dusty planets, and a hero who communicates primarily through competence and irritation. The show’s timeline sits after the fall of the Empire, so the future feels lawless in a very practical way – power vacuums, local tyrants, and people making their own rules because nobody else is showing up. It’s stylish, episodic in a satisfying throwback sense, and it knows exactly when to go big and when to keep things intimate. Even when the plot detours, the mood is so strong it still feels like forward momentum, like a lone-wolf adventure that keeps accidentally collecting a found family.
7. Westworld (2016)
Start with a theme park where people pay to act out their worst impulses, add hyper-advanced AI, and then act surprised when the whole thing turns into an existential knife fight. Westworld is glossy, violent, philosophical, and occasionally so tangled it practically dares you to draw a flowchart – yet when it’s on, it’s electrifying. The future here isn’t just robots and luxury; it’s data, control, and the terrifying idea that consciousness might be something you can manufacture and still mistreat. The show’s best episodes hit that sweet spot of “thriller plot” plus “I’m going to stare at the ceiling after this,” especially when it leans into identity, memory, and what freedom costs. It can get uneven later, but the ambition never disappears, and the early run is some of the most stylish, unnerving future-set TV out there.
6. The Jetsons (1962)
Retro-future optimism has a face, and it’s George Jetson trying to survive his job while his house does everything except file his taxes. The Jetsons imagines a tomorrow full of flying cars, robot helpers, push-button convenience, and the quiet assumption that technology will solve everything – plus, it’ll do it with a cheerful beep. The jokes are very much of their era, but the concept still charms because it treats the future like a lifestyle catalog: shiny, domestic, and just stressful enough to be relatable. A lot of modern sci-fi loves dystopia; this one loves convenience, and that contrast is half the fun. It’s also a reminder that “shows set in the future” don’t have to be bleak to be memorable – sometimes they just predict video calls and call it a day.
5. Upload (2020)
Death gets rebranded as a subscription service here, which is both hilarious and faintly horrifying in the way only good near-future TV can manage. The premise drops people into a glossy digital afterlife where “eternity” comes with customer support, premium tiers, and the occasional buffering problem – because of course it does. What makes the show stick is how it keeps one foot in rom-com charm and the other in a quietly sharp critique of tech companies and class divides. It finds real tension in who controls the servers, who pays for the perks, and who gets stuck in the ads. It’s breezy, but it’s not empty; the jokes land because the world feels plausible enough to be annoying. When it gets darker, it still keeps a wink in its pocket, like it knows you came here to laugh and panic at the same time.
4. Futurama (1999)
A delivery guy wakes up in the future and immediately joins the worst workplace imaginable – in the best possible way. Futurama takes the “far future” and uses it as an excuse to do everything: dirty jokes, warm character arcs, brainy sci-fi concepts, and sudden emotional gut-punches that show up when you least expect them. The world is absurd (robots, aliens, bureaucratic space nonsense), but the writing is weirdly precise about what makes it funny and what makes it human. Fry’s whole deal is fish-out-of-water comedy, yet the show never forgets the loneliness under the gag, which is why it hits harder than it has any right to. Some episodes are pure chaos candy; others are straight-up iconic sci-fi storytelling with a cartoon face. It’s one of the easiest “future-set TV shows” to recommend because it does the genre and mocks the genre in the same breath.
3. Pluribus (2025)
The apocalypse shows up in this one wearing a friendly smile, which is arguably the rudest kind. Pluribus drops you into a near-empty world after “the Joining” turns most of humanity into a peaceful, content hive mind – and yes, it’s as unsettling as it sounds when everyone is calm for the wrong reasons. Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), an Albuquerque romance novelist and one of the few immune, becomes the inconvenient problem the hive mind can’t neatly solve, and the tension comes from how “nice” the threat can be while still trying to swallow you whole. Vince Gilligan leans into that itchy mix of mystery, dread, and dark humor, so the show can make you laugh and then immediately make you feel weird about laughing. It’s sleek without feeling sterile, and it has a mean little streak about conformity that lands because it never treats the premise like a cute gimmick. Apple has even touted it as a major viewership hit for the platform, which tracks with how quickly it got people arguing about its twists.
2. Black Mirror (2011)
You know that tiny, irrational fear that your phone is judging you? Black Mirror turns that into a full episode and then makes it worse on purpose. The show’s future isn’t “one big timeline” so much as a pile of cautionary postcards: social scoring, invasive surveillance, AI grief replicas, twisted entertainment, and tech that feels like it was invented during a very bad week. When it’s great, it’s unforgettable – sharp, mean, clever, and suddenly personal, like it found the exact button you didn’t want pressed. When it’s uneven, it’s still interesting because the ideas are always swinging for the throat, not the wallpaper. It also has a talent for making you laugh and then immediately regret laughing, which is a special skill. If “TV shows set in the future” means anything beyond flying cars, this is the series that keeps dragging the genre back to consequences.
1. Andor (2022)
No Jedi, no destiny speeches, no cute side-quest detours – just the slow, grinding machinery of oppression and the people trying to jam a wrench into it. Andor feels like the future as lived experience: surveillance, propaganda, extraction, and the constant pressure of behaving correctly so you don’t get noticed. It’s technically part of Star Wars, but the tone is closer to a political thriller that happens to have blasters, where every conversation sounds like it could get someone arrested. Diego Luna’s Cassian is the anchor, but what really elevates the show is how seriously it treats ordinary lives – workers, prisoners, bureaucrats, rebels – each caught in systems that don’t care if they’re good people. The pacing is patient, sometimes brutally so, but the payoff is tension you can feel in your jaw. If you want a future-set series that makes rebellion look costly, complicated, and painfully earned, this is the one.