5 Perfect Sci-Fi Shows You Can Binge In A Day

Published Jul 20, 2026, 4:15 PM EDT Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel. Sometimes you don't have all the time in the world to pay attention to a long-running sci-fi TV show; in those cases, check out these five series: excellent science fiction you can binge in a day. Science fiction short stories are a genre unto their own, so it's a wonder why there aren't more short sci-fi TV shows. Science fiction doesn't always lend itself to short form on television. It can take some time to get an audience accustomed to the setting and ideas of a science fiction story before you can start building out plot and characters. Other sci-fi shows drop you right into an alien world, and trust you can keep up. Maniac (2018) 10 Episodes, 26-47 Minutes Credit: MovieStillsDB Maniac is a 2018 psychological black comedy and an oddly forgotten Netflix original. It was on the early side of Netflix original TV shows and starred Emma Stone the same year she appeared in her Oscar-nominated role in The Favourite and Jonah Hill in the middle of what remains a high-profile and successful career. Add in Patrick Somerville, creator of another sci-fi masterpiece, Station Eleven, and Cary Joji Fukunaga, director of True Detective season 1, and it becomes even harder to gauge why Maniac doesn't hold as important a place in the pop culture landscape. It should, and not just because it takes only 6–7 hours to binge. This sci-fi miniseries follows Annie Landsberg (Stone) and Owen Milgrim (Hill), two strangers who independently decide to undergo a risky, experimental psychological pharmaceutical trial. The trial is for a drug that will supposedly cure every problem a person has, of which Annie and Owen have many. It's a mind-bending series, and each episode feels different than the previous one, with changing settings and characters, a result of the novel drug transporting Annie and Owen through what seem to be different universes. Maniac constantly shifts in how it looks and feels, which makes it perfect for a binge so you don't lose your mooring. Calls (2021) 9 Episodes, 13-21 Minutes Credit: IMDB Calls is a strange series that takes some time to get used to but is very rewarding once you do. A science fiction thriller told entirely via phone calls, with some text on screen, Calls is essentially a radio play, a popular concept 80 years ago but all but completely forgotten about now. Based on a French TV series of the same name, Apple TV's Calls is a co-production between Apple and the original show's Canal+. The series is multiple episodes of interconnected phone conversations between strangers who find themselves trying to understand the mysterious beginnings of an apocalyptic event. While you don't see them on screen, you do hear the voices of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Aubrey Plaza, Ben Schwartz, Clancy Brown, Danny Huston, Danny Pudi, Judy Greer, Karen Gillan, Lili Collins, Nicholas Braun, Pedro Pascal, and Rosario Dawson. It's packed with famous stars who lend weight and anxiety to the proceedings. Each episode of the series is only tenuously linked, and most characters don't tend to appear in more than one episode. Each episode offers a dramatic, though routinely human beginning, like a breakup or unintended pregnancy, and quickly goes off the rails as the callers begin to understand that something awful is happening in their world. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022) 10 Episodes, 23-28 Minutes Based on the 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077, the animated Netflix series, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners may have even helped boost appreciation for the video game, which had a somewhat muted reception upon release. Edgerunners is set within the world of the games, but tells an entirely unique story. The 10-episode anime takes place a year or two before the events of the game, set within Night City, a dystopian metropolis where society is ruled by megacorporations, the rich sit safely high above, and the poor make meager livings in the streets, either fighting in gangs or on behalf of violent corporations. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners follows David Martinez, a struggling student whose life is changed after a personal tragedy. This tragedy leads him to meet Lucy Kushinada, a cyber hacker who brings him into a group of edgrerunners, cybernetically enhanced mercenary outlaws, and David quickly proves to be a prodigy. It's an action-packed, beautifully animated story that does not step off the gas pedal for the entire series. As lovely as the drawings are, it's David's journey from a novice to a committed edgerunner that keeps you the most engaged and is a dramatic, tragic examination of running away from grief. Bodies (2023) 8 episodes, 55-61 Minutes The British science fiction mystery thriller Bodies was created for Netflix and stars a large ensemble of characters often played by more than one actor, because Bodies is a time-jumping show that crosses from 1890 to 1941 to 2023 to the future in 2053. There are some similarities to Netflix's German hit Dark, but it's a unique show. One day, on Longharvest Lane in the Whitechapel area of London, a dead body suddenly appears. We quickly learn that this body appears in the same location in the four aforementioned years. So begins four separate investigations by different iterations of the Metropolitan Police. Time-jumping shenanigans and time loop paradoxes ensue, resulting in detectives from each timeline trying to right the world across different decades. It's a twisting, complex series that can be difficult to keep straight, but the brevity of the show actually helps to direct your attention only to what's important. Stephen Graham puts in a fantastic performance in multiple storylines, and he finds strong support in the rest of the cast. Each episode is carefully divided into four sections which makes navigating the time loop easier, and the mystery is filled with sub-questions that give you enough to chew on as you wait for the big reveal. Mrs. Davis (2023) 8 Episodes, 48-60 Minutes Damon Lindelof has continued to wrestle with his questions about the relationship between science and religion many times after Lost. In The Leftovers and Watchmen, Lindelof picked apart ideas of free will, self-determination, what we owe one another and ourselves, and how science and religion can tear people apart as much as they can bring them together. In Peacock's Mrs. Davis, Lindelof makes his points about this never-ending concern more obvious than ever. In the series, an artificial intelligence known as Mrs. Davis is obsequious. Almost everyone wears headphones to hear her advice and suggestions, which has led to a world free of war, hunger, and other man-made maladies. However, it has not freed some people from needing to find a sense of purpose. One such person is Sister Simone (Betty Gilpin), a Catholic nun with an extremely personal relationship with Jesus Christ (Andy McQueen). This is a world where you are as likely to be swallowed by a whale as meet the Virgin Mary. It's a beautiful series, filled with hilarious moments and creative quirks that never stop giving. Beneath the goofiness and absurdity are some tearjerking stories of love, loss, and the painful decisions people make to save or simply protect the ones they love. It's a quick watch, but a sci-fi series you may find yourself frequently returning to.