Apple TV's Most Ambitious Sci-Fi Series Debuts To Record-Breaking Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score

©Apple TV/Courtesy Everett Collection Published Sep 7, 2026, 7:01 PM EDT Matthew Rudoy is one of ScreenRant's Movie & TV News Editors. He covers the latest in movie & TV news, with a focus on major franchises like Star Wars, The Boys, and Game of Thrones, and also writes some features and reviews. He wrote lists for ScreenRant from 2017-2022, became a news writer in 2023, a senior staff writer in 2024, and an editor in 2025. Sign in to your ScreenRant account The Rotten Tomatoes score for Apple TV's most ambitious sci-fi show breaks a series record. Apple TV has become a top-tier streaming destination for the science-fiction genre. Severance, Pluribus, Silo, For All Mankind, and Murderbot are among the platform's many streaming shows that have made an impact in terms of critical acclaim, awards recognition, and viewership. Ted Lasso used to be Apple TV's most-watched show of all time, until it was surpassed by Severance and then Pluribus. The former has a 95% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, while the latter has a 99% Tomatometer score. Now Playing · Sound On How Well Do You Know Apple TV+? “Believe.” 🍪TedLassoBiscuits with the boss 🧠SeverancePraise Kier 🐎SlowHorsesSlough House ☕MorningShowLive from NYC 🚀For AllMankindWhat if...? PRESS PLAY → 01 Apple TV+’s breakout comedy about a relentlessly optimistic American football coach hired to manage an English Premier League team won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series back-to-back in 2021 and 2022. Who plays Ted? AJason Sudeikis BJon Hamm CWill Ferrell DBrendan Hunt ✓ Correct! Jason Sudeikis — the former SNL cast member who originally played Ted in 2013 NBC Sports Premier League promos. He co-created the series with Brendan Hunt (who plays Coach Beard), Bill Lawrence, and Joe Kelly. Sudeikis won back-to-back Emmys for Best Actor in a Comedy. A Season 4 is officially in production for 2026. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is Jason Sudeikis. Jon Hamm is Mad Men (and later showed up as himself in Ted Lasso Season 2). Will Ferrell hasn’t done an Apple TV+ show. Brendan Hunt plays Coach Beard — Ted’s silent assistant — and was a co-creator, but Sudeikis is the title character and won two Best Actor Emmys for the role. NEXT → 02 Ben Stiller-directed sci-fi thriller Severance became a cultural phenomenon with its eerie Macrodata Refinement floors and “praise Kier” cultishness. What is the name of the sinister biotech corporation at its centre? AApex Corporation BLumon Industries CWeyland-Yutani DUmbrella Corp ✓ Correct! Lumon Industries — the unsettling corporation founded by the cult-like Eagan family, whose “severance procedure” surgically splits an employee’s work memories from their outside life. Weyland-Yutani is from Alien; Umbrella Corp is Resident Evil; Apex is fictional but not this show. Lumon’s retro-futuristic aesthetic (beige Macbook-era CRTs and long hallways) has become instantly iconic. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is Lumon Industries. Weyland-Yutani is the Alien franchise’s evil megacorp. Umbrella Corp runs Resident Evil. Apex isn’t a recognisable fictional company. Lumon is the creepy biotech behind Severance — with its Kier Eagan cult of personality, waffle parties, and surgically separated “innies” and “outies.” NEXT → 03 In March 2022, Apple TV+ made streaming history when one of its films became the first from any streaming service to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Which film was it? AThe Morning Show BGreyhound CCODA DKillers of the Flower Moon ✓ Correct! CODA (Children of Deaf Adults) — Sian Heder’s drama about a hearing daughter of a deaf family in Massachusetts — won Best Picture at the 94th Academy Awards, beating The Power of the Dog (the heavy favourite). Troy Kotsur’s supporting-actor win was the first for a deaf male actor. The Morning Show is a TV series, Greyhound is Apple’s Tom Hanks WWII film, Killers is an Apple film but was released later. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is CODA. The Morning Show is a series. Greyhound is Apple’s 2020 Tom Hanks WWII film (a solid hit but not an Oscar winner). Killers of the Flower Moon — Scorsese’s 2023 Apple release — was nominated for 10 Oscars but won none. CODA’s 2022 Best Picture win made Apple the first streamer to break through in the category. NEXT → 04 The scruffy, flatulent, ruthlessly cynical MI5 exile Jackson Lamb — running the Slough House dumping ground for disgraced spies — is one of modern TV’s most acclaimed performances. Which veteran actor plays him? AAnthony Hopkins BColin Firth CGary Oldman DJim Broadbent ✓ Correct! Gary Oldman — Oscar winner for Darkest Hour — plays Jackson Lamb opposite Kristin Scott Thomas’ glacial Diana Taverner. The series adapts Mick Herron’s Slough House novels and has become Apple’s most quietly successful long-running drama, renewed through at least Season 6. Oldman has repeatedly called Lamb his favourite role of his career. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is Gary Oldman. Anthony Hopkins hasn’t done an Apple TV+ series of this prominence. Colin Firth was reportedly in contention for different spy roles (including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s George Smiley, which Oldman also played). Jim Broadbent appears elsewhere. Oldman’s Lamb is one of TV’s most delightfully unpleasant protagonists. NEXT → 05 Apple TV+’s flagship prestige drama on launch day — a #MeToo-era newsroom saga about the on-air partners of a fictional morning TV show — was anchored by two huge Hollywood names as its co-leads and producers. Who are they? ANicole Kidman & Meryl Streep BReese Witherspoon & Laura Dern CJennifer Aniston & Nicole Kidman DJennifer Aniston & Reese Witherspoon ✓ Correct! Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon — both also executive producers — anchor the show as Alex Levy and Bradley Jackson. Reportedly each earned a then-record $1.1 million per episode. Steve Carell co-stars as the disgraced anchor whose firing kicks off the entire series. Aniston earned her first Emmy nomination for dramatic work for the role in 2020. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is Jennifer Aniston & Reese Witherspoon. Witherspoon & Dern did Big Little Lies (on HBO). Kidman was also in Big Little Lies. Meryl Streep joined The Morning Show in later seasons (a supporting role). Aniston and Witherspoon lead and produce — both reportedly making $1.1M per episode in one of streaming’s richest-ever deals. NEXT → 06 Ronald D. Moore’s alt-history space epic For All Mankind — one of Apple TV+’s original launch titles — jumps forward in time each season. What is the show’s central point of divergence from real history? AThe Soviets land on the Moon first BAliens contact Earth in 1969 CMars is colonised in 1970 DNASA is privatised in the 1960s ✓ Correct! The Soviets beat Apollo 11 to the Moon in June 1969 — keeping the Space Race alive and turning NASA into a permanently ascendant institution. That single change cascades across decades: women astronauts are pushed early, lunar bases are built in the 1970s, Mars is reached in the 1990s, and so on. Each season time-jumps ahead a decade, showing how this different history snowballs. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is the Soviets landing on the Moon first — June 1969, beating Apollo 11. That single change drives everything: continued funding, expanded NASA, women astronauts, a permanent lunar base by the 1980s, Mars missions in the 1990s. Aliens aren’t in the show. Mars gets colonised, but much later. NASA remains public throughout the series. NEXT → 07 Apple TV+ launched with a small lineup of nine originals — including The Morning Show, See, Dickinson, and For All Mankind — at the aggressively low price of $4.99 a month. When did the service officially go live? AJanuary 2017 BNovember 2019 CMarch 2020 DSeptember 2021 ✓ Correct! Apple TV+ launched on November 1, 2019 — just before Disney+ beat it to market by 11 days. Apple went in with a tiny roster of about nine originals (versus Disney+’s massive back catalogue) but compensated with $1 billion in original content spend and a one-year free trial for Apple hardware buyers. Its quality-over-quantity bet has since paid off in awards and prestige. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is November 2019 — specifically November 1st, just 11 days before Disney+ launched (a deliberate piece of scheduling brinkmanship). Apple launched with only nine originals and priced at $4.99/month to try to get ahead of Netflix and Disney. The service went live just before the pandemic turbocharged streaming growth everywhere. NEXT → 08 Apple TV+’s post-apocalyptic thriller Silo — starring Rebecca Ferguson in a 10,000-person underground society — adapts a bestselling series of novels originally self-published as a 2011 short story. Who wrote them? AAndy Weir BBlake Crouch CTed Chiang DHugh Howey ✓ Correct! Hugh Howey self-published Wool as a short story on Amazon in 2011; word-of-mouth turned it into a trilogy (Wool, Shift, Dust) and eventually a publishing phenomenon. Apple’s adaptation, retitled Silo, premiered in 2023. Andy Weir wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary. Blake Crouch wrote Dark Matter and Recursion. Ted Chiang wrote the novella that became Arrival. ✗ Cut it off! The answer is Hugh Howey. Andy Weir is The Martian/Project Hail Mary. Blake Crouch is Dark Matter/Recursion (also recently adapted to Apple TV+, hence the mix-up). Ted Chiang is Arrival’s source. Howey’s Wool trilogy — Silo’s source — started as a self-published Amazon short story in 2011 before exploding into a bestseller. REVEAL MY SCORE → End Credits · Autoplay Paused Your Apple TV+ Rank 🍏 / 8 Cupertino completionist — or still on the free trial? ⤴ PLAY AGAIN Apple TV's Dark Matter season 2 has now debuted to a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. This is a record-best for the series, as season 1 had an 80% audience score. The critics' score has also improved, going from 81% to 91%. Since season 2's audience score is based on fewer than 50 ratings as of this writing, the overall number may fluctuate as more reviews are added to the site. Dark Matter Season Tomatometer Score Popcornmeter Score Season 1 (2024) 81% 80% Season 2 (2026) 91% 92% Many of the audience reviews praise season 2 for getting off to a strong start after the two-year hiatus and as the story moves beyond Blake Crouch's source material. The cast, writing, and overall plot are also complimented in numerous reviews, along with an emphasis on being eager to see where the story goes next in the coming episodes. With even more universes and variants of characters than in season 1, the new season is already showing its ambition. Joel Edgerton's Jason Dessen remains at the heart of the series, while other Dark Matter actors play even more versions of themselves this season, including scenes where the variants interact with one another. The show is also diving deeper into the multiverse and the Box that makes travel between each reality possible. In ScreenRant's Dark Matter season 2 review, Dani Kessel Odom gave it a rating of seven out of 10 stars due to appreciating the thoughtful ambition but taking issue with some of the execution: "The second season of the sci-fi show felt ambitious and thoughtful... Unfortunately, the execution was shaky, and Dark Matter season 2 didn't find its footing until the final few episodes, making it lower quality than the first season." Crouch, who wrote the book that season 1 is based on, also created the series and serves as the showrunner. It is not unusual for successful shows to continue after adapting the entirety of their source material, but it often doesn't happen with the original author being the one to continue the story. Another season hasn't been officially announced yet, but producer Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry previously told ScreenRant that Dark Matter has a three-season plan, and season 2 was pitched to Apple TV with this in mind. The improved reception from both critics and audiences is a promising sign of a third season being greenlit. The viewership also bodes well, with the show third on Apple TV's worldwide streaming charts and in the U.S. as of this writing, only behind Silo and Ted Lasso and ahead of Slow Horses, Widow's Bay, Lucky, Severance, and all other shows on the platform. In addition to Edgerton, the Dark Matter season 2 cast features Jennifer Connelly as Daniela Dessen, Oakes Fegley as Charlie Dessen, Alice Braga as Amanda Lucas, Jimmi Simpson as Ryan Holder, Dayo Okeniyi as Leighton Vance, Amanda Brugel as Blair Caplan, and Chris Diamantopoulos as Mitchel McNamara. Dark Matter season 2 releases new episodes on Fridays on Apple TV. Release Date May 7, 2024 Network Apple TV+ Directors Jakob Verbruggen, Alik Sakharov, Roxann Dawson, Logan George Writers Blake Crouch Cast Joel Edgerton Jason Dessen / Jason2