Apple TV’s Most Underrated Sci-Fi Series Returns With Stellar Rotten Tomatoes Score

Credit: Apple TV Published Aug 29, 2026, 1:29 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 most underrated Apple TV science-fiction series returns with an impressive Rotten Tomatoes score. When it comes to Apple TV's science-fiction shows, the first to come to mind are often Severance and Pluribus. The former dethroned Ted Lasso to become the streamer's most-watched show of all time, only for Pluribus to later become the record-holder. Silo, which is close to ending its third season, has also received a great deal of recognition, as has For All Mankind, which will end as the service's longest-running sci-fi series after six seasons. 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 Now, Apple TV's Dark Matter season 2 has debuted to a 93% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. This average is based on 15 reviews so far, 14 of which are "Fresh" by the metrics of the aggregation site. While the score may fluctuate as more reviews are added, it is an improvement over season 1, which had an 81% score from critics. In ScreenRant's Dark Matter season 2 review, Dani Kessel Odom gave it a rating of six out of 10 stars, explaining that the new episodes do "a lot right, including narrative consistency and providing representation. I can easily say the season is more good than bad. That said, the second season of Dark Matter remains a prime example of the issues that can arise when adaptations surpass their source material." Kaiya Shunyata at RogerEbert.com praises how season 2 improves upon the show's initial premise and does its characters justice: "What was once a mind-numbing, reality-hopping sci-fi becomes a thrilling examination of humanity and belonging. Finally, the multiverse isn’t the focus of the story; instead, the characters within these realities are." Nick Schager at The Daily Beast calls the series "the most mind-meltingly compelling genre series since Netflix’s Dark, and a twisty-turny triumph elevated by performances—led by Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly—that are as multi-layered as the various realities in which they exist." Many of the other reviews also highlight the cast's performances. The one "Rotten" review so far comes from Samantha Nelson at Polygon, who writes that "while the series is never a disaster, and its second season has moments of transcendent brilliance, it doesn’t quite live up to Crouch’s ambitions." Season 1 is an adaptation of Blake Crouch's Dark Matter novel, which sees physicist Jason Dessen (Edgerton) kidnapped and thrown into the multiverse, while an impostor takes over the life he left behind. After the book's story was adapted in season 1, the new season goes beyond the source material, as Jason and his family search for a universe that could become their new home. Along with Edgerton playing Jason and versions of him from many other universes, the rest of the main Dark Matter season 1 cast also returns, including Jennifer Connelly as Daniela Dessen, Oakes Fegley as Charlie Dessen, Alice Braga as Amanda Lucas, Jimmi Simpson as Ryan Holder, and Leighton Vance as Dayo Okeniyi. Amanda Brugel, who plays Blaire, was promoted to series regular, and Chris Diamantopoulos has joined the cast as a mysterious individual at the heart of an investigation involving the numerous Jasons being found. While the show hasn't become as big as Severance or Pluribus, along with the positive critical reception, season 2 is already performing well on streaming. It is number three worldwide on Apple TV, only behind Silo and Ted Lasso. It is also in the top 10 for 101 different countries, and is in the top 3 for most of them, including in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Thailand, and Ukraine. With only one episode left in Silo season 3, and the majority of the season still to come for Dark Matter, it will likely surpass that series relatively soon as well. Apple TV's Dark Matter was created by the author of the original novel, Crouch, and he also serves as the showrunner, along with writing and executive producing. 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