5 Best Sci-fi Shows to Binge on HBO Max This Weekend

HBO Max built its name on prestige drama, but it has quietly become one of the most reliable homes for science fiction on television. Westworld turned a cult western into a puzzle box, Watchmen rewrote what a superhero adaptation could be, and Station Eleven found beauty in the end of the world.

Add everything HBO Max has absorbed from Adult Swim and Warner Bros., and the library runs deep. The problem is finding the good stuff. Here are five sci-fi series worth your weekend, ranked from solid to essential. The list runs from broad comedy to grim animation, so there is something here for whatever your mood.

5 Avenue 5 Is the Funniest Space Disaster

Armando Iannucci swaps political corridors for a luxury space cruise, and the results are gloriously bleak. In Avenue 5, Hugh Laurie plays a captain who is actually an actor hired to look reassuring, and Josh Gad is the billionaire owner who understands nothing.

A small navigational error turns an eight-week trip into a three-year one. The joy is watching a thousand entitled passengers slowly realise nobody in charge is qualified. The writing is vicious, the cast is stacked with comic ringers, and at two short seasons it is the easiest commitment on this list.

4 Rick and Morty Still Has the Wildest Ideas in Animated Sci-Fi

A drunk genius scientist drags his anxious grandson through portals in this Adult Swim animated sci-fi show. They encounter whatever nightmare dimension the writers dreamt up that week, and this simple setup has endless possibilities.

What keeps Rick and Morty worth returning to is how seriously it takes its own concepts. An episode can be a throwaway parody one week and a genuinely upsetting story about cloning or regret the next. The animation has only gotten better, and there are enough episodes here to fill a very long weekend.

3 Stuart Fails to Save the Universe Sends a Sitcom Sidekick Across the Multiverse

Nobody asked for a Big Bang Theory spinoff about the comic shop guy, which is exactly why this works. Kevin Sussman’s Stuart breaks a device built by Sheldon and Leonard, triggers a multiverse collapse, and has to fix it with Denise, Bert, and Barry Kripke.

Danny Elfman wrote the theme of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, where the alternate-reality versions of familiar faces are a constant gag. Episodes have been dropping weekly since July, with the finale arriving September 24.

2 Dune: Prophecy Brings Game of Thrones Scheming to the Dune Universe

Set 10,000 years before Paul Atreides, Dune: Prophecy follows the Harkonnen sisters building the order that will one day become the Bene Gesserit. It is less about sandworms than about who controls the bloodlines, and therefore the empire.

Emily Watson and Olivia Williams are magnetic as two women who disagree on everything except the goal, and Travis Fimmel is a live wire as a soldier with an unexplained gift. With six episodes, enormous production values, and more knives in the dark than open warfare, this show is worth watching this weekend.

1 Scavengers Reign Builds the Strangest Alien World on Television

In Scavengers Reign, the survivors of a wrecked cargo ship are scattered across Vesta, a planet whose ecosystem is beautiful, indifferent, and constantly trying to absorb them. Every creature has a life cycle, and the show trusts you to work it out.

The hand-drawn animation is extraordinary, the sound design does more than most scripts, and the horror comes from biology rather than monsters. Twelve half-hour episodes, one perfect season, and the most original thing HBO Max cancelled far too early.

What do you think of the shows on this list? Which one are you going to catch first? Let us know in the comments below!