Publications
Partners
Cape Town - Feeling stressed out?
Forget all of your earthly worries by travelling to other worlds in these series that you’ll find on internet TV this weekend.
HERE ARE 6 SCI-FI FANTASY SERIES TO ESCAPE INTO:
1. The Magicians, S1-3 | Showmax
The third and latest season just premiered on Showmax, and the story of Quentin Coldwater, who gets admitted to a secret, exclusive college of magic in New York, gets more frightening and intriguing with every episode.
Magic has been removed from the world, forcing Quentin and his friends to search for seven hidden keys to restore it - otherwise their college and their whole way of life may disappear forever.
Season 3 has a 100% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes - so there’s no disputing that this is the best season yet. If you haven’t watched The Magicians yet, start from the very beginning.
2. Reverie | Showmax
Reverie is a new virtual reality game that is so appealing and attractive to its players that they never want to leave. It offers them everything they’ve ever wanted, from adventure to success to love. But while their minds are in the game, their bodies are comatose in the real world.
It’s up to one woman, former hostage negotiator Mara Kint, with a dark past of her own that she’d quite like to escape from, to enter the game and convince the players to return to their real lives.
3. HBO’s Here and Now | Showmax
The Bayer-Boatwrights seem like a model modern family. Philosophy professor Greg (Tim Robbins) and his wife Audrey (Holly Hunter - whose performance in this role is only rivalled, we think, by her as an androgynous mystic in a women-only cult in Top of the Lake S1, on Showmax and Netflix) have three adopted children and a biological daughter.
When they all come together to celebrate Greg’s birthday, Ramon starts experiencing weird visions, featuring the number 11:11. Is he a prophet that nobody’s listening to? Or is he going mad?
Series creator Alan Ball, who also brought us True Blood (all seven seasons are on Showmax), says, “On face value it’s a drama series, but if you dig deeper, there are more things happening in the shadows.”
4. The Orville, S1 | DStv Now
Want a bit of comedy with your sci-fi? Seth MacFarlane stars in and created this Star Trek spoof set 400 years in the future. He plays Ed Mercer, an officer who’s put in charge of The Orville, an exploratory space vessel in the Planetary Union.
This is his big break in a career that’s been on a bit of a downward spiral lately - so to speak. But then he finds out that his ex-wife Kelly has been assigned as his right-hand woman on the ship. They split up after he found her in bed with an alien, but now they have to put their tensions aside for the good of the vessel.
Look out for guest stars Rob Lowe, Jeffrey Tambor, Charlize Theron and Liam Neeson.
5. Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, S5 | DStv Now
The latest season of the longest-running Marvel Cinematic Universe series has the coveted 100% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which fans will appreciate, since the show took a big gamble at the beginning of this season, moving Agent Phil Coulson and his colleagues to a space station in the future.
Earth has been destroyed, and the Kree are in control. But Fitz has been left behind, and is now accountable for the whereabouts of the other agents. So he decides to bring them back on his own.
6. The Good Place, S1 | Netflix
Kristen Bell plays Eleanor, a not-very-nice person who accidentally ends up in The Good Place when she dies. She quickly realises that she was put there by some kind of clerical mistake, and has to hide the fact that she’s a fraud from her neighbours, while also trying to fit in and make up for the mean things she did when she was alive.
Ted Danson plays Michael, the architect of The Good Place, and, as Eleanor starts to realise, he’s not been completely honest with her about where she’s ended up.
