TL;DR — Start with The Expanse if you want the best serious sci-fi series here. Pick The Orville for a warmer, funnier space adventure. Save Total Recall for a terrific one-night dose of 1990s Mars paranoia.
There is an embarrassment of sci-fi available to stream for free on SBS On Demand at the moment. Not the “a man is trapped in a simulation and there is a blue filter” kind, either. Proper spaceships, political conspiracies, alternate realities, augmented soldiers and Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to work out whether Mars is real.
I checked the IMDb scores before making the list. They do not tell you everything — especially for brand-new shows with a few dozen ratings — but they are useful for separating a cultish curiosity from something people have loved at scale.
1. The Expanse
IMDb: 8.5/10 from 193,000 ratings
This is the easy recommendation. The Expanse is the best thing on this list and, for many people, one of the best science-fiction series made in the past decade.
It begins with a missing person case. Then it expands — patiently and brilliantly — into a tense struggle between Earth, Mars and the people living in the asteroid belt. It takes its politics seriously, gets the physics of space unusually right, and builds a future that feels inhabited rather than decorated.
SBS currently has three seasons available. If you have somehow missed it, this is your next binge.
2. The Orville
IMDb: 8.0/10 from 110,000 ratings
The Orville is what happens when Seth MacFarlane makes something that begins as a very affectionate Star Trek pastiche and gradually turns into a proper, sincere space drama.
Yes, there are jokes. There are also ethical dilemmas, alien civilisations, wonderful ship design and a crew you end up rather liking. The early episodes can feel broader than the show it becomes, so give it a little room to settle in.
The tone is lighter than The Expanse, which makes it a much better choice if you want an episode or two after dinner rather than a dense geopolitical briefing disguised as television.
3. Total Recall
IMDb: 7.5/10 from 383,000 ratings
If a six-season commitment feels like too much, watch Total Recall instead.
Paul Verhoeven’s 1990 film has Arnold Schwarzenegger as Douglas Quaid, a construction worker who buys implanted memories of a holiday on Mars. The procedure goes wrong. Or does it? Soon Quaid is running through a grubby, memorable future with a mysterious past and an increasingly unreliable grip on reality.
It is violent, funny, strange and packed with practical effects that have aged far better than they have any right to. It also contains one of the enduring questions of science fiction: is any of this actually happening?
This is not subtle cinema. It is much more fun than subtle cinema.
4. Warren’s Vortex
IMDb: 6.9/10 from 66 ratings
A New Zealand dad keeps an interdimensional portal in the shed. His daughter gets sucked into it. He goes after her.
That is enough of a premise for Warren’s Vortex, a short, knowingly silly sci-fi comedy set in Lower Hutt. One alternate reality is controlled by smart fridges. Another involves a deadly television game show. It knows exactly what sort of show it is.
The IMDb score is based on a very small sample, so treat it as an early signal rather than a verdict. But it is only six 24-minute episodes, which makes it a pleasingly low-risk experiment.
5. The Sentinels
IMDb: 6.4/10 from 891 ratings
Les Sentinelles — shown in English as The Sentinels — is the wildcard.
Set in 1915, it imagines a secret French programme that turns mortally wounded soldiers into enhanced warriors. That gives it an unusual mix of First World War mud, alternate history and super-soldier fantasy. It is French-language, darker than the rest of this list, and probably not the one to choose if you want a relaxed Friday-night watch.
Its IMDb score puts it below the others, but the premise is distinctive enough to make it worth trying for anyone whose ideal sci-fi has uniforms, conspiracies and the uneasy feeling that human enhancement never ends well.
The order I would watch them
Start with The Expanse. It is the one most likely to turn into a full-scale binge.
Then move to The Orville when you want the stars without the weight. Watch Total Recall whenever you have two hours, a good screen and a tolerance for peak Verhoeven. Finish Warren’s Vortex over a weekend. Keep The Sentinels for when the idea of superpowered soldiers in the Great War sounds exactly right.