While it’s unclear if or when a sixth season of Black Mirror is coming, these 24 shows like Black Mirror can help you feed your craving for dystopia.
Shows Like Black Mirror
1. The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone endures for a reason: It’s both timeless and brilliant. Rod Serling brought dystopian science fiction and psychological horror, as well as occasional black comedy, to our living rooms long before streaming. From extraterrestrials to addiction, social commentary and the horrors of nuclear war, Serling’s work transcends its time period and resonates today. From the terrifying Talking Tina in “Living Doll” to the iconic “Eye of the Beholder” and beyond, Black Mirror fans will undoubtedly find The Twilight Zone appealing, even if Serling couldn’t possibly predict the advent of smartphones.
2. The Outer Limits
Similar to The Twilight Zone but with more of a focus on science fiction than on the supernatural, The Outer Limits featured introductions and narrated closings to each self-contained episode and some similar themes, like alien life. However, The Outer Limits had less humor and allegory than The Twilight Zone and was more focused on scaring the pants off of viewers with more straight action and suspense. The show inspired subsequent works like Star Trek(which used some of the same monsters) and even The Terminator. The Outer Limits was rebooted from 1995 to 2002, and as of 2019, another reboot is reportedly in the works.
3. Made for Love
HBO Max’s Made for Love stars Cristin Milioti, a Black Mirror alum, and may as well be a super-long episode of the series: Hazel is in a 10-year marriage to tech mogul Byron when she learns he implanted her with a microchip to monitor her emotions. Made for Love is a darkly hilarious look at love, divorce and “emotional data,” and watching Hazel’s escape from her gilded cage is compelling. Milioti previously told Parade.com that Made for Love made her examine her own relationship with technology. “I’m researching how to get this phone called the Light Phone, where you can only text and call, and then it gives you GPS. That’s it. No email, no pictures,” she said. “And I’m actively pursuing it. I don’t have a great relationship with technology. It frightens me. It’s access to us. It’s unregulated access. It gives me a lot of anxiety.”
4. Tales From the Loop
5. Love, Death & Robots
Three big themes of Black Mirror are the key titular components of Love, Death & Robots. The animated Netflix hit counts Deadpooldirector Tim Miller and iconic director David Fincheramong its producers and Samira Wileyand Mary Elizabeth Winstead among its voice actors. Like Black Mirror, the episodes are standalone, so if you want to jump around or skip a few, you won’t have to worry about missing anything. Unlike Black Mirror, however, the episodes are all quite short (typically 20 minutes or less), so even shorter attention spans can enjoy it.
6. Dead Set
Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker’s first TV show was Dead Set, and it’s basically Big Brothermeets The Walking Dead: A zombie apocalypse hits and leaves the castmates and production staff of Big Brother stranded on their isolated set. Real Big Brother housemates cameo in the five-episode series, which features fast-moving zombies akin to those in 28 Days Later versus the slow, shambling walkers of TWD. Dead Set is streaming on Netflix.
7. Black Summer
Though not directly related to the perils of technology and social media like Black Mirror, Black Summer examines what happens (and how!) when all of our systems fail in the earliest days of a zombie apocalypse. Black Summer examines these issues not just from a systemic and widescale sensibility, but also from the microcosm of one mother (played by Jaime King) being separated from her daughter. The series is specifically written and produced for binge-watching, so you won’t have to feel too bad for canceling your plans to catch it all in one Netflix and chill sitting.
8. Dark
Dark, available to stream on Netflix, is a German thriller-mystery series examining the disappearance of numerous children from a fictional town. There are elements of time travel, wormholes, parallel universes and more. It should be noted that a large element of the aptly named Dark is suicide, so it may be triggering for some viewers.
9. Weird City
Before he rebooted The Twilight Zone, Jordan Peele helmed Weird City, released on YouTube Premium in 2019. The anthology series features stars including Mark Hamill, LeVar Burton, Ed O’Neill, Steven Yeun, Rosario Dawson, Laverne Cox, Hannah Simone, Michael Cera, Auli’i Cravalho, Awkwafina, Yvette Nicole Brown and Gillian Jacobs, to name a few. Each episode follows different characters as they navigate their way around the titular Weird City, which is segregated into The Haves and The Have-Nots.
10. Upload
Upload pretty much has a plot straight out of Black Mirror: In 2033, users can upload themselves into a pricey digital afterlife. When Nathan (Robbie Amell) dies young, he uploads to the ultra-expensive Lake View. While there, his surviving girlfriend Ingrid (Allegra Edwards) tries controlling him and he begins to develop a mutual crush on his customer service rep, Nora (Andy Allo). Nora is struggling with her own dying father’s decision to not be uploaded and is trying to save money to do so despite his wishes.
11. You
There are few cautionary tales about social media darker than You. Penn Badgley stars as Joe, a charming bookworm and murderer with a heart of…definitely not gold. He uses social media to stalk and learn about women who interest him, as well as their friends, family members and anyone else he may interpret as a threat to what he believes is true love. John Stamos, who appeared in Season 1 of the Netflix smash, told Parade of the series, “If you look up the word ‘obsession, you’ll see this show. There was a time where if I wanted to know how popular I was, I’d have to go to the mall. You couldn’t go to an app and say, “I’ve got 10,000 likes.” It’s an interesting look at social media, and it’s a cautionary tale too.”
12. Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams
13. Inside No. 9
14. Room 104
Streaming on HBO Max, Room 104 is an anthology series from the Duplass Brothers that follows the goings-on in a single hotel room. Each episode, like Black Mirror, is self-contained and features stars including Dave Bautista, James Van Der Beek, Orlando Jones, Rainn Wilson, Nat Wolff, Judy Greer, Michael Shannon, Mahershala Ali, Brian Tyree Henry, Luke Wilson, Cobie Smulders, Ron Funches, Kevin Nealon and Harvey Guillen. The comedy has themes including time and space travel, addiction, fiction becoming reality and more.
15. Altered Carbon
Altered Carbon centers around an investigator and former soldier named Takeshi Kovacs with the ability to transfer his consciousness into different bodies. Joel Kinnaman and Anthony Mackie each star as Kovacs in the show, which takes place in the year 2384. Look for Hamiltonstar Renée Elise Goldsberryin a recurring role as a master strategist from Kovacs’ past, as well as Chris Conner as an artificial intelligence figure modeled after Edgar Allen Poe. You can stream Altered Carbon on Netflix.
16. The Handmaid’s Tale
If it’s the dystopian angle of Black Mirror that has your heart, you’re hard-pressed to find anything more dystopian than the world of The Handmaid’s Tale, inspired by Margaret Atwood’s books. In a not-so-distant future, a totalitarian regime wins a second Civil War in the United States and turns fertile women into slaves whose sole purpose is to bear children for their wealthy owners. The series, streaming on Hulu, follows Offred (Elisabeth Moss) as she navigates the new normal and fights back against it. Moss previously told Parade that though the series is incredibly harrowing, fans gush to her about the hope it gives them. “The thing that means the most to me is that [the show] gives them strength, or bravery,” she said. “This show is very dark, and those moments are distracting sometimes because they’re so brutal. But I do think that the idea is how you rise above that brutality that is grinding you down.”
17. Westworld
Evan Rachel Wood, Thandiwe Newton and Jeffrey Wright star in Westworld, based on the 1973 Michael Crichton-penned movie of the same name. The series centers around a Wild West theme park populated with robots that its wealthy visitors can use at their will, often for nefarious purposes. Once the robots, dubbed “hosts,” gain some sentience, however, things take a turn. Wright previously told Parade that the show made him rethink his own relationship with technology. “We also are more susceptible than we’ve ever been, probably in the history of our species, to misinformation, chaos and confusion as a result of this technology,” he said. “And we’ve become, I think, in some ways, less reliant on our own internal hard drive, on our own brain. We could argue that while the technology evolves, we are devolving in some ways.”
18. Humans
19. Maniac
Netflix miniseries Maniac stars Emma Stoneand Jonah Hill, and the psychological horror examines mental illness (specifically schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder) and pharmaceuticals. We’d love to tell you more, but it’s better to see it for yourself—it’s worth it for the performances alone.
20. Two Sentence Horror Stories
Two Sentence Horror Stories is great for the science fiction and horror fan who’s too busy for a binge: Each episode of this anthology series (on the CW and streaming on Netflix) is 20 minutes or shorter, and they’re all self-contained, so you don’t have to worry about missing anything important if you skip an episode or two. The show contains a diverse cast in each episode, and the series as a whole is based on viral fan fiction stories designed to subvert typical horror tropes in all of its subgenres.
21. The Ray Bradbury Theater
22. Mr. Robot
Oscar-winner Rami Malek stars in Mr. Robot alongside Christian Slater. The show’s depiction of hacking and conspiracies made its leads more than a little wary of technology. Malek previously told Parade, “I’ve gone back to writing my own checks. I am not kidding. Every time I go into the bank, they’re like, ‘Are you sure you don’t want to sign up for online banking?’ I look in the teller’s eyes and tell her that I’m positive.”
23. Tales From the Darkside
George A. Romero created Tales From the Darkside, an anthology series that ran for four seasons between 1983 and 1988. The show had (appropriately) dark horror and science fiction themes, as well as the occasional bit of gallows humor that you’d find in Black Mirror. Episodes took inspiration from writings of Clive Barker, Stephen King, Harlan Ellison and more, and a 1990 movie followed starring Christian Slater, Debbie Harry, Julianne Moore and Steve Buscemi.
24. Night Gallery
Like The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling created Night Gallery, an anthology series with a focus on the supernatural. This time, you can see him and his work in color! The show ran from 1969 to 1973, and while Serling reportedly was frustrated that he didn’t have as much creative control over Night Gallery as he did with The Twilight Zone, he was proud of his work on the show. Season 1 episode “They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar” was nominated for an Emmy. Next, check out the 100 best TV shows to binge-watch on Netflix right now!
