Television series

Dark Matter

Name: Dark Matter
Genre: Science Fiction, Thriller, Mystery
Released: 2024
Cast: Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, Oakes Fegley, Alice Braga, Joel Edgerton

A physicist wakes up in the wrong version of his own life and has to fight his way home through an infinite hallway of alternate selves. Adapted from Blake Crouch's bestseller, it's propulsive, high-concept thriller television that takes the multiverse idea and makes it personal, even domestic — the villain is just you, with slightly different choices. Good for anyone who wants their sci-fi twisty but emotionally grounded.

TVMaze rating

7.4

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Dark2017

German time-travel series that treats its puzzle-box structure with total seriousness — family secrets, causal loops, and a genuinely staggering long game. If you liked untangling Dark Matter's rules, this rewards obsessive rewatching even more.

But Dense, grim, and demands real attention across three seasons — not a casual watch.

Counterpart2017

J.K. Simmons plays two versions of the same man on either side of a Cold-War-style parallel-world divide, and the show is as much espionage thriller as sci-fi. The doppelganger tension is exactly Dark Matter's engine in a trench coat.

But Slow-burn and cancelled after two seasons, so it ends on a cliffhanger with no resolution.

Devs2020

Alex Garland's eerie miniseries about a tech company that builds a machine to see every possible timeline. Cooler, more meditative than Dark Matter, but obsessed with the same question of choice and determinism.

But Deliberately slow and more interested in ideas than plot momentum — some will find it inert.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

La Jetée1962

Same core wound as Dark Matter — a man haunted by the one moment that split his life in two — but told in twenty-eight photographs instead of eight episodes, decades before the multiverse became a genre.

A 28-minute French film told almost entirely in still photographs, about a man sent through time who becomes trapped inside his own memory. It invented the emotional logic that Dark Matter, Twelve Monkeys, and half of modern time-travel fiction still runs on.

But No dialogue-driven scenes, no special effects, and a pace closer to a slideshow than a thriller — this asks for patience, not thrills.

Fringe2008

Long-running network sci-fi that eventually goes full parallel-universe, with alternate versions of characters you already love turning menacing or tragic. Bigger, weirder, and more fun than it sounds.

But Five seasons is a real commitment, and the first season is a fairly standard case-of-the-week show.

Everything Everywhere All at Once2022

Same premise — infinite versions of yourself, a life you could have lived — turned into a maximalist, absurdist, ultimately tender action-comedy. Proof the multiverse can hold heart as easily as horror.

But Frenetic and silly by design; if you wanted Dark Matter's restraint, this is the opposite.

Everything Everywhere All at Once poster

The OA2016

A woman's account of alternate dimensions and near-death experiences that's stranger and more emotionally raw than almost anything else in the genre. Shares Dark Matter's interest in what we'd sacrifice to save the people we love.

But Polarising tone — earnest in a way some viewers find moving and others find unbearable.

Travelers2016no page yet

Consciousness-swapping time travelers occupying other people's lives, wrestling with identity and consequence episode to episode. Same tension between the life you're stuck in and the one you're fighting for.

But Budget and ambition are more modest — this is comfort-food genre TV, not prestige.

Undone2019

Rotoscope-animated series about a woman who may be unstuck in time, blending family drama with reality-bending mystery. The animation lets it get more surreal and interior than live action ever could.

But Only two short seasons, and the animation style takes some getting used to.

Coherence2014

A dinner party fractures into multiple realities after a comet passes overhead — made for almost nothing, but it nails the same dread of not knowing which version of your life you're in.

But Microbudget filmmaking shows; handheld, talky, and claustrophobic by design.

Sliding Doors1998

Identical premise to Dark Matter's core dilemma, the road not taken made literal, but told as a breezy London rom-com instead of a multiverse abduction thriller.

Gwyneth Paltrow's life splits in two the instant she catches or misses a train, and the film cuts between both versions with real wit and heartbreak. It's Dark Matter's central question — who would I be if one thing had gone differently — stripped of every sci-fi trapping.

But It's a 90s romantic drama with a gimmick, not a thriller — no chases, no danger, no stakes beyond the heart.

Persona1966

Where Dark Matter dramatizes self-versus-self as multiverse thriller, Persona does it as psychological horror with no sci-fi machinery at all — just two faces merging into one.

Ingmar Bergman's film about two women whose identities begin to bleed into one another until it's unclear where one ends and the other begins. It's the purest, most unsettling version of Dark Matter's idea that another self can consume you.

But Art-house Swedish cinema with no plot in the conventional sense — ambiguous, formally daring, and built to disturb rather than entertain.