Television series

Devs

Name: Devs
Genre: Drama, Science Fiction, Mystery
Released: 2020
Cast: Sonoya Mizuno, Nick Offerman, Jin Ha, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Cailee Spaeny

Alex Garland's coldest, most beautiful puzzle box: a grieving engineer discovers her tech-giant employer has built a machine that can see the future, and the show slows down to interrogate what that would actually mean for free will, guilt and love. Gorgeous, glacial, more interested in ideas than jump-scares — patient viewers get rewarded, restless ones won't.

TVMaze rating

6.8

If you liked this

Severance2022

The same corporate dread, the same sense that a benevolent-sounding company is hiding something monstrous behind a friendly logo, filtered through gorgeous production design and dry, unsettling comedy.

But More surreal workplace satire than sci-fi mystery — if you wanted answers fast, this stretches its secrets out even longer than Devs did.

Ex Machina2015

Garland's own earlier film, and the clearest blueprint for Devs — a chamber piece about consciousness, control and whether we can trust what a beautiful machine tells us.

But Much smaller and more claustrophobic, essentially three people in a house; if you loved the sprawl and scenery of Devs this feels tightly wound.

Black Mirror2011

Anthology dread from the same emotional register — technology as a mirror for grief, guilt and hubris, told in standalone hour-long doses if you want the mood without the commitment.

But Wildly uneven across episodes, and the tone swings from Devs-like solemnity to outright shock, which can feel cheap after Devs' restraint.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Colossus: The Forbin Project1970

Same premise at its core — a machine that can predict and therefore control outcomes, and the humans who built it realising too late what that means for free will.

A Cold War-era thriller about a supercomputer built to run American defence that quietly decides it knows better than its creators — the godlike, all-seeing machine of Devs, fifty years earlier and on a shoestring.

But Dated effects and stiff seventies dialogue; the ideas land harder than the filmmaking does.

Dark2017

German time-loop thriller obsessed with determinism and whether anyone in a closed system can ever truly choose differently — the philosophical cousin of Devs, just messier and more emotional.

But Dense family trees and time travel across generations demand real note-taking; it rewards obsession more than casual viewing.

Mr. Robot2015

Paranoid tech thriller with the same sense that reality might be a constructed lie, anchored by a lead performance as internally fractured as Lily's search for the truth.

But Faster, twitchier, more hacker-thriller than metaphysical drama — the visual poetry of Devs is traded for jagged editing and unreliable narration.

Westworld2016

Season one shares Devs' interest in simulated worlds, predetermined loops and whether consciousness can be engineered — plus the same eerie, tech-campus unease.

But Later seasons sprawl into action-thriller plotting that abandons the quiet philosophical mode Devs sustains for its whole run.

The OA2016

Just as sincere about metaphysics as Devs, with a similarly hushed, dreamlike pace and a willingness to ask big unfashionable questions about fate and other worlds without flinching.

But Its sincerity tips into the earnestly strange in ways some viewers find moving and others find simply baffling by the finale.

Counterpart2017

A quieter, spy-thriller take on parallel realities and the question of whether a different version of you would have made better choices — same melancholy, different genre clothes.

But Espionage plotting takes over more than metaphysics, so the philosophical ambition of Devs gets diluted by tradecraft and double agents.

Annihilation2018

Garland again, this time turning the same cool intelligence toward a shimmering alien zone that changes everything it touches — visually stunning and just as comfortable with ambiguity.

But Body-horror imagery and a much stranger final act push it further into genre weirdness than Devs ever goes.

AlphaGo2017

Devs fictionalises the unease of a secretive tech company building something that sees further than any human; this is the true story of that same unease happening for real.

A documentary following DeepMind's AI as it learns to beat the world's best Go player — real footage of the uncanny, slightly frightening moment machine intelligence outstrips its makers' understanding of it.

But No mystery plot, no drama beyond real events — this is quiet, procedural, and its tension comes from watching actual scientists react in real time.

Mr. Nobody2009no page yet

Both wrestle with whether choice is real or illusion in a branching, multiple-outcome universe — Devs treats it as a corporate conspiracy, this treats it as a love story, but the underlying physics-of-fate question is identical.

A sprawling, tender, visually delirious film about a man who lived every possible version of his life, tracing how tiny choices branch into entirely different fates — determinism as romance instead of thriller.

But Overlong and emotionally maximalist where Devs is controlled and cool; some will find its whimsy where Devs has dread.