Television series
Someday or One Day
A Taiwanese sci-fi romance about two people who fall in love across time. When a woman discovers her boyfriend may have died years before they met, she chases him through parallel timelines and fractured moments, trying to rewrite their shared past. It's tender and clever, balancing genuine emotion with the vertiginous pleasure of a puzzle that actually fits together.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you enjoy genre blends where a sci-fi hook sits inside ordinary, lightly comic human life, and you prefer mood over spectacle.
Skip it if you want tight, plot-driven sci-fi with big stakes; this leans on mood and small talk, and its thirteen episodes can drag if you want momentum.
What it asks of you: A conversational pace across thirteen episodes, and attention enough to catch tonal shifts between sincere and silly.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Your Name.2016
A Japanese anime romance where two teenagers mysteriously swap bodies across time and space. Like Someday, it braids romance with temporal mystery, building to a desperate love that defies impossible odds. Visually gorgeous and emotionally devastating.
But Subtitles, and the middle section drags slightly while explaining its own mechanics. Some find the ending too neat for the chaos that precedes it.
Dark2017
A German series about a small town where children vanish into a time-loop conspiracy spanning generations. It shares Someday's willingness to make time travel genuinely complex and its insistence that love and connection matter more than solving the puzzle.
But Three dense seasons demand real commitment and note-taking. The tone is relentlessly bleak; there's no warmth here, only dread and repetition.
The Midnight Library
A woman gets to live out all the lives she didn't choose, across parallel realities. Like Someday, it asks what love and choice mean when time isn't linear. It's whimsical where Someday is haunting, but both trust their emotional core completely.
But The film is gentler and more sentimental than the book; if you want ambiguity rather than comfort, you'll find it saccharine.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Someday or One Day
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Arrival2016
Both use temporal mystery as a cover for something simpler and more true: the story of someone willing to lose everything for one other person, across any distance time can throw at them.
A linguist learns an alien language that restructures how she experiences time itself, giving her glimpses of her own future. Like Someday, it argues that language and love are the same thing—that connection across time is the highest human calling. Achingly beautiful.
But It's deliberately slow and abstract. The science is soft. If you want action or clear explanations, you'll be frustrated.
More like this (8)
Primer2004
Engineers accidentally build a time machine in a garage and spiral into recursive loops of their own making. It has Someday's intellectual rigor and its conviction that time travel is ultimately about human desperation and connection, not spectacle.
But Deliberately cryptic and unrewarding on first viewing. The sound design is poor; you'll struggle to hear dialogue. Requires multiple watches and a notebook.
Tenet2020
A spy thriller where time runs backwards as well as forwards. Nolan commits fully to the temporal gimmick; if you liked untangling Someday's chronology, this offers similar intellectual pleasure but with scale and spectacle.
But The plot is nearly impenetrable and the dialogue inaudible. It's exhausting rather than elegant, solving problems by adding more complications instead of clarity.
About Time2013
A man discovers he can time-travel and uses it to fix his life and relationships. It shares Someday's central belief that temporal power is useless without love. Funny, warm, and unexpectedly moving about fathers and sons.
But The time-travel premise is abandoned halfway through for a domestic drama. Some find the tonal shift jarring; others find it the whole point.
Twelve Monkeys1995
A time-traveler from a plague future tries to prevent catastrophe, but reality splinters around him. Like Someday, it's a love story trapped inside a time-loop nightmare. Terry Gilliam's visuals are hypnotic and the emotional core is genuine.
But The plot is intentionally confusing and somewhat dated in its CGI. The tone swings between sci-fi thriller and romantic tragedy in ways that don't always cohere.
Russian Doll2019
A woman dies repeatedly and relives the same night over and over. Each season resets the rules. Like Someday, it uses time as a way to explore how people hurt each other and whether love can survive repetition and change.
But Natasha Lyonne's deadpan narration isn't for everyone. The second season abandons the loop format entirely; some viewers never forgive that choice.
Predestination2014
A time-traveling agent pursues a terrorist through decades, but nothing is what it seems. The twist is genuinely earned and the film respects the audience's intelligence. If you loved Someday's layered structure, this rewards close attention.
But The third act reveal divides people sharply. Some find it brilliant; others feel cheated. The film's treatment of its central premise is ethically murky in ways it doesn't acknowledge.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind2004
Both films understand that love survives the destruction of narrative. When everything is taken away—memory, timeline, certainty—two people still find each other. Both show time not as a constraint but as proof of devotion.
A man discovers the woman he loves has had him erased from her memory, so he decides to erase her from his. It's a love story told backwards, through fractured moments and fading images. Heartbreaking and formally inventive.
But The non-linear structure is disorienting and the ending is deliberately ambiguous. Jim Carrey in a serious role confuses some viewers. It's slow and melancholy throughout.
Kindred2022
Like Someday, it's about the unbearable pull of connection across time—but where Someday is romantic and ethereal, Kindred is material and brutal. Both ask: what would you do to save someone you love if the only path between you is fractured time itself? One offers hope; the other offers a harder, truer answer.
A woman is pulled through time to the antebellum South, repeatedly, by an ancestor she's connected to by blood. It's science-fiction structured as a family horror and a love story. Formal, tense, deeply intelligent about how the past lives in the present.
But Heavy subject matter involving slavery and racial trauma. The pacing is deliberate and ponderous. Only one season, and it ends on a cliffhanger that may never be resolved.
