Entertainment
10 Obscure Sci-Fi Shows That Became Cult Classics
Every sci-fi fan has a show they’d go to war for that nobody else has heard of. It aired on some cable network that’s since been rebranded, it ran for maybe three seasons before getting axed on a cliffhanger, and it’s the first thing out of your mouth when someone asks for a recommendation. Streaming has made most of these shows easier to find than ever, which means there’s never been a better time to catch up on the weird, ambitious, canceled-too-soon series that built cult followings for a reason.
We’ve rounded up the best of these obscure sci-fi shows. They’ve all got inventive world-building, unfairly talented casts, and the kind of bonkers plotting that keeps you up until 3 AM muttering, “just one more episode.”
‘Dark Angel’ (2000–2002)
Before she was running a billion-dollar company, Jessica Alba was Max Guevara, a genetically enhanced super-soldier on the run in a post-apocalyptic Seattle that James Cameron built for Fox’s Dark Angel. It was 2000, Cameron was fresh off Titanic, and he decided his next move was a cyberpunk television show about a bike messenger with cat DNA and an attitude problem. The show aired for two seasons and made Alba a household name, earned her a Saturn Award, and then got canceled because Fox moved it to the Friday night death slot to make room for 24.
The world-building is pure early-2000s grit. An electromagnetic pulse has crippled the U.S., Seattle looks like a tech-noir fever dream, and Alba’s Max navigates it all while searching for her fellow Manticore escapees, trading barbs with Michael Weatherly’s cyber-journalist Logan Cale, and outrunning government agents who want her back in a lab. Jensen Ackles joined the cast in Season 2 as a fellow supersoldier, and his chemistry with Alba gave the show a jolt it sorely needed. Dark Angel is a time capsule of a very specific era of sci-fi television, the kind that trusted its female lead to carry action sequences and moral complexity, usually in the same scene. We still miss it.
‘Killjoys’ (2015–2019)
Before Hannah John-Kamen was fighting Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) in the MCU, she was Dutch, a lethally charming bounty hunter chasing warrants across a distant planetary system called the Quad with her partner Johnny (Aaron Ashmore) and his ex-military brother D’avin (Luke Macfarlane). Created by Michelle Lovretta, who also gave us Lost Girl, Killjoys ran for five seasons on Syfy from 2015 to 2019 and delivered a fully realized sci-fi universe where class warfare, body-snatching parasites, and interplanetary barroom brawls coexisted with surprising ease. Think Firefly if Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) were a woman with a mysterious past and significantly better hand-to-hand combat skills.
What makes Killjoys such a satisfying binge is its refusal to take itself too seriously. The world-building is dense but never homework-y: you’ve got a feudal corporate hierarchy, a caste system that spans multiple moons, and an ancient alien threat that unfolds slowly across the series, all woven into a show that never forgets it’s supposed to be fun. The chemistry between its three leads carries even the weaker episodes, and the fact that it actually got to end on its own terms, with a proper finale, makes it a rarity in the graveyard of canceled sci-fi.
‘Revolution’ (2012–2014)
What if every piece of technology on the planet just stopped working and never came back on? That’s the question at the center of Revolution, Eric Kripke‘s post-apocalyptic NBC drama that aired from 2012 to 2014 and featured J. J. Abrams as executive producer and Jon Favreau directing the pilot. Set 15 years after a mysterious global blackout, the show follows a scrappy band of survivors navigating a fractured America where former U.S. states have become warring militia territories and arrows have replaced drone strikes. Billy Burke, fresh off playing Bella Swan’s (Kristen Stewart) dad in Twilight, reinvented himself here as Miles Matheson, a former Marine turned reluctant hero with a complicated past and a very big sword.
The cast is stacked for a network show that only lasted two seasons. Giancarlo Esposito, doing what Giancarlo Esposito does, plays a militia captain whose ambitions rival Gus Fring’s in a post-electrical world. Elizabeth Mitchell brings gravitas as the scientist hiding the secret behind the blackout. Tracy Spiridakos leads the early episodes as Charlie, Miles’ niece. Kripke himself later joked that if Revolution had been a streaming show with a bigger budget and shorter episode order, it would have been The Last of Us. He’s not entirely wrong.
‘Mutant X’ (2001–2004)
Here’s a deep cut. Mutant X debuted in first-run syndication in 2001, created by Avi Arad under a Marvel Comics license, and it was immediately so X-Men-adjacent that 20th Century Fox sued Marvel over it. The lawsuit was settled, the show carried on for three seasons and 66 episodes, and it cultivated a following among fans who couldn’t get enough of the mutant-team formula on a weekly basis. The premise follows Adam Kane (John Shea), a geneticist trying to atone for his role in creating “new mutants” by assembling a team of them to protect others from a shady government agency. Victoria Pratt‘s feral Shalimar Fox, Victor Webster‘s electricity-wielding Brennan Mulwray, and Forbes March‘s density-shifting Jesse Kilmartin round out the crew.
Mutant X is not prestige television. The dialogue can be clunky, the effects are of the early 2000s variety, and the plotting sometimes feels like it’s making things up as it goes. But there’s something genuinely charming about its scrappiness, and the team dynamics carry it through the rougher patches. Lauren Lee Smith, who later turned up in CSI, adds a compelling energy as the tele-empath Emma DeLauro for the first two seasons. The show got abruptly canceled after Season 3 when its production company folded, leaving it on a cliffhanger that was never resolved, which is, at this point, basically a rite of passage for any self-respecting cult sci-fi series.
‘Falling Skies’ (2011–2015)
Noah Wyle spent over a decade playing a mild-mannered doctor on ER, so naturally, his follow-up was a TNT series where he plays a mild-mannered history professor who picks up a gun and leads a guerrilla resistance against alien invaders. Falling Skies ran for five seasons from 2011 to 2015 with Steven Spielberg as executive producer, and it wears his fingerprints all over it: the Americana, the emphasis on family bonds under impossible duress, and the weird aliens. Wyle’s Tom Mason becomes the reluctant leader of the 2nd Massachusetts Militia Regiment, and the show mines surprisingly effective drama from watching civilians figure out how to fight a war they were never trained for.
The supporting cast gives Wyle plenty to work with. Will Patton is grizzled and excellent as Captain Weaver, Moon Bloodgood brings gravity to the group’s medic, and Colin Cunningham is a scene-stealer as John Pope, an outlaw whose allegiances shift with the wind. The first three seasons are the strongest and the show’s willingness to keep introducing new alien species and political complications keeps the mythology from going stale. The final season rushes its ending, but the journey there offers one of the more satisfying post-invasion narratives cable TV has attempted.
‘Avenue 5’ (2020–2022)
Armando Iannucci, the acid-tongued genius behind Veep, set his satirical sights on space tourism with Avenue 5, and the result is a two-season HBO comedy so viciously funny it makes you wonder how it didn’t find a bigger audience. Hugh Laurie plays Captain Ryan Clark, the reassuringly handsome figurehead of a luxury interplanetary cruise ship owned by Josh Gad‘s obnoxious tech billionaire, Herman Judd. When a technical malfunction throws the ship off course, what was supposed to be an eight-week pleasure cruise becomes a years-long ordeal, and the passengers, who are exactly as awful as you’d expect rich people trapped in a tin can to be, start losing it.
The comedy here is bleak and unrelenting, which is probably why it struggled to find its crowd during its initial run in 2020, a year when being trapped in an enclosed space with terrible people hit a little too close to home. Zach Woods is perfect as the ship’s incompetent head of customer relations, as is the supporting cast of Nikki Amuka-Bird, Suzy Nakamura, and Lenora Crichlow. The second season improved significantly, which makes HBO’s decision to cancel it in 2023 sting even more.
‘Dark Matter’ (2015–2017)
Six strangers wake up on a derelict spaceship with no memory of who they are, so they name themselves One through Six and start trying to piece together why everyone in the galaxy seems to want them dead. That’s Dark Matter in a nutshell, a Syfy series that ran from 2015 to 2017 and delivered the kind of pulpy, character-driven space opera that the network hadn’t managed since the Battlestar Galactica days. Created by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, who spent years writing for the Stargate franchise, it’s a show built on the bones of everything those writers learned about making sci-fi on a budget feel lived-in and propulsive.
Melissa O’Neil is the standout as Two, the crew’s de facto leader whose backstory turns out to be far wilder than anyone’s, and Zoie Palmer brings a warmth and dry humor to the ship’s android that quickly makes her the fan favorite. The show’s three seasons build an increasingly complex web of corporate wars, alternate dimensions, and identity crises, and it got canceled on a cliffhanger that its fanbase has still not forgiven Syfy for. It never got the sendoff it deserved, but the ride to that point is engaging enough that it’s worth the frustration.
‘The 4400’ (2004–2007)
USA Network’s The 4400 debuted in 2004 as a miniseries and was so well-received that it earned three additional seasons before the 2007 writers’ strike killed its momentum. The hook is irresistible: 4,400 people who vanished at various points over the last century all reappear simultaneously near Mount Rainier, dumped in a ball of light with no memory of where they’ve been and not having aged a day. The catch is that many of them come back with new abilities, and the government isn’t thrilled about it. Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie anchor the show as the Homeland Security agents tasked with monitoring the returnees, but the real draw is the sprawling ensemble.
A young Mahershala Ali plays Richard Tyler, one of the 4,400 who disappeared in the 1950s, and Billy Campbell is magnetic as Jordan Collier, a charismatic millionaire returnee whose intentions stay murky right up until they don’t. The 4400 was doing the “ordinary people with extraordinary abilities and a shadowy conspiracy” thing years before Heroes made it mainstream, and its willingness to go truly dark with its mythology still holds up.
‘Continuum’ (2012–2015)
Continuum is the kind of Canadian sci-fi export that flies completely under the radar in the U.S. and then slowly builds a following that will not shut up about it, for good reason. Rachel Nichols plays Kiera Cameron, a law enforcement officer from a corporately controlled dystopia in the year 2077 who accidentally gets transported back to 2012 Vancouver along with a group of terrorists she was supposed to be guarding. Stranded in our timeline, she teams up with a young tech genius named Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen) and a local detective (Victor Webster) to hunt down the fugitives while secretly trying to find a way home to her husband and son.
What elevates Continuum past its time-travel premise is the way it complicates its own morality. The “terrorists” Kiera is chasing, a group called Liber8, are fighting to prevent the corporate oligarchy that Kiera serves and protects. The show asks you to root for its protagonist while slowly revealing that her side might be the wrong one, and it threads that needle across four seasons without ever fully tipping its hand. Created by Simon Barry (who went on to make Warrior Nun), it aired on Showcase in Canada and Syfy in the States from 2012 to 2015, and while the truncated final season of six episodes means it wraps up faster than ideal, it does actually wrap up, which counts for something, right?
‘The 100’ (2014–2020)
The elevator pitch for The 100 sounds like every other CW show circa 2014: pretty young people, love triangles, post-apocalyptic setting, based on a YA novel series by Kass Morgan. And the first few episodes do lean into that formula hard enough that plenty of viewers bounced. Their loss. By the end of its first season, The 100 had evolved into something ruthless and morally knotty that regularly shocked even its most devoted fans. Eliza Taylor‘s Clarke Griffin starts as a reluctant leader and ends up making the kind of decisions that would give war-criminals nightmares.
Set 97 years after a nuclear apocalypse, the show follows 100 juvenile delinquents sent from a failing space station back to Earth as expendable guinea pigs. What they find down there, surviving ground-dwellers, a militarized mountain bunker, an AI that wants to end all human conflict by ending most humans, keeps escalating in ways that The CW rarely allowed. Bob Morley, Marie Avgeropoulos, and Henry Ian Cusick round out a strong cast, and the show ran for seven seasons. It’s a slow starter that rewards patience with one of the more ambitious sci-fi arcs network television has produced.
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It’s nothing new or revolutionary for TV shows to base themselves on books, especially in this modern age of streaming. Heck, some of the most successful shows of all time, like Game of Thrones, are based on books. Since most of these shows have source material to fall back on, it’s easy to create something that is enjoyable and that keeps people coming back for more. Unfortunately, it’s even easier to muck everything up.
Indeed, there have been many TV series that have been based on books, but that do not give their sources any sort of boost in popularity—in fact, sometimes, it’s quite the opposite. It’s often very disappointing for fans of the books (naturally) when these shows come through and set fire to everything the fans loved, and it always leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths. These are the worst book-to-TV adaptations of all time, some of which were canceled quickly before they had the chance to do any more damage.
10
‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ (2022–Present)
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is an adaptation of several works by J. R. R. Tolkien, who penned an enormous universe consisting of thousands of years of history that collectively became known as Middle-earth. There have been several popular film adaptations over the years, so hopes were high when a new show coming out promised to delve into some of the more elaborate and fascinating parts of Middle-earth’s history that hadn’t gotten the chance to be filmed yet.
The Rings of Power was a resounding success with critics because it is technically impressive. The visuals are gorgeous, the action exciting, and the acting is very well done. However, for fantasy fans and for die-hard fans of Tolkien’s work, the show has proven to be a disaster. It destroys much of the lore that one of the greatest writers of all time crafted with such care, and deviates from the source material far too much for its own good. It’s not a terrible show by any means, but it is a major disappointment, especially for those who were expecting something on the level of Peter Jackson‘s acclaimed film trilogy.
9
‘Nancy Drew’ (2019–2023)
The Nancy Drew series of YA mystery novels has been immensely popular and has seen a few TV adaptations in the nearly 100 years since they’ve been around. All the books claim to be written by Carolyn Keene, but this is actually a pseudonym that numerous different authors have adopted over the years. In any case, the recent incarnation of the series created by The CW is really bad in pretty much all respects.
The main problem with it was that it lacked any of the spirit that made the novels so popular in the first place. The eponymous character is generally known for her bubbly and optimistic demeanor, never backing down in the face of adversity. But in this show, everyone is super moody, and the show bears an overly dark tone, trying to appeal to audiences way beyond the books’ level of maturity. The cast is good, and the show is visually pleasing, but it was just too somber and depressing, and had no reason to last for four whole years.
8
‘Beauty & the Beast’ (2012–2016)
There are so many adaptations of the original Beauty and the Beast fairytale that it’s impossible to count them all. But among the worst of them is the 2012 series from The CW, which inexplicably decided to go for a more murder mystery route rather than an expansion of the story itself. To its credit, it is a reboot of a 1987 CBS series, but this doesn’t help it at all. Not only does it have to live up to its predecessor, but to the original story, as well.
It did neither of those things. There was zero chemistry between its two main actors, who, in accordance with the story, are supposed to fall in love, and the mystery at its heart was just not that interesting or suspenseful. The series was able to pick itself up and dust itself off as it went on, but the first two seasons are one heck of a slog that’s nearly impossible to get through. Truth be told, while the later seasons are fine, they aren’t worth the agonizing effort of watching Season 1.
7
‘The Rook’ (2019)
For all of the terrible TV shows that overstay their welcome, at least The Rook had the decency to remain a miniseries. Based on a 2012 novel, The Rook bears a rather interesting premise. Taking place in London, the supernatural drama thriller follows a woman named Myfanwy, who wakes up on the Millennium Bridge surrounded by dead bodies, completely unaware of how she got there or what killed all those people. Eventually, she discovers that she is a sleeper agent with a top-secret British intelligence service.
All of that sounds great, right? Unfortunately, the miniseries fell flat in terms of execution. It failed to make its promising storyline interesting, and deviated so far from the novel upon which it is based that it’s nearly unrecognizable. But perhaps worst of all, it’s just so bloody boring. It could have been a really exciting psychological thriller, but they get all the interesting stuff out of the way early and don’t really keep up their momentum.
6
’13 Reasons Why’ (2017–2020)
13 Reasons Why starts out promising. It opens up with a teenage girl’s death, with her leaving behind a series of tapes, each one listing a reason why she died. These tapes are found by her secret admirer, who, upon listening to them, learns that each of the 13 tapes names specific individuals, with the request being that the tapes be sent to those people so that they can understand their actions and the untimely death of their classmate.
The first season is actually pretty good and remains an intriguing, yet tragic tale of the darker side of adolescence. Unfortunately, the show seriously overstayed its welcome after that, moving far beyond the source material that the original novel provided due to its resounding success. Each subsequent season of the series is pretty terrible and ruined the greatness of the first season entirely. 13 Reasons Why is an example of a show that should have quit while it was ahead and stayed a miniseries rather than trampling all over what made it so popular in the first place.
5
‘The Walking Dead: World Beyond’ (2020–2021)
The original run of The Walking Dead inspired a few spin-offs here and there, but none have been as truly terrible as The Walking Dead: World Beyond. All the shows are based on a series of comics-turned-graphic novels, and gained pretty positive reception, even though viewership kind of fell off towards the end. The show is pretty basic, with it being about a zombie apocalypse, albeit featuring a huge number of characters, with the spin-offs sort of extending the plotline.
Perhaps what made World Beyond so bad was that it brought nothing new to the table: no new interesting characters, no new developments in the zombie pandemic, no nothing. On top of that, it came out while the original series was still running, making the entire franchise feel overly crowded and hard to swallow. Maybe audiences just needed a break, but World Beyond offered little to reinvent the universe, and didn’t really do the comics any justice, either.
4
‘Supergirl’ (2015–2021)
For all of its campy awfulness, it’s frankly a miracle that Supergirl lasted as long as it did. Supergirl was conceived as a part of the Arrowverse, which has most certainly seen its share of ups and downs over the years. To its credit, Supergirl‘s main cast are experienced and really give it their all during each of their performances. The problem isn’t the actors, it’s literally everything else. The script and dialogue were cringe-inducing, the “action” sequences are cheesy and awkward, but the worst part of it all is the show’s atrocious CGI. Oh man, that CGI.
From obvious green screens to unconvincing visual effects, Supergirl has some of the worst CGI ever seen on television. Clips of it even went viral online because of how horrid the CGI is, becoming the subject of mockery from fans and non-fans alike. Even though that’s the most glaring issue in the show, there’s a whole lot more about it that misses the mark by a mile. Even though it’s based on comic books rather than a novel, Supergirl most definitely counts as one of the worst book-to-TV adaptations ever.
3
‘Inhumans’ (2017)
Inhumans is frequently cited as the worst ever drama series and the worst comic book-to-television adaptation, and it’s most certainly not hard to see why. It was such a travesty that it only lasted eight episodes before being canceled and swept under the rug. Unfortunately, people didn’t forget how atrocious the show was. Honestly, thank goodness this show isn’t part of the MCU, or it could’ve ruined the entirety of the franchise.
Critics were extremely harsh with their reviews, stating that Inhumans tries to do a lot of things, but remarkably, fails to do any of them… or at least, fails to do any of them well. Other critics were even more harsh, saying that calling it a train wreck is almost too generous, because, at least a train wreck, people can’t look away from, whereas Inhumans is so easy to turn off. It’s a mess, and it’s no surprise to anyone that this show was canceled so soon.
2
‘Are You There, Chelsea?’ (2012)
In general, biographical sitcoms can work, especially biographical sitcoms based on comedians’ lives. Take a look at shows like Seinfeld or Everybody Hates Chris, for example. Both are based on the lives of their comedian creators, and are some of the greatest sitcoms ever conceived. So, when a sitcom was announced based on Chelsea Handler‘s memoir, there was no reason to expect the level of awful that it actually delivered.
The memoir is mostly a collection of humorous anecdotes from Handler’s life, many of them awkward or embarrassing. It’s not exactly high art, but it’s enjoyable and fairly relatable. The show, however, was nothing short of an atrocity. To say it wasn’t funny would be a huge understatement. It lacked every ounce of the dry wit that helped launch the memoir onto the bestseller list, and for all of its attempts, lacked anything original or even remotely humorous. Are You There, Chelsea? is one of the worst sitcoms of all time, and one of the worst adaptations of a book ever made. It’s no surprise to anyone at all that it only lasted one season.
1
‘Caillou’ (1997–2011)
Ask any parent out there, and they’ll tell you no children’s show grinds their gears more than the critically-panned Caillou, an animated series about a four-year-old French-Canadian boy based on a series of picture books. Generally speaking, kids’ shows should be educational, and should present children with ways to deal with real-life situations while also helping them develop basic life skills like reading and writing.
Caillou offered none of that. The titular character is nothing but a whiny, spoiled brat who always gets his way by kicking and screaming or otherwise throwing some sort of tantrum. At no point does it present children with how to deal with negative emotions; instead, it spreads the message that they can get pretty much anything they want if they scream loud enough, so it’s no surprise that parents loathe this show with every fiber of their being. Heck, even non-parents can’t stand the little bald brat and his frequent meltdowns. There have been numerous attempts at a revival, but these have always been met with severe rebuttals from the public. Caillou is a terrible influence on kids, and pretty much everybody hates it, so there’s no doubt that it is, without question, the worst book-to-TV adaptation ever conceived.
Caillou
- Release Date
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1998 – 2018-00-00
- Network
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Treehouse TV
- Directors
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Greg Bailey
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Claudia-Laurie Corbeil
Caillou (French language version)
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Violette Chauveau
Mousseline / Clémentine (voice)
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Nathalie Coupal
Doris (voice)
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Gilbert Lachance
Boris / Rexy / Gilbert (voice)
Matty Healy was worlds away from the action as Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce tied the knot at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden.
The 1975 frontman, 37, was spotted grabbing lunch with his fiancée Gabbriette Bechtel in Los Angeles on Friday, July 3, according to photos published by TMZ.
Healy, who was linked to the Tortured Poets Department singer in 2023 shortly after her breakup from Joe Awlyn, was seen walking arm in arm with Bechtel on the same day Swift exchanged vows with Kelce on the opposite side of the country.
The British rocker and Swift were first linked when Swift attended several of his band’s shows in 2014. Healy revealed that he and Swift had “swapped phone numbers” at the time.
Matty Healy’s mom, Denise Welch, has spoken — and confirmed that her son is engaged to Gabbriette Bechtel. “I woke up this morning to the fact that they put it on Instagram,” Welch, 65, shared on ITV’s Loose Women on Wednesday, June 12. “Instagram official! He’s got engaged to Gabriella Bechtel, Gabbriette she’s known as.” […]
“I mean, bloody hell, what am I going to do? Go out with Taylor Swift? She’s a sensation. I wouldn’t say no!” he said during a radio interview.
In 2016, Healy caused a stir when he claimed that it would be “emasculating” to date someone more famous than him, name-dropping Swift, in a 2016 interview with Q Magazine.
“It’s just interesting to me how interested the world is about Taylor Swift,” he said. “The reason I mention that is because if I had [properly] gone out with Taylor Swift, I would’ve been, ‘F***ing hell, I am not being Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.’ You know, ‘F***. That.’”
Taylor Swit and Matty Healy in 2023. (Photo by Robert Kamau/GC Images)
However, he backtracked the comments during an interview with Elle later that year, alleging his remarks were taken out of context. Healy insisted he was “not a misogynist” but could be “an idiot on occasion.”
He added, “I have said on countless occasions that I found her to be one of the most gracious, hard-working, creatively gifted and beautiful women that I have had the pleasure to meet. I personally have a lot of respect and admiration for her. Why would I not?”
Swift and Healy were linked again in May 2023, but both parties have remained tight-lipped about the exact timeline and nature of their romance. However, their split was confirmed the following month.
Matty Healy was spotted in the midst of an emotional conversation with his mom Denise Welch, just one week after she made headlines for slamming his ex, Taylor Swift. In a video filmed on Thursday, July 31 and published via TMZ the following day, the 1975 frontman could be seen appearing to console his mother […]
In July 2025, Healy’s mother, Denise Welch, weighed in on her son’s romance with Swift while appearing on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.
“Obviously on pain of death can I talk about that episode, but not being her mother-in-law is a role that I’m glad that I lost,” Welch, 68, said, earning gasps from the WWHL audience.
“Not that I have anything against her at all,” Welch quickly added. “It was just — it was tricky.
After Swift, Healy moved on with Bechtel in September 2023. The pair got engaged in June 2024.
During an appearance on “Tom’s Hirschsprung’s Podcast” in May, Welch confirmed that her son and Bechtel are set to tie the knot this month.
“Matty gets married in July, which we’re very excited about,” she said. “I’m very excited about that, that’s wonderful.”
Dolly Parton has a unique way of showing her gratitude for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s $2 million donation to her charity.
Parton’s Imagination Library was one of the recipients to share in the $26 million that Swift and Kelce gave away to various charity organizations ahead of their wedding on Friday, July 3.
To thank the couple for their generous gift, the “Jolene” singer, 80, shared an Instagram Reel message ahead of their nuptials on Friday.
“Taylor and Travis, it’s Dolly, and I was just told that you two were making a donation of $2 million to my Imagination Library,” Parton said in the video. “I’m blown away and overjoyed with that gratitude.”
UPDATE 7/3/2026 at 3:43 p.m. ET — Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee has joined a chorus of charities and celebrities thanking Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce for making $26 million in charitable donations across the country. On Friday, July 3, the politician, 75, shared a tweet where the Rhode Island Food Bank personally thanked the […]
She then joked, “Now, it’s evident that you have made giving back a key part of your lives, so hey, when you have your firstborn, can I have it? Because that is gonna be one special baby!”
The Imagination Library provides free books to children up to the age of five, intending to inspire a love of reading.
Parton ended the video message on a more serious note, thanking the newly married couple for helping with her philanthropy endeavors.
“You know the mission of the Dollywood Foundation is to dream more, care more, learn more and be more, and thank you again for your very generous gift. And, we’ll continue that mission even in bigger ways now with your money,” she said.
The Imagination Library also shared the video. The post’s caption doubled down on thanking Swift and Kelce.
“We’re smiling extra big today!! @taylorswift and @killatrav, THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts! It means so much to all of us at Dolly’s Foundation to know that you share Dolly’s dream of inspiring a love of reading in children,” the caption read. “Because of your kindness, more children will experience the excitement of receiving a new book each month, more families will share bedtime stories together, and more little imaginations will be inspired to dream boldly.”
The caption concluded, “On behalf of our team, partners, and millions of children and families across the United States to Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Republic of Ireland, thank you.”
Swift and Kelce tied the knot in a star-studded ceremony held at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Friday, July 3. Just after the pair exchanged vows, digital billboards outside the venue read, “JusT&T Married.”
There’s nothing more satisfying than watching an epic movie. But what defines an epic? Characterized by length, scope, and subject, an epic tends to focus on a heroic figure’s legendary deeds upon a vast expanse. Often elevated by text, style, larger-than-life foes, and sweeping narratives, epic movies are feats meant for the brave.
With advancements in cinema in the 21st century, many filmmakers have told new kinds of epics. Some are original tales. Others tackle historical moments. Whether on Earth or in space, these epics have had a profound impact on movies and blockbusters in general. The films on this list are among the best of the last 25 years, changing how we consume epic thrillers.
13
‘Kingdom of Heaven’ (2005)
If there is one director who knows how to play in every genre imaginable, it’s Ridley Scott. Whether in science fiction masterpieces like Alien, comedies like Thelma & Louise, or war films like Black Hawk Down, Scott’s ability to craft expansive universes has made him one of the greatest directors of all time. Only a few years after he established the epic in the new millennium with Gladiator, Scott took audiences to medieval times for Kingdom of Heaven. The film follows Balian (Orlando Bloom), a French blacksmith who, after his wife’s suicide and children’s deaths, travels to the Holy Land seeking redemption, joining his father, Godfrey of Ibelin (Liam Neeson), there. Balian becomes a knight and leads the defense of Jerusalem against the Muslim leader Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) as the fragile peace between Christians and Muslims breaks down. Navigating religious conflict, political intrigue, and the search for a kingdom of conscience, Kingdom of Heaven was an epic that vowed to change perception.
Kingdom of Heaven is a story of honor, faith, the futility of holy wars, and the corruption of religious zeal. Scott presents the film through a nuanced lens of conflict, putting forth morality before religious dogma. The title, a reference to both the physical city of Jerusalem and the idea of a place where morality, tolerance, and justice exist, Kingdom of Heaven is Scott’s most daring film thematically. Scott’s prowess as a directorial visionary made the film an immersive experience through its spectacular battle sequences. Though it may not have been critically beloved, as epics go, Kingdom of Heaven achieved its mission. Though a post-9/11 lens may have affected the film’s execution, the scope and story still resonate as an epic.
12
‘Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’ (2003)
Loosely based on Patrick O’Brian‘s Aubrey-Maturin novel series, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was an extraordinary epic about the naval side of the Napoleonic Wars. Directed by Peter Weir, Captain “Lucky” Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) leads the HMS Surprise in a relentless, high-stakes chase to capture a superior French warship, the Acheron, across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Showcasing the intense, complex friendship between the traditional Captain Aubrey and the ship’s scholarly, intellectual surgeon, Dr. Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is an exploration of the conflict between duty and the Crown, personal ambition, and the responsibility of being a commander at sea.
The film’s selling point is Weir’s realistic portrayal of 19th-century naval life. By highlighting the brutality of war, the hardships of the crew, and the woes that come with leadership, the film is a remarkably textured and richly human portrait of life during the Napoleonic War that audiences may previously have not been familiar with. Following his star turn in Gladiator, Crowe continued his rise to Hollywood superstardom, as this film highlighted his rough charm and brazen ability to lead a wide-ranging project. The source material led to a wonderful blockbuster that earned numerous nominations.
11
‘Prometheus’ (2012)
To no one’s shock, we have another groundbreaking Ridley Scott entry to discuss. This time, we’re heading back to space with 2012’s science fiction horror thriller, Prometheus. The fifth installment of the Alien franchise, the prequel film explores the origins of humanity and the engineers who created them. The story follows the 2093 expedition of spaceship Prometheus as it follows a star map to Moon LV-233, discovered among the artifacts of several ancient Earth cultures. They search for humanity’s origins, only to discover on this distant world, a dark biological weapon aimed at Earth, leading to a fight for survival. With a brilliant ensemble cast including Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Charlize Theron, and Logan Marshall-Green, Prometheus reignited the Alien franchise for the 21st century.
Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof, Prometheus expanded on the mythology and lore of the original film while using similar tones across different themes. With artificial intelligence becoming a prominent factor at the time of creation, the newfound elements made Prometheus’ central theme of creation and identity so profound. It was an ambitious project, but it paid dividends. Fassbender’s take on the android David was sensational, delivering the film’s strongest performance. Visually striking, with an aesthetic only Scott could create, the vivid exploration of space was exactly what the franchise needed. Had it not been for Prometheus, we would not have any of the projects that have come since.
10
‘Gangs of New York’ (2002)
If there is one epic working relationship that blossomed in the 21st century, it is that of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio. The first that came to fruition was 2002’s Gangs of New York. A rich period piece, the historical epic explores the brutal gang wars in Manhattan’s Five Points district during the 1860s. Amsterdam Vallon (DiCaprio) is on a quest for revenge against Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) for killing his father. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War and draft riots, Gangs of New York is a visceral exploration of vengeance and belonging during the violent birth of modern America.
The road to creation took nearly two decades, but the final product was sensational. Though some felt the excessive violence was heightened for entertainment, Scorsese’s portrayal of the time was fairly realistic. Having two superstar actors go toe-to-toe proved to be an immense draw for the film. By highlighting the long-running Catholic-Protestant feud through an epic lens, Scorsese created a sprawling production with impressive production design. Though it may have fallen short of some of his other works before and after, Gangs of New York is still a modern masterpiece.
9
‘Dune: Part Two’ (2024)
By the end of this calendar year, we may have to swap Dune: Part Two out for its follow-up, but for now, the peak Dune film is its second chapter. Expanding upon the splendor of the first film, Denis Villeneuve‘s take on Frank Herbert‘s 1965 novel is remarkable. In Dune: Part Two, Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) unites with the Fremen people of the desert planet Arrakis to wage war against House Harkonnen. Learning the Fremen ways on the road of revenge, Paul must grapple with a prophesied messianic role and visions of a devastating future holy war he might unleash. Through power, love, religious manipulation, and the inevitable rise in becoming a dark anti-hero, Dune: Part Two built upon its predecessor’s success into something even more epic.
Knowing that this part would be bookended with the setup and ultimate climax, Dune: Part Two was the right bridge for the overall narrative. Chalamet’s charismatic Paul was on full display, but the clues to his ultimate descent allowed for a nuanced performance. The entire ensemble, from Zendaya‘s Chani and Rebecca Ferguson‘s Lady Jessica to new players Florence Pugh‘s Princess Irulan and Austin Butler‘s Feyd-Rautha, made the film even stronger than the first. Visually extraordinary, the science fiction epic was a cinematic marvel. Where else can you see two of Hollywood’s biggest rising stars, Butler and Chalamet, engage in a fight sequence as they did here? If the first film was a glorious appetizer, Dune: Part Two was the delicious entrée.
8
‘King Kong’ (2005)
A reboot of a beloved classic would be difficult to achieve without it being in the most capable of hands. Thankfully, Peter Jackson brought King Kong to life in the 2005 epic monster film. A remake of the 1933 film, the film follows the story of Carl Denham (Jack Black), an ambitious and unscrupulous filmmaker who tricks playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrian Brody), actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), and his hired ship crew into traveling to the mysterious Skull Island, where they encounter various prehistoric creatures and the legendary giant gorilla, King Kong. Capturing and bringing him back to New York City, Ann forms an integral bond that helps prove the simian is truly no monster.
Emphasizing the emotional depth of Kong’s relationship with Ann and the spectacle of Skull Island, this iteration of King Kong maintained the integrity of the original’s core narrative while becoming a visually breathtaking blockbuster. Jackson, who will be represented on this list again later, brought his prowess to the project to ensure the epic wasn’t just a remake to introduce a new generation to the character, as 1998’s Godzilla was. With advancements in special effects and a majestic approach to the story, Jackson’s remake was faithful to the original, while also bringing a new sense of wonderment to the iconic creature. Though Jackson may not have continued on the journey with Kong, thanks to him, the character lives on today.
7
‘Lincoln’ (2012)
Bringing Abraham Lincoln’s life to the screen would be no easy feat, given that the 16th President of the United States has been the subject of many projects over the decades. Then Steven Spielberg adapted Tony Kushner‘s script, casting Daniel Day-Lewis in the titular role, and an epic historical biographical drama was born. In the 2012 film Lincoln, the final four months of Lincoln’s life are covered, focusing on President Lincoln’s efforts in January 1865 to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude by forcing the Thirteenth Amendment to be passed. Based on Doris Kearns Goodwin‘s Team of Rivals, Lincoln was a sweeping epic created by a team of cinematic masters.
For a methodical performer who has tackled an array of roles in his career, Day-Lewis’s transformative take on Lincoln allowed for a dignified take on an extraordinary man. A powerful and patient performance of a stellar script, Day-Lewis was once again at the top of his game. Through Spielberg’s realistic approach to the story, it became a triumphant portrait of an integral figure during a dark period. Though it may not have yielded any new revelations, Lincoln became a reliable biopic with just enough cinematic flair.
6
‘300’ (2006)
There was an extraordinary desire for gladiator-inspired content after the success of Gladiator. Finding a new way into the genre was the key. Then Zack Snyder swooped in with a Dark Horse comic book, and audiences’ needs were satisfied. Based on the source material by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, 300 took on a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae in the Greco-Persian War. Following King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) as he leads 300 Spartans into battle against Persian “God-King” Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) and his 300,000 soldiers. As the war rages on, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally support in Sparta for her husband. The fictionalized epic emphasizes the legendary aspect of the last stand through bravery, sacrifice, and defiance against tyranny.
Unlike Gladiator, 300 took on a markedly different tone, even in the color palette Snyder used. Extraordinarily graphic in nature, 300 did not minimize the amount of blood and violence. A film made for the movie theater, 300 didn’t aim to depict history with historical accuracy, opting for an entertaining retelling with buff bodies and quotable lines. Digitally enhanced yet never belligerently animated, 300 was a compelling blockbuster that made Snyder a power player in grandstanding. If you’re looking for historical accuracy, look away. But, like they said in Gladiator, “Are you not entertained?”
5
‘1917’ (2019)
No matter what, cinephiles love a good war movie. The 21st century has been in no short supply. Of the many that have come out in the last 25 years, the pinnacle World War I film is Sam Mendes‘ 1917. Occurring after the German retreat to the Hindenburg Line during Operation Alberich, the film follows two British soldiers, Lance Corporals Will Schofield (George MacKay) and Tom Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman), on a perilous mission across enemy lines to deliver a message to halt an attack that would have cost 1,600 lives. Renowned for its immersive one-shot filmmaking, 1917 captured the intensity of war through a real-time mission that had never been depicted in war movies before.
One of the most visually remarkable war films, it earned the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. 1917 is a hard-hitting technical achievement that puts the audience into the trenches. Though some war historians disapproved of the sanitized approach, the cinematic achievement elevated war cinema to new heights through the oft-overlooked chapter of World War I. The historical accuracy of the military tactics may have been exaggerated for entertainment, but nevertheless, 1917 brought the harsh reality of war.
4
‘Dunkirk’ (2017)
Before 1917 wowed audiences with World War I, Dunkirk brought audiences the definitive World War II epic of the 21st century. Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film depicts the Dunkirk evacuation from the perspective of people on land, sea, and air. Through three parallel narratives, Dunkirk portrays the many individuals who participated in the operation as they helped save Western civilization. On land, it’s British soldier Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) who tries to reach safety via the beach. At sea, Dawson (Mark Rylance), a civilian, and his son, Peter (Tom Glynn-Carey), sail their boat to Dunkirk to help with the evacuation. In the air, Collins (Jack Lowden) and Farrier (Tom Hardy), Spitfire pilots, defend the beach from German planes. Considered one of the greatest war films ever made, Dunkirk is an emotionally satisfying epic that honors the reality of a pivotal moment in war.
Filled with chaos and horror, even though we know the outcome, Nolan does a miraculous job at making us ponder if things may turn out differently. Yet, his ability to maintain historical accuracy pleased both casual moviegoers and historians. Seamlessly interweaving multiple storylines, some careening together, Dunkirk‘s ability to provide emotional balance amid the harsh realities of the situation makes the war drama character-driven first, with history as its backdrop.
Crime fiction is an enduring part of cinematic history, and it’s responsible for some of the greatest films of all-time. As the world’s relationship within criminality evolved over the course of the 20th century, films began to take different perspectives on what type of stories they would tell. Initially, a pulpy crime thriller was just another form of escapist cinema, but the “New Hollywood” era utilized it to tell more complex stories about lived experiences.
Grittiness is a challenging term to define, as it doesn’t just mean that something is dark and violent. Rather, a “gritty” film should speak to some sort of societal truth that grounds the story in humanity because it offers something familiar. A reminder that these types of films aren’t escapist fantasies but thrillers that say something about the human condition is why they have been able to stand the test of time.
10
‘M’ (1931)
M is one of the most foundational works of the German expressionist movement and outlined the paranoid, neo-noir genre in a way that would be highly influential within the next few decades of crime fiction. Although the term “serial killer” wouldn’t be coined for almost four decades, M featured a terrifying performance by Peter Lorre as a child murderer who is so dangerous that the mob and the cops work together to track him down.
M set precedents within the genre because it introduced the idea of comparative morality when it comes to forging bonds. Rarely in crime films are characters given the opportunity to ally themselves with those who share their same ethical standards; although the cops would have no other reason to work with the mob, they are forced to ally for the collective good of the community’s safety.
9
‘The Untouchables’ (1987)
The Untouchables was an electrifying adaptation of the classic television show of the same name that saw Brian De Palma making one of his most entertaining films ever. Although De Palma had made a number of thrillers and psychological horror films early on in his career, he was able to draw from history to show how the Chicago cop Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and his ragtag group of law enforcement officers led the hunt to take down Al Capone (Robert De Niro).
Costner has rarely been better than he is as a desperate, morally upstanding defender of justice, but the film’s real scene-stealer was Sean Connery as a veteran Irish cop who decides to join his team. Although Connery was considered to be past his prime at this point in his career, his performance was so acclaimed that he ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
8
‘Once Upon a Time in America’ (1984)
Once Upon a Time in America was an ambitious drama about the futility of the American dream directed by the great Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone, who was best known for making “The Man With No Name” trilogy. Despite the fact that he was best known for making Westerns, Leone was able to make an elegiac epic about the journey of immigrants involved in mob conflicts throughout the 20th century, painting a damning portrayal of generational violence.
Once Upon a Time in America was what got Leone out of retirement after he had prematurely ended his career in the early ’70s, and sadly, the theatrically released film was marred by endless studio cuts. Thankfully, the director’s cut of Once Upon a Time in America, which ran for over four hours long, was eventually unveiled at festivals and given the praise that it deserved.
7
‘Point Blank’ (1967)
Point Blank was a feat of formal innovation within the action genre that saw director John Boorman turning what could have been a trashy B-movie into an existentialist drama. The film stars the great action star Lee Marvin as a hitman who is abandoned and left for dead by his former allies, leading him on a quest for revenge as he tries to piece together his life.
Boorman uses eerie, slightly surrealist repetition techniques to tap into the madness of Marvin’s character, with some theories suggesting it is all part of an elaborate fantasy he had in the moments before his death. Point Blank had a significant influence on the career of Steven Soderbergh, who made his own homage to the film with his 1999 crime thriller The Limey, starring Terence Stamp in a role based on Marvin’s performance.
6
‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975)
Dog Day Afternoon is the ultimate heist film because it explores the pressure and anxiety faced by a criminal as their plan falls apart and the grim reality of the situation becomes even clearer. Although Sidney Lumet has made many crime films that would be considered to be among the best of all-time, Dog Day Afternoon is significant because he was able to contain all of the tension within the single location of a bank.
Dog Day Afternoon featured one of the greatest performances ever from Al Pacino, who was able to show a surprising degree of levity and vulnerability, as the film functions as a sincere commentary on marginalization and class warfare. Although Dog Day Afternoon was an Oscar-nominated masterpiece that would seemingly be impossible to ever remake, this year saw a new Broadway version of the story with Jon Bernthal in the role that Pacino had played.
5
‘The Maltese Falcon’ (1941)
The Maltese Falcon is the foremost entry in the hardboiled detective genre because it saw the introduction of Sam Spade, the definitive private eye character in fiction. The moody, intense atmosphere of the classic film noir movement of the 1940s required a protagonist who was world-weary and a bit cynical, and The Maltese Falcon perfectly cast Spade by getting Humphrey Bogart in what would become one of his most iconic roles.
The Maltese Falcon is the directorial debut of John Huston, a former actor who would go on to become one of the most respected filmmakers of the 20th century. Although Huston would go on to direct many epics and historical dramas, The Maltese Falcon succeeded by telling a confined story that felt like it existed in a real city, and that realism would become a cornerstone of the genre moving forward.
4
‘The French Connection’ (1971)
The French Connection is one of the greatest films to ever win Best Picture at the Academy Awards and felt perfectly suited for an unusual point in American history in which the “war on drugs” had gone into full effect. Gene Hackman gave the most iconic performance of his career as Popeye Doyle, a committed detective who is determined to stop a French criminal (Fernando Ray) from bringing drugs into the United States.
Friedkin was a former documentary filmmaker who showed an unprecedented level of detail in exploring the investigative process of the cops, as The French Connection explored the mundanity of law enforcement in a way that cinema hadn’t seen before. The film is best known for its showstopping car chase, which put some of the cast and crew in real danger because of Friedkin’s insistence on making it as realistic as possible.
3
‘Se7en’ (1995)
Se7en was the film that solidified David Fincher as the greatest director for serial killer films because he created one of the most disturbing and multifaceted examinations of a psychopathic mind. The film follows the detectives William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) and David Mills (Brad Pitt) as they track down an enigmatic killer known only as “John Doe” (Kevin Spacey), who has been staging elaborate murders that are staged around the “Seven Deadly Sins” in the Bible.
Se7en explores the darkness that mankind must confront and ends with one of the most depressing conclusions in the history of the genre. Although Fincher would return to tell more serial killer stories in subsequent films and in his Netflix series Mindhunter, Se7en was such a transgressive work of experimentation within an established mystery genre that its influence on crime fiction cannot be overstated.
2
‘Goodfellas’ (1990)
Goodfellas is hardly the first crime film that Martin Scorsese made, but it became his most famous and is remembered as one of the most defining classics of the ’90s. Goodfellas understood, better than any other gangster film, how alluring the life of a mobster could seem, and showed how the criminal Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) is lured into the dangerous lifestyle before it all falls apart, forcing him to betray his former allies.
Goodfellas is among Scorsese’s most entertaining films because he understood the ways in which gangsters talked and took efforts to explore the communities that emerged among their families. Scorsese’s use of music has rarely been better thanks to the numerous great needle drops. It’s a film stacked with great performances, including Joe Pesci in the scene-stealing role as Tommy DeVito, which won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
1
‘The Godfather’ (1972)
The Godfather marked the beginning of the greatest story in cinematic history and changed the way that crime films were perceived forever. Although gangster films had previously been seen as works of trashy exploitation, Francis Ford Coppola elevated the acclaimed novel by Mario Puzo to tell a complex story about family, loyalty, and the American dream that had the richness of a Shakespeare play.
The Godfather has the single best ensemble of any film ever made, as there is an exorbitant amount of detail that each character has, making them each memorable and tragic in their own ways. Although the film’s story is not complete without The Godfather: Part II, the 1974 follow-up from Coppola that acted as both a prequel and a sequel, the original classic remains the perfect installment in the series and perhaps the best film ever made.
The Godfather
- Release Date
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March 24, 1972
- Runtime
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175 minutes
- Director
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Francis Ford Coppola
- Writers
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Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppola
Love Island USA‘s Parmida Keshani and Corbin Mims shut down the insinuation that they were in a shallow relationship.
During the Friday, July 3, episode of the hit Peacock show, each couple had to nominate two pairs who were not compatible. Kenzie Annis and Dylan Wrona questioned Parmida and Corbin’s connection after only hearing him praise his partner in a physical sense.
Kenzie specifically said Corbin and Parmida were in a “lustful relationship,” with Parmida saying, “I definitely disagree. From the outside, it might look that way to you because we are both very good looking and we both workout.”
Some of the other couples laughed as Corbin and Parmida continued to defend themselves.
“We know that about ourselves. So it might seem that way but we can get deep and serious too,” she continued. “You just haven’t seen that because you aren’t in our chats.”
Corbin’s return to the villa hasn’t been easy after finding a connection with Parmida in Casa Amor. Their recoupling initially sparked backlash when Kenzie publicly dragged him for not considering her when he went to explore his chemistry with other women.
Earlier in the week, Corbin revealed there were “red flags” he didn’t address with Kenzie. This inspired Corbin to explore his options — and he later told the guys he “hasn’t thought” of Kenzie at all.
Love Island USA originally premiered in the U.K. in 2002 before it expanded worldwide with various spinoffs, including Love Island USA on Peacock. The series follows a different group of singles every season who have to pair off in order to stay in the show’s luxury villa.
The contestants — referred to as Islanders — live in isolation in a villa and are under constant video surveillance. They must be coupled up to remain on the show and stand a chance at receiving the $100,000 prize.
Season 8 escalated the sex that took place in the villa with multiple couples going all the way while sharing a bedroom in the villa. The drama escalated with Casa Amor when the new women discussed which guys they thought would pair off with them before returning to the villa.
They poked fun at Kenzie’s possible reaction to Parmida walking in with Corbin.
“Kenzie just likes anyone who likes her,” Parmida said after the rest of the women made fun of how Kenzie spoke to Corbin.
New episodes of Love Island USA are released six days a week — except for Wednesdays — on Peacock.
Join Us Weekly and Bracketology.tv in our first-ever Love Island USA fantasy league! This is your chance to predict who you think will win Season 8 and rank the Islanders weekly based on how confident you are that they will survive the next elimination. You will be playing against our editors, get access to exclusive content and have the chance to win fun prizes. Sign up for free today!
Animation is a medium, not a genre, and it’s a medium perfectly suited for some of the most bonkers, wildly over-the-top TV shows that the small screen has ever seen. After all, the fact that animation throughout history has allowed creators almost infinite visual creativity has obviously resulted in several creators taking full advantage of that fact to deliver some truly wild shows.
Whether it’s an animated series for kids, like the aptly-titled Bonkers; or one that’s definitely not for kids, like Frisky Dingo, the most bonkers animated TV shows in history are proof of why cartoons are worthy of significantly more respect than they tend to get nowadays. What other medium could possibly be able to deliver experiences this delightfully wacky? Even though these shows have been forgotten over the years, they should all be considered essential viewing for fans of over-the-top television.
10
‘Bonkers’ (1993–1994)
There are very few shows in the Disney Channel’s catalog more fittingly titled than Bonkers, a spin-off of Raw Toonage‘s short series He’s Bonkers. Heavily inspired by the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, this is just as bonkers an animated experience, telling the story of the titular out-of-work toon, who joins the Hollywood Police Department to help his partners catch animated criminals.
Virtually anyone who loves Roger Rabbit is pretty much guaranteed to love Bonkers just as much. Blending surreal slapstick with elements of the detective procedural genre in ways as kooky as they are entertaining, it’s one of the most irresistibly fun cartoons in the Disney Channel’s history. It has heart, it has some fantastic animation, and it has plenty of exquisite cartoonish world-building.
9
‘The Maxx’ (1995)
MTV broke plenty of new ground in adult-oriented animated television during the ’90s. This included the creation of Oddities, a label for Eric Fogel‘s The Head and Sam Kieth‘s The Maxx. As great as the former is, it’s the latter that’s one of the best animated shows you’ve never heard of, based on Kieth’s own exceptional comic book series. It’s about The Maxx, a superhero trying to protect his friend from an omniscient serial killer both in the real world and in a subconscious fantasy world.
Disguising a profound, admirably mature psychological drama about trauma behind a gritty superhero narrative, The Maxx is one of the most criminally underrated animated superhero shows in history. That psychological depth that makes it feel like a deep dive into the human subconscious comes with an air of surrealism that makes it a must-see for all those who love head-scratchingly bizarre shows.
8
‘Mr. Pickles’ (2014–2019)
There are some shows whose bonkers nature becomes abundantly clear from the moment one hears their premise, and the Adult Swim forgotten classic Mr. Pickles is definitely one such show. It’s one of the best body horror and slasher shows that animation has ever produced, about a family who lives with a deviant Border Collie with a secret Satanic streak.
Thankfully, Mr. Pickles lives up to the wildness of its premise at every turn of each of its four seasons. It was always the intention for the show to combine the charm and nostalgia of a ’50s family sitcom with some of the most subversive shock humor, gore, and surreal absurdity imaginable, and for people who love that kind of thing, Mr. Pickles should hit the spot easily.
7
‘Sym-Bionic Titan’ (2010–2011)
Even though it was created by Genndy Tartakovsky, one of the biggest names in the history of televisual animation, Sym-Bionic Titan has somehow still managed to slip under most animation fans’ radars as the years have passed since its cancellation. It’s one of those obscure animated shows that became cult classics, one that everyone who loves animation—regardless of whether they love Tartakovsky—should consider checking out. In it, three young aliens with the ability to form a giant robotic warrior try to blend into suburbia.
“Bonkers” is a word that would very fittingly describe a decent majority of Tartakovsky’s work across television and the big screen, but it applies to Sym-Bionic Titan with particular glee. Part mecha action extravaganza, part John Hughes-esque high school teen drama, it’s a genre-bending trip full of fast-paced animation and mature themes.
6
‘Frisky Dingo’ (2006–2008)
Those who love bonkers animation should already know that Adult Swim is typically the place to go when looking for one such show. But even by the network’s sky-high standards of hilarious absurdity, Frisky Dingo is particularly bizarre. Even the synopsis of this sci-fi farce is hard to explain, but in broad strokes, it’s all about a philandering billionaire playboy who moonlights as a superhero, as he faces his nemesis while balancing his business and his superhero life.
It’s one of the best animated series for adults, a gleeful deconstruction of the pre-MCU superhero genre that feels even timelier and more relevant today than it did back in the late 2000s. With its frantically paced, hilariously nonsensical plotlines, its absurd visuals, and its rapid-fire dialogue, it’s one of the most chaotic comedies that animation has ever produced for the small screen.
5
‘Turbo Teen’ (1984)
From the moment one hears Turbo Teen‘s mere synopsis, it becomes abundantly clear why it’s one of the most bonkers cartoons of the 20th century: It’s all about a teen who gets into an accident and then gains the ability to transform into a crime-fighting sports car when it’s hot. It’s a genuinely wild premise to make a show out of, so (perhaps needless to say) the show failed to capture an audience.
Even still, its brief 13 episodes are worth watching today if only to admire how anyone could have come up with an animated show so bonkers. It’s a Knight Rider rip-off that almost borders on qualifying as kid-friendly body horror, and as if that weren’t enough reason for an animation fan’s morbid curiosity to be piqued, there’s also the writing so nonsensical that it’s practically surreal.
4
‘Freakazoid!’ (1995–1997)
Executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, Freakazoid! is one of those forgotten cartoons that are still worth watching. It follows the adventures of Washington, D.C.’s brand-new defender, a geeky teenager who absorbs the entire cyberspace after a freak accident and gains superhuman cartoon powers. It’s the sort of premise that would feel right at home in even the wildest of Looney Tunes stories.
Clearly a response to the chaos and mayhem of the early rise of the Internet and the digital frontier during the mid-’90s, Freakazoid! is as surreal, absurd, manic, and eager to break the fourth wall as any fan of a character like Deadpool could possibly hope for an animated superhero show to be. Written like a stream of consciousness and full of meta humor, it’s the peak of what superhero comedies had to offer during the ’90s.
3
‘The Pirates of Dark Water’ (1991–1992)
Produced by Hanna-Barbera, The Pirates of Dark Water is a dark fantasy swashbuckling adventure like no other. In it, a young man learns that he’s a prince, one with an urgent quest to save his world by finding 13 magical treasures. What ensues is one of the best forgotten fantasy shows of the ’90s, a highly ambitious serialized story with some of the most groundbreaking animation of any ’90s cartoon.
It was also a genre-bending and incredibly bonkers show, though, an unprecedented mixture of high fantasy, swashbuckling pirates, cosmic horror, and science fiction. The world of Mer is wonderfully surreal and full of over-the-top world-building, inhabited by a delectably odd ensemble of characters who never fail to get into all sorts of entertaining situations.
2
‘Megas XLR’ (2004–2005)
The slacker genre, spanning both cinema and music, peaked around the mid- to late-’90s. Megas XLR is both an homage to and a parody of not just the slacker genre, but also the mecha genre. Its story follows two teenage slackers who find a mecha from the future that had been lying in a New Jersey junkyard for almost 60 years.
Megas XLR is one of those classic 2000s cartoons that is ready for a reboot, but for the moment, the original should be more than enough to satisfy fans of animated sci-fi and bonkers comedies. Also inspired by video games and heavy metal, Megas XLR feels like a delightful hotchpotch of styles, tones, and influences that always blend together in all the most enjoyably over-the-top ways.
1
‘Æon Flux‘ (1991–1995)
Premiering on MTV’s experimental animation showcase Liquid Television, Æon Flux instantly cemented its place as one of the greatest experimental animated shows of the ’90s. Today, those lucky few who have actually seen it still tend to regard it as one of the best of all time. This avant-garde masterpiece follows a secret agent from an anarchic society who repeatedly infiltrates a heavily surveilled neighboring state.
It’s one of those sci-fi shows that gets better every episode, though it also gets more bonkers every episode. Created by Peter Chung as a very intentional subversion of every established rule of 1990s American television, Æon Flux has aged like fine wine. Visually surreal, psychologically tense, and masterfully genre-bending, it may be disorienting at times, but it’s also an undeniable masterpiece.
When it comes to police procedurals and cop shows on streaming, few franchises have developed as big of an audience as Bosch. On the back of major star Titus Welliver, who has also gone on to feature in other projects like Dark Winds and The Westies, Bosch ran for seven seasons on its way to becoming one of the most popular shows in Prime Video history. Only one year after the show went off the air, Welliver returned as Harry Bosch in a sequel series, Bosch: Legacy. Fans were certain that Bosch: Legacy was going to be on the air for years, but Prime Video made the stunning decision to cancel the show after three seasons and focus on the Ballard spin-off. The latest offshoot stars Maggie Q, who was introduced in the final season of Bosch: Legacy.
Prime Video isn’t entirely done with Welliver’s Bosch, though, as he did return last year in the first season of Ballard. Prime Video has renewed Ballard for Season 2, and it’s also been reported that the show’s sophomore season will stream sometime this month, meaning a trailer is likely imminent. Welliver has also confirmed that Harry Bosch will have a small role in Ballard Season 2, meaning that fans will see his Bosch return to Prime Video soon. Welliver has also shared that he’s had discussions with Prime Video about returning as Bosch in another show, but nothing concrete has been decided. The Bosch superstar has been tapped to lead a new Amazon crime thriller, The Westies, along with J.K. Simmons, and the show is arriving sooner than you might think.
When Does ‘The Westies’ Come Out?
Amazon has already announced that The Westies will be released on July 12, but the show is not coming to Prime Video like the Bosch shows of the past. Instead, The Westies will stream on MGM+, but there is a possibility in the future that the show will make the jump to Prime Video, where it would certainly be a massive streaming contender. The show is set in Hell’s Kitchen in the 1980s, and it’s being hailed as a perfect mash-up of Bosch and another popular crime thriller show, Peaky Blinders. Narcos scribes Chris Brancato and Michael Panes wrote The Westies.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates and coverage of The Westies and Ballard Season 2, which both star Titus Welliver.
- Release Date
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July 9, 2025
- Network
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Prime Video
- Directors
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Jet Wilkinson
- Writers
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Michael Connelly, Brandi Nicole, Galeesa Murph, John Coveny, Julissa Castillo, Kendall Sherwood, Liz Hsiao Lan Alper, Michael Alaimo, Ralph Gifford, Thania St. John
- Franchise(s)
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Bosch
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Courtney Taylor
Samira Parker
Ridley Scott, the veteran director of sci-fi classics such as Alien and Blade Runner, has stayed away from the genre for over a decade, but he will return to it in August with The Dog Stars, starring Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin. Scott’s last sci-fi movie also happens to be his highest-grossing hit. It was released in 2015 to widespread acclaim, and is now streaming on Prime Video as the perfect lead-in for this year’s breakout sci-fi hit, Project Hail Mary.
Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Project Hail Mary debuted on Prime Video on Friday after grossing $670 million worldwide. The movie was embraced by audiences and critics alike, and is now sitting at a 94% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The site’s consensus reads, “A visually dazzling space odyssey that’s carried along effortlessly by the gravitational pull of Ryan Gosling at his most winning, Project Hail Mary is a near-miraculous fusion of smarts and heart.” The movie was based on a novel by Andy Weir, whose work also served as the source material for Scott’s last sci-fi movie.
The Most Epic Double-Bill Ever Is Waiting To Be Planned
We’re talking, of course, about The Martian. Starring Matt Damon, the movie grossed around $630 million worldwide against a reported budget of a little more than $100 million. It’s now sitting at a 91% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Smart, thrilling, and surprisingly funny, The Martian offers a faithful adaptation of the bestselling book that brings out the best in leading man Matt Damon and director Ridley Scott.” The Martian was nominated for seven Oscars, including in the Best Picture category and the Best Actor category for Damon. Rather controversially, it received a nomination at the Golden Globes in the Best Motion Picture — Comedy or Musical category.
The Martian is now streaming on Prime Video, where you can revisit it ahead of Project Hail Mary‘s release. Or, you can plan the most epic double-bill ever. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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September 30, 2015
- Runtime
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141 minutes
- Writers
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Drew Goddard
- Producers
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Mark Huffam, Michael Schaefer, Simon Kinberg
Influencer Halley Kate McGookin opted for a vintage designer dress as she tied the knot with Reed Williams.
Posting via her TikTok on Thursday, July 2, the New York-based influencer, 25, showed off her thrifted Dior outfit as she got ready for her special day.
“I’m getting married today and my vision for this look absolutely came together,” she shared in the video. “Yes, I’m just going to the courthouse, but I’m still going to do an insane, iconic look.”
McGookin shared details of her wedding day attire as she explained the aesthetic she was aiming for.
Influencer Halley Kate McGookin showed off a massive engagement ring from boyfriend Reed Williams. Halley, 24, shared a glimpse of the stunning sparkler, featuring a marquise-shaped diamond set on a gold band, while taking to social media on Friday, January 23, to announce that she and Reed were engaged after more than two years of […]
“This is a vintage Dior look. Immediately, when I saw the flowers on it, I knew it was for me. Reed actually picked it up for me at a vintage market. I still wanted to keep the integrity of the dress, but I had it altered to be strapless because I knew I was going to do this hat,” she said. “I had this hat custom made because I saw this vintage Valentino look. Immediately, I knew I had to recreate it. I’m so happy with how this turned out. I think it’s insane.”
Later the same day, McGookin shared a video of her and Williams kissing inside the courthouse after exchanging vows.
@halleykate Tomorrow look might even top this👀
McGookin announced her engagement to Williams in January after more than two years of dating. Taking to Instagram, McGookin shared a glimpse of the stunning sparkler, which featured a marquise-shaped diamond set on a gold band.
She followed up the post by sharing a clip of the sweet proposal. The video showed Williams getting down on one knee to pop the question as they stood in a park in Switzerland. After asking McGookin for her hand in marriage, Williams stood back up and gave her a kiss.
“He ate with the 💍,” she captioned the post at the time.
The content creator also shared that Williams couldn’t sleep for “a couple of nights” because he was “trying to decide between which diamond to get.”
Several of the internet’s most famous faces took the next steps in their relationships in 2026. The year kicked off with influencer and former Playboy model Amanda Cerny saying yes to Serhant real estate agent Johannes Bartl. Weeks later, influencer Halley Kate McGookin announced that Reed Williams popped the question to her while on vacation […]
In an episode of her “Delusional Diaries” podcast in June 2025, McGookin was candid about never having any ambitions to have a big ceremony if she ties the knot.
“I’m not against getting married, I just wanna make that clear, I have nothing against marriages, I just don’t wanna have a wedding, is what I’ve always said,” she explained on the podcast.
McGookin and Williams first met on the dating app Hinge in early 2023 and dated briefly before calling it quits in November 2023. After that false start, McGookin announced in April 2024 that the pair had gotten back together.
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