Poster art for Archer Season 10, titled Archer:1999 – a reference to the 1975-1977 SF TV series Space: 1999 (and hence a nod to the anachronistic retro vibe of Archer’s main continuity)
Sigh. My Top 10 Fantasy & SF TV Series may be the most fluid of all my top ten lists.
Many, perhaps most, simply miss the mark for me at the outset. Those that do hit the mark generally fall away quickly or don’t have an enduring quality – or they endure too long, waning until they limp into their final season and fail to stick the landing. The recent archetypal example, for me as it was for so many others, was Game of Thrones, in which the failure to stick the proverbial landing – or dare I say it, King’s Landing (heh) – in the final season left a bitter taste that filtered back throughout the series or at least its later seasons.
Hence, I tend to have a high turnover for shuffling or ranking entries into my special mentions, with so few entries having the consistent or enduring quality to rank in the top ten itself – or remain there. And to be honest, most of my present entries are pretty shaky.
In fairness to myself, there’s also my separate Top 10 Animated TV Series, in which my entries are somewhat more enduring – and animation by its nature tends to be fantasy or SF. Indeed, all but the top entry in my present top ten are clearly fantasy or SF, and the top entry (Archer) has so many substantial SF elements as to be borderline SF. (One season was outright SF and there’s a reasonable argument for the other seasons as alternate history given their anachronistic timeline and divergence from our own world in which they are nominally set.)
Like my Top 10 Fantasy & SF Films, my Top 10 Fantasy & SF TV Series leans predominantly towards SF. Only one entry is clearly fantasy, although the distinction between SF and fantasy seems far fuzzier in most of the other entries than it does for SF films. As I did for films, I will note each entry as fantasy or SF, but with a section (Fantasy or SF?) for the fuzziness of the distinction.
It’s also interesting how much supernatural or SF horror features in my Top 10 Fantasy & SF TV Series, as well as how many superhero comics adaptations – both of which I will note in each entry. Four of the entries, including the top entry, arguably fall within the horror genre (with arguable horror elements in two or three of the others) – and two entries are adaptations from superhero comics.
Anyway, these are my Top 10 Fantasy & SF TV Series.