The last sci-fi novel that I couldn’t put down, that had me hooked from start to finish, was Blake Crouch’s mind-bending techno-thriller Dark Matter. So believe me when I say that while Apple TV+ doesn’t hit all of its releases out of the park (no streamer does, of course), they knew exactly what they were doing with the decision to adapt Crouch’s novel into a drama starring Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly. A show, I might add, that’s currently the most popular TV series across the entire streaming landscape this week.
That’s according to at least two sources — both Rotten Tomatoes, as well as the streaming search engine Reelgood, which tracks the most popular TV shows from all of the major streamers, from Netflix to Max, Apple TV+, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock and more.
In the new Apple series, three episodes of which are currently available to stream as of this writing, Edgerton plays a physics professor who’s thrust into what’s essentially a multiverse narrative. The “real” version of Edgerton’s character Jason, who teaches a dry physics class to bored undergraduates, is kidnapped and replaced by a Jason from another dimension. A Jason who, among other things, is a prize-winning scientist and has invented a mechanism that can connect people to parallel worlds.
It’s heady stuff, and also part of a growing library of similarly complex and fascinating sci-material on Apple TV+, which is also home to other genre fare like Silo, Severance, Foundation, and For All Mankind (the latter of which is getting a Soviet-focused spinoff that I seriously cannot wait for). Dark Matter, meanwhile, is also one of at least two Apple shows released this year with quantum mechanics at the core of its story, the other being Constellation.
This week also finds Dark Matter at #1 as ranked by Reelgood, which monitors 20 million viewing decisions each month across every streaming platform in the US. For the 7-day period that ended on May 15, the 10 shows that topped Reelgood’s latest TV chart are as follows:
- Dark Matter (Apple TV+)
- Fallout (Prime Video)
- Bodkin (Netflix)
- Baby Reindeer (Netflix)
- A Man in Full (Netflix)
- Young Sheldon (Netflix)
- Under the Bridge (Hulu)
- Maxton Hall: The World Between Us (Prime Video)
- Doctor Who (Max)
- The Veil (Hulu)
If you’re not in the mood for a series like Apple’s — which blends an intro to physics with love, regret, and the idea of matter having a superposition across parallel worlds — there’s still plenty more to get excited about streaming this week, from stories about humanity after nuclear annihilation to podcasters investigating a mystery and much more.
Noteworthy new additions to Reelgood’s most-watched list this week include Bodkin, Netflix’s quirky new drama that was produced by the Obamas and which stars Will Forte leading a team of podcasters in their investigation of a mystery. The podcasters have descended upon a picturesque Irish town that’s jam-packed with the kinds of tropes about Irish people that probably drive people there a little mad, but it’s got an engrossing story at its core if you can get past the stereotypes — and it doesn’t hurt that it’s also filled with sumptuous vistas and moody, fog-filled landscapes to swoon over.
