5 Perfect Sci-Fi Shows To Watch After The Boroughs

Netflix’s highly rated new sci-fi show, The Boroughs, quickly became one of the best shows of 2026 on the platform. The series is set in a plush retirement community, where some very strange things start to happen. Soon, a group of community members bands together to investigate what’s happening and discover that an alien threat is targeting them. It’s up to this unlikely group to stop the threat, however they can.

The Boroughs mixes sci-fi, horror, and geriatric drama together into a unique brew that few other series have imitated. In that sense, it’s hard to find a suitable show to watch after The Boroughs, but we have 5 good selections that will offer a similarly good premise and sci-fi appeal.

5. Stranger Things

A considerable number of viewers mistakenly think that Netflix’s Stranger Things creators, The Duffer Brothers, created The Boroughs instead of just executive producing. But if you never saw Stranger Things, and you like The Boroughs, then you should definitely make the Duffers’ sci-fi-horror/coming-of-age series your very next stop.

The series is in the town of Hawkins, Indiana, where a group of young kids discover stranger supernatural creatures lurking around, and a mysterious girl with extraordinary psychic powers, who is somehow connected to the dark phenomenon. Over 5 seasons, Stranger Things built some of the best sci-fi/horror lore seen in years, and made it all relatable to both adults and teens who are growing up in an increasingly scary world. There’s a good reason why this show became a worldwide phenomenon.

4. Eerie Indiana

José Rivera and Karl Schaefer’s sci-fi-mystery-supernatural-horror series was way ahead of its time when it first aired on NBC in 1991 (now streaming on Tubi and Pluto TV). The show follows a teenage kid named Marshall Teller (Omri Katz) who moves to the small Indiana town of Eerie. He befriends a kid named Simon Holmes (Justin Shenkarow), and the two of them are sucked into all kinds of strange occurrences in their bizarre town.

The stories were outlandish mashups of genre and commentary. Storylines included tupperware that preserved youth, as well as food; braces that provided insight into dogs’ minds, and their plot for world conquest, or a school nurse who is turning students and staff into zombies incapable of humor. Eerie Indiana only lasted for 19 episodes (and went through several retoolings along the way), but you’ll quickly notice how it helped create a mold for shows like Stranger Things and From, which came afterward.

3. Counterpart

Starz’s Counterpart aired in the late 2010s and was criminally underrated. The series starred Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons as a boring bureaucrat named Howard Silk, who has worked at the “Office of Interchange” (OI) for 30 years. Howard had no idea what his classified work, exchanging seemingly random messages, was all about; that is, until the day he is brought to a secret room to have a conversation with… himself.

Howard learns that his workplace is actually a checkpoint between two parallel realities: the “Alpha” world (his world) and the “Prime” world, where his counterpart comes from. The two worlds used to work together cooperatively until the Prime World was crippled by a deadly pandemic, creating a deep divergence in each world’s development and deeper distrust between them. The series dips into espionage and mystery, as Howard Alpha learns that Howard Prime, a career spy, is part of a much bigger “Cold War” between the two worlds. That war includes sleeper agents hiding in each reality and impostor agents replacing and posing as their counterparts, sometimes in high positions of power or influence. Howard Alpha personally suffers the indignity of finding out that Howard Prime is the tough, confident, and decisive man he never dared to become; meanwhile, Howard Prime slowly but surely realizes that Howard Alpha is the good, compassionate, loving person he used to be.

Counterpart has a similar appeal as The Boroughs, forcing older viewers to consider lives not lived, and who they could’ve been if they’d made different life choices. It’s also a pretty compelling mystery, with some great twists.

2. From

From is the new sci-fi/horror series on MGM+ that’s grown into a dark horse breakout hit since first airing in 2002. Season 4 (which is airing in 2026) has marked a big turn in the series, with From finally getting mainstream exposure and gaining a much bigger audience. Like The Boroughs, From features an ensemble of characters trying (and often failing) to work together, and definitely has themes that appeal to an adult crowd, facing very real stresses of a chaotic modern world.

The show follows (seemingly) random people driving down different roads, who all end up mystically transported and trapped in the same small rural town. Every night, a group of ghoulish monsters disguised as 1950s townsfolk wakes from their slumber and hunts for human flesh to consume, while also “feeding” off the terror they create. A self-appointed “sheriff” of the town, Boyd Stevens (Lost star Harold Perrineau), struggles to keep everyone alive and sane long enough to figure a way out of their supernatural prison. The lore gets much deeper from there, with many calling From the new Lost, with more horror influences.

1. The Twilight Zone

If The Boroughs is sci-fi/horror aimed at an older (if not elderly) demographic, then why not go back to the greatest sci-fi series the older generation knows? The Twilight Zone was Rod Serling’s groundbreaking anthology series, which offered viewers twisted episodic stories in genres like sci-fi, horror, psychological thriller, fantasy, dark comedy, and more. It was one of the main blueprints for so many other sci-fi/horror shows, films, and even books that would come after; it was also so successful that it spawned three reboots (the latest from filmmaker Jordan Peele in 2019), as well as a cult-hit anthology movie in 1983.

The Boroughs may be somewhat dark and intense at times, but The Twilight Zone is a perfect palate cleanser. Especially if you have a guide to the episodes that are comparable to The Boroughs.

The Boroughs is streaming on Netflix. Let us know how you like the series over on the ComicBook Forum!

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