Ever since Karel Capek coined the word “robot” in 1920, after robots first appeared on screen in 1927’s brilliant Metropolis, humanity has been fascinated by the concept of mechanical intelligent servants who can both destroy us and elevate us to a new stage of evolution.
We stand on the threshold of the age of the realization of this long-held fantasy. What will happen next and will the three laws of robotics, formulated by Asimov in 1942, save us?
We offer you to think about it with the best, bright and interesting sci-fi series about robots, cyborgs and androids, which you can watch today on a variety of online platforms.
I’m Not a Robot
- IMDB Rating – 8.0
- Genre: Melodrama, sci-fi, comedy
- Production: Korea South / 2017
- Director: Jeon Dae-young
- Starring: Yoo Seung-ho, Chae Soo-bin, Eom Gi-joon, Park Se-wan, Song Jae-ryong, Kang Gi-young, Hwang Seung-heon, Song Byung-ho, Lee Byung-joon, Lee Hae-young
A cute South Korean love triangle between a robot, a girl and a guy. Hong Bekkyun has developed the gynoid “Aji-3” by copying the appearance of his ex-girlfriend Jo Jia. Hong’s company manager, Kim Minkyu, who lives in isolation due to a severe allergy to touching people, is going to test the invention.
But the Aji has a malfunction, and Hong asks Cho Jia to pretend to be a robot for a while. Meanwhile, Kim falls in love with the amazingly intelligent gynoid, truly believing that he only has feelings for the robot, not knowing that there is a live girl next to him to whom his disease does not react.
The television series failed commercially in South Korea, but was a hit in other countries.
Love, Death & Robots
- IMDB Rating – 8.4
- Genre: Cartoon, sci-fi, comedy, action, horror, thriller, fantasy, crime
- Production: USA / 2019
- Directed by Gabriele Pennachiole, Jennifer Yu Nelson, Jerome Denzhan
- Starring: Fred Tatashior, Scott White, Nolan North, Noshir Dalal, Caitlin McKenna, Josh Brener, Stephen Pacey, Gary Anthony Williams, Emily O’Brien, Matthew Ian King
There is a magazine in the USA called “Heavy Metal”, which is not about rock music at all. It publishes fantastic stories and comics from both beginners and famous authors. These sketches were the inspiration for the anthology series “Love. Death. Robots.”
You are waiting for three seasons of the most exciting short films from different talented authors and directors, which play with the themes of androids, aliens, cloning, mutations and others. But the main thing here is love, death and, of course, robots.
The series was in development for about 10 years and won several special Emmy Awards for creativity.
Are You Human Too?
- IMDB Rating – 7.9
- Genre: Melodrama, sci-fi
- Production: Korea South / 2018
- Director: Cha Young-hoon
- Starring: Seo Gang-joon, Kon Seung-yeon, Lee Joon-hyuk, Park Hwan-hee, Kim Sung-nyung, Yoo Oh-sung, Park Young-gyu, Choi Dong-moon, Kim Hye-eun, Kim Won-hee
A South Korean drama about competition in chaebol, spiced with a theme about robots. Laura Oh is an expert in robotics and artificial intelligence. After a brutal attack, her son Nam Shin falls into a coma, and to safeguard his inheritance, Laura creates an android with his appearance to replace Nam Shin until he recovers.
Kang So Bong, a security girl, becomes the robot’s guardian, who is supposed to look after the replica and protect it from those who tried to kill Nam Shin. Kang Seo gradually falls in love with the android, and to her surprise, the feelings are mutual.
Some scenes of the series were filmed in the Czech Republic.
Battlestar Galactica
- IMDB Rating – 8.7
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Drama, Adventure
- Production: USA / 2004
- Director: Michael Rymer, Michael Nankin, Rod Hardy
- Starring: Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber, James Callies, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Katie Sackhoff, Michael Hogan, Aaron Douglas, Tamo Penikett.
The 1978 TV series Battlestar Galactica is an iconic sci-fi series that spawned an entire media franchise. In 2004, there was a reboot of this series with the same title, plot, and updated special effects.
The story goes like this: sometime in the future, mankind created 12 colonies in space with the help of androids, Cylons, who, as usual, realized themselves and rebelled against humans. Thus began a protracted war between humans and the cybernetic race.
And then one day, the Cylons gather forces and destroy all 12 colonies. At that time, the cruiser Galactica was traveling through space and its crew survived. After learning the terrible news, the crew of the cruiser gathers survivors from the colonies. And then, pursued by the Cylons, sets out to find Earth.
The New York Times placed this project on its list of the top 20 TV series of all time. By the way, if you are interested in the subject, in 2009, the equally exciting Caprica was released, which tells the story of the Cylons’ prehistory.
Westworld
- IMDB Rating – 8.5
- Genre: Fantasy, Drama, Detective
- Production: USA / 2016
- Budget: $100,000,000
- Director: Richard J. Lewis, Jonathan Nolan, Fred Tua
- Starring: Thandiwe Newton, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood, Tessa Thompson, James Marsden, Luke Hemsworth, Angela Sarafyan, Anthony Hopkins, Aaron Paul.
This sci-fi western is HBO’s most popular contemporary robot series. The theme park entertains a lot of tourists, fans of the Wild West era. Everything here is very real: saloons, cowboys, bandits, shootouts, locals, gold diggers and Indians.
All characters are portrayed by cyborgs, and people are allowed to do literally everything with them, because in the morning all the machines will erase the memory of yesterday. And one day it turns out that not all memories are completely erased, and cyborgs can be no less vindictive than people.
This series is a thrilling reboot of the classic 1973 science fiction film of the same name from director Michael Crighton.
Almost Human
- IMDB Rating – 7.9
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Drama, Crime
- Production: USA / 2013
- Directed by Sam Hill, Brad Anderson, Kenneth Fink,
- Starring: Karl Urban, Michael Ealy, Minka Kelly, Michael Irby, Mackenzie Crook, Lili Taylor, Joe Smith, Anthony Konecny, Darren E. Scott, Garfield Wilson
Detective John Kennex, working in Los Angeles 2048, hates androids, which have become a mandatory part of police squads. One such machine failed to save his partner, prioritizing this task over catching the criminal, and John himself spent several months in a coma after the incident.
Back on duty, John is disappointed to learn that his new partner is another robocop. He is disappointed to learn that his new partner is another robocop with an outdated model and a small bug – the ability to sense human emotions.
Series creator J.H. Wyman has said he wants to create a less dystopian version of the future with robots than Philip K. Dick and Asimov. Dick and Asimov’s version of a future with robots.
Better Than Us
- IMDB Rating – 7.3
- Genre: Drama, sci-fi
- Production: Russia / 2018
- Budget: ₽ 320,000,000,000
- Director: Andrei Junkovsky
- Starring: Paulina Andreeva, Kirill Kyaro, Alexander Ustyugov, Olga Lomonosova, Eldar Kalimulin, Vitalia Kornienko, Vera Kincheva, Alexander Kuznetsov, Fedor Lavrov, Sergey Sosnovsky
The first Russian sci-fi bought by Netflix and a great success abroad, a brilliant thriller set in 2029. Georgy, a pathologist, does not get along well with his wife Alla, which negatively affects their children. And then Georgi orders a robot nanny Arisa.
But Arisa keeps a dangerous secret: she is reprogrammed from a combat robot. Moreover, her creator from China planned to make a machine capable of being a wife and mother, but he died before he could finish the experiment, and the android, who accidentally killed a man and went on the run, was caught and sold to a Russian robotics company. Georgi is unaware of the thrill his family will get from the sweet girl Arisa, the family’s seemingly obedient assistant.
This series is essentially an adaptation of the Swedish product “Real People” (it’s a little lower on the list), but a very high quality and modified adaptation with successful plot finds.
Jue dui da ling
- IMDB Rating – 7.5
- Genre: Fantastic, Melodrama, Comedy
- Production: Taiwan / 2012
- Director: Liu Zunjie
- Starring: Koo Hye-sung, Jiro Wang, Xie Kunda, Jack Na, Jun Yong Lin, Emily Tsai, Ru Zhi Xia, Qi Wen Xie, Shiao Hai Pi, Shi Shen Wei
Koreans love high technology and impeccable attitudes! Da Da is a very busy and responsible girl who works as a makeup artist on a movie set. She has suffered humiliation not only from the capricious stars, but also from her own actor boyfriend, who hid her from the world for 7 years of their relationship, never once talking about the future.
After breaking up with him, sad but proud Da Da takes delivery of several mannequins needed on the set and discovers that instead of one plastic doll in the box by mistake put an android in the image of a handsome guy. The girl has to spend a lot of time with him, and she is amazed to realize that this talking doll is the perfect boyfriend.
The series is based on the manga of the same name by Japanese mangaka Watase Yuu.
Project “Anna Nikolaevna”
- IMDB Rating – 6.3
- Genre: Comedy, sci-fi, drama
- Production: Russia / 2020
- Director: Maxim Pezhemsky, Alexander Karpilovsky
- Starring: Zoya Berber, Anton Filipenko, Sergey Garmash, Kuzma Saprykin, Fyodor Lavrov, Marusya Klimova, Anton Vasiliev, Nikita Tarasov, Anna Kotova, Irina Rozanova
“Anna Nikolaevna” is a high-tech anthropomorphic robot ART-4536 worth 11 million euros, created to catch especially dangerous criminals. In this series from TNT she was played by actress Zoya Berber.
The head of the police department Victor Galuzo presents colleagues a new employee, Anna Nikolaevna, allegedly the daughter of the Deputy Minister. This imperturbable girl owns any weapon, perfectly seeks and analyzes information, is able to scatter a crowd of thugs, delighting his colleagues. Major Pozharsky falls in love with this icy girl, not realizing what she really is.
Perhaps the funniest storyline in the series is the performance of actress Irina Rozanova, who played Pozharsky’s mother, a theater worker who teaches Anna to mess with men’s heads.
Humans
- IMDB Rating – 7.9
- Genre: Fantastic, Drama
- Production: UK, USA, Sweden / 2015
- Director: Lewis Arnold, Samuel Donovan, Chyna Moo-Young
- Starring: Gemma Chan, Tom Goodman-Hill, Katherine Parkinson, Lucy Carless, Colin Morgan, Emily Berrington, Neil Maskell, Ruth Bradley, Ivanno Jeremiah, Daniel Webb
Another series about robots, inspired by the Swedish sci-fi drama “Real People”, only now an Anglo-American production. In the not-too-distant future, anthropomorphic robots, synthetics, “synths”, are almost every human being. Obedient, powerful servants with wide-ranging capabilities have become commonplace.
Dr. David Elster is conducting experiments to awaken the synths’ consciousness and emotions. Fragments of Elster’s modified program penetrate the global network and many synths begin to show humanity. Anita (actress Gemma Chan)-the Hawkins’ synthetic housekeeper-feels these changes. And now she can’t settle for the role of an uncomplaining servant.
By the way, this series has an awesome commercial designed like a real online synthetics store. You can visit it at personasynthetics1984.tilda.ws
Doom Patrol
- IMDB Rating – 7.8
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Drama, Comedy, Detective
- Production: USA / 2019
- Director: Chris Manley, Christine Windell, Dermott Downs
- Starring: Diane Guerrero, April Bowlby, Matt Bomer, Brendan Fraser, Riley Shanahan, Matthew Zook, Joivan Wade, Timothy Dalton, Skye Roberts, Phil Morris
This sci-fi project is a spin-off of the Titans series, featuring the incredible adventures of some of DC Comics’ most bizarre characters.
Inside Crazy Jane live 64 personalities; Elastic Girl Rita can stretch like soft rubber; Victor is a Cyborg, a mix of human and robot; Robotman Cliff is a former pilot whose brain has been transplanted into a machine; and the most Negative person of the bunch is Larry, a former pilot who emits hard radiation.
They were brought together by a slightly inadequate scientist, Dr. Niles Calder, who found them a new purpose in life, and an interesting occupation for himself.
In each episode, Robotman wears t-shirts with the names of different popular punk bands.
Raised by Wolves
- IMDB Rating – 7.5
- Genre: Fantasy, Thriller, Drama
- Production: USA / 2020
- Director: Alex Gabassi, Luke Scott, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan
- Starring: Amanda Collin, Travis Fimmel, Abubakar Saleem, Vinta McGrath, Niamh Algar, Felix Jamison, Ethan Hazzard, Matias Varela, Jordan Lowgren, Aasia Sha
A beautiful, quirky and addictive multi-part sci-fi series, with Ridley Scott as executive producer and directing the first two episodes.
The action takes place in the mid-twenty-seventh century. On Earth does not stop religious wars, almost exterminated humanity. On a deserted planet descends a ship with two androids, who must establish a human colony here. They have plenty of human embryos and artificial wombs at their disposal. But this plan begins to quickly spiral out of control.
The planet on which all this is happening is the first planet discovered by NASA, supposedly in the “Habitable Zone”. It’s Kepler-22b, six hundred light years from Earth.
Real people
- IMDB Rating – 7.9
- Genre: Fantasy, Thriller, Drama
- Production: Sweden / 2012
- Director: Harald Hamrell, Levan Akin, Kristina Haml
- Starring: Lisette Pagler, Pia Halvorsen, Johan Paulsen, Nathalie Minnewick, Kore Hedebrant, Leif Andre, Josefina Alhanko, Marie Robertson, Fredrik Silberski, Anki Larsson
The action of the sci-fi series takes place in the near future in Sweden, where hubs, humanoid robots, have become an integral part of people’s lives: servants, bodyguards, nannies, lovers. There is also a black market where stolen cyborgs are sold.
Mimi is a robot girl who has escaped from brutal exploitation. She is kidnapped and resold on the black market, rewriting her memory and giving her a new name, Anita. She soon finds herself in the Engman family, who have bought her as a helper for their elderly grandfather. Meanwhile, Mimi is wanted by her boyfriend, the cyborg Leo, leader of the robot resistance.
In 2013, the series won a prestigious award at the oldest film festival, Prix Italia.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
- IMDB Rating – 7.6
- Genre: Fantasy, Action, Thriller, Drama
- Production: USA / 2008
- Director: Charles Beeson, Jeffrey J. Hunt, David Nutter
- Starring: Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau, Richard T. Jones, Brian Austin Green, Garrett Dillahunt, Shirley Manson, Lieven Rambin, Stephanie Jacobsen, Dean Winters.
A serial sequel to “Terminator 2”, which was closed due to low ratings. In the story, a terminator arrives from the future to kill John Connor, but along with him in the lives of Sarah and John appears Cameron, an unusual cyborg of a new generation, able to flawlessly imitate a human and even feel emotions.
Cameron tells the Connors that, despite their efforts, Judgment Day has taken place, and now they must find the creator of Skynet to stop the nightmarish future from coming.
The creator of the series, Josh Friedman, approached the project very responsibly. For example, for the role of Sarah, he looked at more than three hundred actresses before he chose Lena Headey. Unfortunately, the series failed commercially and was closed after the 2nd season.
Bionic Woman
- IMDB Rating – 5.8
- Genre: Fantastic, Action, Thriller
- Production: USA / 2007
- Director: Michael Dinner, David Boyd, Steve Boyum
- Starring: Michelle Ryan, Miguel Ferrer, Molly Price, Lucy Hale, Will Yun Lee, Kevin O. Rankin, Isaiah Washington, Katee Sackhoff, Mark Sheppard, Jordan Bridges.
Sci-fi thriller “Bionic Woman” is the story of an ordinary bartender, Jamie Sommers, whose life is forever changed by a car accident. She was supposed to die, but her boyfriend Will gets the woman an experimental surgery that literally turns her into a cyborg with a human brain.
Thanks to bionics, Jamie now has accelerated reactions, extraordinary strength, increased regeneration, and many other qualities bestowed upon her by her cybernetic body parts. She joins the secret group “Berkut” and begins to carry out complex missions across the planet, saving the world.
The series is based on the 1974 project The Six Million Dollar Man, which in turn is based on Martin Kadin’s sci-fi novel Cyborg.
K-9
- IMDB Rating – 5.2
- Genre: Fantastic, Family, Comedy
- Production: UK, Australia / 2009
- Director: James Bogle, Carl Zwicky, David Napier
- Starring: John Leeson, Robert Moloney, Keegan Joyce, Philippa Coulthard, Daniel Webber, Robin Moore, Connor Van Vuuren, Jared Robinson, Josh Nobido, Jason McNamara.
The term “K-9” first appeared in the famous TV series “Doctor Who” and then spread widely around the world. It is a pun on the word “canine” and refers to robot dogs. The K-9 teen series is a mix of animation and computer graphics that follows the adventures of the very first robot dog from the original series.
The action takes place in London in the not-too-distant future, where Professor Griffen accidentally opens a space-time portal and lets an evil reptiloid into our world. Dog K-9 destroys him, dying himself, but before he self-destructs, he manages to give his friend, 14-year-old Starkey, detailed instructions on how to restore K-9 to a more advanced form. And soon the renewed K-9, Stark, his friends and the professor become London’s first line of defense against alien threats.
The creator of children’s sci-fi series and co-writer of the “Doctor Who” script Bob Baker nurtured the idea of this project since the 90’s, but received funding only in 2006.
