Do you like sci-fi shows with big budgets and big plot twists? If you do and you don't currently have Apple TV Plus, you're missing out. And it looks like Apple knows that, because it's started sharing some of the pilot episodes from the best Apple TV shows on social media – for free.
Last month, you could watch Apple TV Plus' sci-fi series Silo on the most dystopian place: Twitter. And this month, Apple has revealed that it plans to release the first episode from season two of its sci-fi epic Foundation online for free. This time around though, it's streaming it on YouTube. The episode will also have a live Q&A with producer David S Goyer and will go live later today (July 10) on the link below.
I think this is good news for several reasons. The first and most obvious one is that Apple TV Plus is now a sci-fi TV show utopia. It has got some seriously good sci-fi series right now, so anything that makes people aware of them has got to be a good thing. And moving to YouTube rather than Twitter is a good thing too, because YouTube delivers video quality and reliability that Twitter simply doesn't.
The best SF shows on Apple TV Plus shouldn't be siloed
Despite Apple's size, its TV business is still a relatively small player in the streaming business. As of April, it was the seventh most popular streamer in the US, with less market share than Paramount Plus. And I think a big part of that is because people aren't aware of some of the really good shows on the service. These social media launches are clearly designed to change that.
I really loved Silo, which is based on the best-selling Wool trilogy, had me jumping up and down at the big twist at the end of the season one finale. I haven't tried Foundation yet, which is based on books by Isaac Asimov, but it's clearly going to delight fans of big budget sci-fi epics.
And there's plenty more where that came from. I absolutely devoured every season of For All Mankind, an alternative-history sci-fi soap opera that began with US test pilots and ended up with big fights on the moon and Mars. I've also heard good things about alien invasion thriller Invasion, dystopian drama See and Snoopy in Space, which – you've guessed it – is about Snoopy in space.
I'd include another two shows in here although neither has spaceships or space aliens. Severance, which is quite simply one of the greatest TV shows ever made, and Shining Girls, which is a fun adaptation of the best-selling book. Both shows are based on an sci-fi plot device – a brain implant in the former and time travel in the latter – but don't need to go to space to deliver some truly gripping drama. Severance in particular is just astonishing, and I'm counting the days until the second season drops.
