Prime Video is home to some of the best sci-fi TV shows of all time, but among them are also some underrated sci-fi gems, including a 29-episode show that is a mix of Black Mirror and The Good Place. The world of sci-fi is a diverse and creative one, allowing artists to explore other worlds, parts of outer space, technology that doesn’t exist (yet), and what the future could look like on Earth if certain practices don’t change.
Sci-fi shows like Black Mirror, The X-Files, The Expanse, Doctor Who, and The Twilight Zone now rank among the best TV shows of all time, and they all offer different types of sci-fi. In recent years, one of the biggest hits in this genre is The Good Place, but what many might not know is that it had a strong competitor over at Prime Video thanks to Upload. Created by Greg Daniels, Upload was released on Prime Video in 2020 (a couple of months after The Good Place’s ending) and ran for four seasons, officially ending in 2025.
Upload is a comedy-drama TV series that drew many comparisons to The Good Place due to their premises, as both explore life after death in different ways and with a good dose of comedy, and it also has a similar vibe to Black Mirror thanks to the technology explored in it. Upload was a consistent success with critics and general audiences throughout its four seasons, but it was overshadowed by bigger hits on Prime Video – however, that doesn’t make Upload any less worth watching.
Upload Is A Surprisingly Deep Sci-Fi TV Show
Upload takes the audience into a near future where technology has advanced to the point where it’s possible to have a digital afterlife. Upload introduces the concept of a digital afterlife, a service offered by different companies – from phone companies to supermarkets and even companies like Disney and Amazon – in which people can upload their consciousness into a digital avatar so they can continue living after they die.
Upload follows Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell), a computer programmer who dies in a car accident and is immediately uploaded by his possessive girlfriend, Ingrid (Allegra Edwards), to Lakeview, an expensive and luxurious afterlife developed by Horizen. With the help of his customer service rep or “angel”, Nora (Andy Allo), Nathan adjusts to this new life and discovers that his death wasn’t an accident – and, in the process, he and Nora form a very deep and special bond that develops into something more than friendship.
Upload is a sci-fi show with comedy, drama, and mystery, as Nathan and Nora not only set out to find who killed Nathan, but they also make other, bigger discoveries regarding Lakeview, uploading, and the disturbing plans of the rich and their companies. Thanks to this, Upload explores themes like death, grief, loneliness, capitalism, corruption, and control, and it does so in clever ways that make them accessible and still fit with the show’s tone.
On the surface, Upload might seem like just a sci-fi show exploring the possibility of a digital afterlife, but it goes a lot deeper into that and everything involved in it – from the moral side of it to the ethics of uploading (and downloading), to agency and even religious beliefs –, making it one of the deepest and most engaging sci-fi shows of the decade.
Upload Went Beyond The Good Place In Its Exploration Of The Afterlife
Upload has a lot in common with The Good Place as they both have death, life, and the afterlife as main topics, and while The Good Place explores philosophical themes that give the show more depth, Upload went beyond what The Good Place did. The Good Place poses the questions of what it truly means to be a good person and thus go to the Good Place, while Upload is more about privilege and how the wealthy can have decent afterlives and the rest risk miserable afterlives or not even the chance of one.
This allows Upload to explore capitalism, morality, inequality, autonomy, privacy, humanity, and death, which, while most are also addressed in The Good Place, are done in more grounded ways despite its sci-fi elements. Upload presents a future that could happen, instead of a hypothetical heaven and hell, making it feel more real and inviting the audience to think about those possibilities and the problems they could bring.
Upload deserves a lot more attention than it received during its run, and it makes an excellent double future with The Good Place as two similar yet different approaches to death and what comes after it.
- Release Date
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2020 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Prime Video
- Showrunner
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Greg Daniels
- Directors
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Jeffrey Blitz, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Daina Reid, David Rogers, Sarah Boyd, Jonathan van Tulleken, Tom Marshall
- Writers
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Megan Neuringer, Maxwell Theodore Vivian, Farhan Arshad, Alison Brown, Shepard Boucher, Yael Green, mike lawrence, Lauren Houseman, Aasia LaShay Bullock, Alex J. Sherman, Alyssa Lane
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Robbie Amell
Nathan Brown
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