While a blend of ‘The Good Place and The Matrix’ might sound like a bizarre and ambitious combination, this four-season Prime Video series proves that the premise has a lot of potential. Sci-fi TV is enjoying a cultural renaissance right now, with everything from Apple TV’s adaptation of William Gibson’s classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer to Prime Video’s long-awaited Blade Runner spinoff show on the way in 2026. However, the genre wasn’t always so popular on the small screen.
While the masterpiece The Expanse proves that the 2010s had plenty of great sci-fi drama shows, as does the underrated post-apocalyptic series The 100, there was a dearth of great sci-fi sitcoms during the decade. Perhaps the popularity of Adult Swim’s acclaimed Rick and Morty discouraged showrunners from further exploring this rich territory, but whatever the reason, sci-fi sitcoms were a rare sight throughout the 2010s, outside of outliers like 2017’s Future Man. Then, creators seemed to start making up for lost time in the 2020s.
From Solar Opposites to Star Trek: Lower Decks, to Inside Job, to Hit-Monkey, to Avenue 5, to Space Force, there has been a steady stream of sci-fi sitcoms throughout the 2020s. Few of these, however, have been quite as ambitious or as successful in their ambitions as Prime Video’s four-season series Upload. Starring Robbie Amell, Upload takes place in a near-future where people can upload themselves into a virtual afterlife after their death. Amell’s Nathan dies at only 27, but soon starts to feel that his supposedly idyllic chosen afterlife is anything but.
Upload’s Sci-Fi Comedy Is Both Thoughtful And Funny
Created by The Office veteran Greg Daniels, Upload’s smart sci-fi satire imagines a world where even dying doesn’t provide an escape from the logic of capitalism. Nathan spends much of season 1 bonding with his beleaguered customer service assistant, who is tasked with ensuring the prematurely deceased software programmer’s afterlife is everything he wanted and, crucially, paid for it to be. Compared to shows like Netflix’s sci-fi thriller Bodies, the plot of this sitcom might seem low stakes, but Upload gets surprisingly existential as the show explores what death means in an era of digital doubling.
Like a super-sized Black Mirror episode that has more time and depth to explore its premise, Upload’s story challenges what viewers expect from a plot involving a virtual afterlife. The community where Nathan exists is neither a secretly dystopian nightmare like the title location of The Matrix nor a genuinely utopian Heaven created by technology. Instead, like the titular setting of The Office, the afterlife is plagued by the same technical issues, subscription fees, and tiered payment options that modern customers recognize from late capitalism.
Where shows like the post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama Into the Badlands imagine entire alternative societies that have sprung up after the end of the world, Upload’s thoughtful sci-fi satire instead imagines a reality where death doesn’t mean an end to an individual’s engagement with the capitalist system. From start to finish, Nathan’s experience of the afterlife is shaped by how much money he has and what luxuries he can access, or conversely, what problems he faces thanks to his limited fortune.
Mixing the existentialism of The Good Place with the anti-capitalist satire of The Matrix movies, Upload offers viewers a vision of the future where connection between people still endures, but is gradually worn down by corporate interference. Throughout this clever story, Amell’s Nathan remains a compelling protagonist, and his navigation of this artificial “Afterlife” forces viewers to question exactly how dystopian or utopian eternal life would be within the current global economic system. Thus, Upload’s smart blend of The Good Place and The Matrix offers even seasoned sci-fi fans something truly new.
- Release Date
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2020 – 2025
- 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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