You don’t always need a subscription to find a show worth watching — we present Five Sci-fi Shows on ITVX you can binge for free now
First some disclaimers. Our list is up to date as of the time of writing, but shows come and go. And by free, you do have to watch adverts. There are still some great shows we really recommend. These are only a selection, there are plenty of of other shows we might have picked such as Stargirl, Krypton, Roswell: New Mexico, Farscape and more besides.
Arrow
You’ll soon realise ITVX has a lot of DC shows under the banner of The Arrowverse. That aside, each can be watched in its own right, and thanks to alphabetical order, we begin our list with Arrow himself. All eight seasons are available, so that’s 170 episodes, so several long winter nights already catered for.
As to the show itself, it’s based on the Green Arrow comicbook character. In the TV show, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), spends five years shipwrecked on the mysterious island Lian Yu, before returning home to Starling City (later named Star City).When he returns home, he is much changed, inevitably people have moved on and there are conspiracies galore. Queen becomes a vigilante under the name The Hood and the story rolls forward from there.
Fringe
The only one of our choices not to centre around a superhero, all 100 episodes are available to watch, across five seasons. It’s more than a little X-Files at times, but aliens are replaced by an enemy from a parallel world and other so-called fringe-science concepts. The core team Fringe team are mad scientist Walter Bishop (John Noble), his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) and FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Ana Torv). We might be a little biased, as it’s a show we reviewed a lot when it was first out, but it stands the test of time, has Leonard Nimoy and possibly the most interesting treatment of parallel worlds we’ve seen ever.
Pennyworth
So, what did Batman’s butler Alfred do before coming to Gotham City? The answer is in Pennyworth, running for three seasons before being cancelled at DC due to not fitting the then current restructuring of the DC universe. While regrettable, all 30 episodes are on ITVX and the setting of a very dark alternate history London is powerful. Jack Bannon is former SAS soldier Alfred Pennyworth, Paloma Faith as sadistic sociopath Bet Sykes, Ben Aldridge as young Thomas Wayne (father of Bruce) and many more besides. Of all shows mentioned here it’s certainly the darkest, and appropriately so.
Supergirl
Another DC hero and another six seasons giving us 126 episodes with Melissa Benoist in the title role of Kara. Far too much to summarise in a short space, but it’s the standard superhero fare, with plenty to satisfy comic book fans. If nothing else, trying season 1 gives a sense of how the character become more rounded out over the season, as well as Calista Flockhart as Cat Grant, Supergirl’s boss when she’s in mild-mannered human guise.
The Flash
Another DC here and another series running from the origin story. And some bad news for fans — there are only seven seasons of the nine that were made. We assume the others will follow, and until then there’s just over 150 episodes (151 we make it) to watch. Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) gets his amazing speed following a a particle accelerator explosion, being hit by lightning and taking a nine-months nap. Cue a crime fighting sensation in a work of metahumans as part of the Arrowverse. There are paradoxes, time travel, singularities, dark matter and the usual multiple layers of deception and secrets.
As we said up top, these are just teasers for some of the many shows you can binge now on ITVX, only needing the ability to withstand the advertising. With no fees, there are dearer ways to enjoy some escapism.