Zeit bites: slices of pure escapism

Idon’t know about you, but I need a break from all the science reality we’ve been getting lately. It’s time for some piping-hot science fiction, with a steaming side dish of fantasy. I’m a big believer in the nourishing power of escapism and, if there was ever a time when we needed that feast, it’s now.

So, without further ado, here are five servings of pure, unadulterated, escapist goodness to lose yourself in as we roll up to the breakfast bar in the same pair of pyjamas we’ve been wearing all week, in search of intellectual sustenance:

Let’s kick off this banquet with a homemade dish of teen swords and sorcery fantasy. Shot partly in New Zealand, is Netflix attempting to give you a Game of Thrones you can actually share with your kids.

Richly infused with some choice Lord of the Ringsesque moments, and a villain that would give George

R R Martin’s Ramsay Bolton a run for his money, this is a solid, wholesome way to get your kids hooked on old-school magic beyond the Harry Potter-verse.

But you wait for them to serve a delectable sci-fi comedy pastiche and two come along at once!

(TVNZ OnDemand) is comic

Seth MacFarlane’s tongue-in-cheek homage to the mac-daddy of sci-fi TV shows, Star Trek.

Irreverent, slightly obnoxious, but time-drainingly watchable, how much you enjoy the show will depend on how much time you have for MacFarlane’s brand of on-the-nose cringe comedy.

It makes a nice double feature with

(Neon), a biting social satire set onboard a wildly offcourse space-faring cruise liner, populated by the kind of obnoxious caricatures that creator Armando Iannucci has made a career out of lambasting.

This is Veep-meets-The Thick Of It in space. People seem to hate (Netflix)