Forget ‘Doctor Who,’ This 12-Episode Sci-Fi Masterpiece Is the Perfect Weekend Binge

Amanda M. Castro is a Network TV writer at Collider and a New York–based journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, where she is an Associate Editor, and The U.S. Sun, where she previously served as a Senior Consumer Reporter.

She specializes in network television coverage, delivering sharp, thoughtful analysis of long-running procedural hits and ambitious new dramas across broadcast TV. At Collider, Amanda explores character arcs, storytelling trends, and the cultural impact of network series that keep audiences tuning in week after week.

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Amanda is bilingual and holds a degree in Communication, Film, and Media Studies from the University of New Haven.

Time travel has become one of television’s favorite toys. There have been Time Lords, superheroes, historians, and countless reluctant saviors hopping between centuries. Timewasters had no interest in any of that, though. Daniel Lawrence Taylor‘s British comedy, which aired for two seasons on ITV2 between 2017 and 2019, followed four struggling musicians from South London who stumbled into a time machine hidden inside the elevator of their rundown apartment building.

Rather than discovering some grand destiny, they found themselves trapped in the past and trying to make the best of it. The result was one of the funniest and most original sci-fi comedies of the last decade — and one that almost received an American remake before those plans quietly faded away.

‘Timewasters’ Gives Time Travel a Very Different Kind of Hero

Nick, Lauren, Jason, and Horace aren’t scientists or explorers, oddly; they’re a jazz quartet trying to stay afloat in modern London. Their fortunes change after an encounter with “Homeless Pete,” a mysterious regular around their building who insists that the lift can travel through time. Before long, the band is stranded in 1926, where their biggest problems aren’t paradoxes or world-ending catastrophes. They’re trying to find somewhere to stay, secure paying gigs, and avoid making their situation even worse. The series wrings plenty of laughs out of the collision between modern sensibilities and life in the Jazz Age, where wealthy socialites are fascinated by them one moment and wildly ignorant the next.

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.

• You’re drawn to understanding how the system works before figuring out how to break it.
• You’d find the Resistance, or it would find you — your instinct for spotting constructed realities is the machines’ worst nightmare.
• You function best when you have access to information and the freedom to act on it.
• The Matrix built an airtight prison. You’d be the one probing the walls for the door.

The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.

• You don’t need comfort, community, or a cause larger than the next horizon.
• You need a vehicle, a clear threat, and enough fuel to outrun it — and you’re good at all three.
• You are unsentimental enough to survive that world, and decent enough — just barely — to be something more than another raider.
• In the wasteland, that distinction is everything.

You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

• You read people accurately, keep your circle small, and ask the questions others prefer not to answer.
• In a city where humanity is a legal designation rather than a feeling, you hold onto something that keeps you functional.
• You’re not a hero. But you’re not lost, either.
• In Blade Runner’s world, that distinction is everything.

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

• Patience, discipline, and political awareness are your core strengths — and on Arrakis, they’re survival tools.
• You understand that the long game matters more than any single victory.
• Others come to Dune and are consumed by it. You’d learn its logic and earn its respect.
• In time, you wouldn’t just survive Arrakis — you’d begin to reshape it.

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

• You find meaning in being part of something larger than yourself — a cause, a crew, a rebellion.
• You’d gravitate toward the Rebellion, or the fringes, or whatever pocket of the galaxy still believes the Empire’s grip can be broken.
• You fight — not because you have to, but because standing aside isn’t something you’re capable of.
• In Star Wars, that willingness is what makes all the difference.

Taylor originally conceived the series while learning the trumpet himself. The idea of a Black jazz band in the 1920s appealed to him, but adding time travel transformed the concept into something much stranger. The result feels unlike most shows in the genre. Nobody in Timewasters believes they’re destined to save history. In fact, the group spends most of its adventures simply trying to survive it.

Season 2 moved the quartet into the late 1950s and Britain’s cool-jazz scene, giving the show a new era to play with while keeping the same chaotic energy. Across both seasons, the entire story unfolds in just 12 episodes, making it an easy watch and an even easier recommendation.

‘Timewasters’ Never Lets Its Social Commentary Overpower the Comedy

• Image via Big Talk Studios/ ITV2

• Image via ITV2

• Image via Big Talk Studios/ ITV2

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Image via Big Talk Studios/ ITV2

Image via ITV2

Image via Big Talk Studios/ ITV2

Plenty of high-concept comedies have clever premises, but far fewer have four leads who feel this naturally in sync. Taylor stars as anxious bandleader Nick, while Adelayo Adedayo‘s Lauren is usually the first person to lose patience with everybody around her. Kadiff Kirwan gives Jason enough confidence to fill an arena, even when common sense tells him otherwise, and Samson Kayo nearly steals the series as Horace, whose enthusiasm frequently outruns his judgment. Filled with guest stars, most notably Joseph Quinn, the series also features an early appearance from Saturday Night Live UK star Paddy Young, who plays Telegram Sam in a Season 1 episode.

The music becomes a huge part of the show, too. This group takes modern hits, plays them in a jazz form, and they would all fit in very well with the 1920s. These musical interpretations add depth to the story, reminding you that these characters are musicians, no matter what outlandish things are going on with time travel and the like.

The quartet quickly discovers that life in the 1920s and 1950s comes with prejudices that period dramas often gloss over. Racism, sexism, and class divisions are impossible to avoid, yet the series never approaches those subjects with a wagging finger. Instead, Taylor and co-writer Barunka O’Shaughnessy use satire. The jokes often come from the absurdity of outdated attitudes and from watching the group react with disbelief, annoyance, and resignation. The series also takes aim at the way period dramas have traditionally treated Black characters as if they barely existed. That perspective gave Timewasters something many time-travel stories lack. It wasn’t interested in rewriting history or placing its heroes at its center. It simply asked what history might look like from the perspective of people who are usually pushed to the edge of the frame.

An American Version of ‘Timewasters’ Never Made It Off the Ground

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    Image via Big Talk Studios/ ITV2</figure>