10 TV Shows That Make You Question Your Own Reality

Television has long been a medium obsessed with the big questions in life, forcing characters to constantly assess their actions in order to understand the environment around them. Most shows will be pretty direct in giving answers of what it is to be human in the particular scenario that they are based, the emotional ramifications of their actions and ask its audience to put themselves in the shoes of its main characters to help understand their own world a little better through the lens of the show.

Conversely, there has been a culture of TV shows that are more keen to muddy the waters with a barrage of philosophical and metaphysical questions that do exactly the opposite and make us more confused about our own reality. With the advent of prestige TV on demand since the turn of the millennium, this particular brand of mind-bending mysteries seems to be surging in popularity, with a whole raft of shows built around each episode raising more questions than providing any clear objective answers. These shows generally gain a loyal cult following, with their audiences following them down the rabbit-hole to conspire about the composition of reality and our relation to it.

Akin to taking the red pill in The Matrix, this list presents a view on those shows that open Pandora’s box and make you ask those big questions about your own existence - tin foil hats on please for the 10 TV shows that make you question your own reality.

With its 3rd season currently ongoing at time of writing, Westworld has become a staple of the mind-bending TV show genre. Debuting in 2016 and based off the back of the 1973 film of the same name, Westworld is a show about a futuristic theme park which simulates the Wild West, allowing visitors to indulge in any frontier-based fantasies that they are harbouring, while engaging with a bevy of robotic hosts created by the science team running the park.

The hosts themselves are programmed to be unaware that they are in a simulation, and despite regular reboots and maintenance by those running the park, you quickly get the eerie sense that the robots are developing a much keener understanding of their surroundings and what it’ll take to escape the loop of never-ending cowboy storylines. On top of this, you’re always keenly aware that this is a show produced by the twist-loving JJ Abrams, which tends to mean you can never truly trust who is a host and who is a customer at any given time within the walls of the park.

Every conversation between host and human is charged with tension and doubt on the impossibility of finding out just how much the robots know and raises a heap of questions on the nature of predestination of fate versus aspects of personal choice in all of the characters’ actions, as well as the relationship between dreams and memory - thinking about it all for too long is pretty chilling in truth and will make you question every conversation you have for weeks after watching.