The Netflix original series Brand New Cherry Flavor has been likened to the head-swirling surrealism of David Lynch and daring filmmakers of his ilk. Created by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion, the story tracks Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar), a bright-eyed young filmmaker in Hollywood trying to break into the cutthroat film industry, only to spiral into a hallucinogenic whirlwind of mystery, strange violence, and unpredictable mayhem.
With a strong central female character, extremely bizarre story, freakish fantasy, and a mind-altering intoxication, Brand New Cherry Flavor joins a long line of maddeningly surreal TV shows that are worthy of checking out.
10 Marianne - Stream On Netflix
Netflix original Marianne is an 8-part miniseries from France that follows Emma Larsimon (Victoire Du Bois), a popular horror scribe who returns to her hometown after she realizes her fictional characters are beginning to manifest in the real world. Worse yet, Emma's worst nightmare from 15 years ago begins to stalk her in waking reality.
Fusing sleep, dreams, fiction, reality, and fantasy into one head-spinning and nightmarishly frightening tale of surrealism, Marianne must use her own wits, wiles, and literary tricks to protect herself and her career legacy.
9 Undone - Stream On Amazon Prime Video
Although it boasts lifelike 3D animation, the scary Amazon original series Undone shares a similar central character and visual aesthetic with Brand New Cherry Flavor. The trippy story concerns Alma (also played by Rosa Salazar), a young girl who experiences a strange sort of purgatorial afterlife following a near-fatal car crash.
Once Alma awakens following the tragic accident, she begins to experience time in a much different, nonlinear fashion which allows her to traverse the fourth dimension and search for answers to her father's mysterious death. It's a thought-provoking piece with the same profound philosophical musings and odd visuals that the best surreal TV shows have to offer.
8 Carnivà le - Stream On HBO Max
When it comes to the theater of the bizarre, HBO's highly-praised original series Carnivà le is among the strangest ever conceived. Set in Depression-era Oklahoma, the strange circuslike tale involves Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl), a young farmboy with cryptic religious premonitions and the ability to heal the sick and raise the dead.
While they're set in much different time periods, Carnivale and Brand New Cherry Flavor both serve as truly odd supernatural coming-0f-age tales anchored by strong central performances by a young actor. Also starring longtime Lynch muse Michael J. Anderson, Carnivà le remains one of the most indelible pieces of TV surrealism.
7 Lovecraft Country - Stream On HBO Max
Inspired by one of the all-time greatest surrealist horror scribes, Lovecraft Country pays homage to scintillating works of H.P. Lovecraft while also making a statement about contemporary society. Just as Lisa enters the seductive world of Hollwyood artifice on her journey, Atticus (Jonathan Majors) and Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) also become endangered when they leave home and travel through the 1950s American south.
Beyond the premise, Lovecraft Country shares the same maddening air of mystery, tonal anxiety, and imperceptible division between reality and fantasy, leaving viewers as confused as many of the central characters.
6 Legion - Stream On Hulu
In addition to its striking visual tableau, Noah Hawley's action-sci-fi drama Legion features the same sort of cerebrally challenging subject matter as Brand New Cherry Flavor. Both stories concern a deeply troubled main character whose life is radically altered following a bizarre encounter.
In the case of Legion's David Haller (Dan Stevens), diagnosed with schizophrenia since birth, he develops special powers that he struggles to determine are real or hallucinatory as he begins to hear voices and see strange visions. In Legion's best episodes, David engages in a wildly surreal relationship with his mutant girlfriend, Syd (Rachel Keller).
5 Twin Peaks - Stream On Hulu
David Lynch's watershed TV series Twin Peaks all but introduced the world to long-form surrealism when it first hit the airwaves in 1990. The show about a murder investigation in the tiny titular town in Washington is populated with nightmarish characters, otherworldly events, scary scenes, and a deadly distortion of fantasy and reality.
Like in Brand New Cherry Flavor, the discombobulating journey of Twin Peaks protagonist Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is far more important than the central crime, allowing viewers to get into the harrowing headspace of the central leads as they try to make sense of their bizarre surroundings and crazy character interactions.
4 Losing Alice - Stream On Apple TV+
The superb Israeli series Losing Alice boasts a similar, surreal central quandary to that of Lisa in Brand New Cherry Flavor. In the former, Alice (Ayelet Zurer) is an aspiring film director who becomes obsessed with her young, seductive new screenwriter Sophie (Lihi Kornowski). In a grand Faustian bargain, Alice begins to lose her sense of self and her grip on reality in her attempt to get close to Sophie.
Also boasting a similar level of tension, suspense, and mystery, Losing Alice also rightly celebrates the empowerment of a female film director and voices the need for more opportunities for artists like Lisa and Alice in the future.
3 Sharp Objects - Stream On HBO Max
Although the setting is much different and the color schemes much warmer, Sharp Objects is also a riveting character-driven examination of Camille Preaker (Amy Adams), a woman on the brink of a psychological meltdown, losing her grasp on reality when she returns to her scarifying hometown to investigate a murder.
If Los Angeles is the seductive cesspool of depravity and illusion that preys on Lisa, then it's Camille's hometown full of bad memories, tragic events, and childhood scars that prove to be her undoing. Both characters struggle to recognize the veracity of their psychological fantasies and bizarre flights of fancy.
2 Dark - Stream On Netflix
Although the drama features a much bigger ensemble, the German Netflix original series Dark is one of the trippiest and most surreal TV shows in recent memory. Fusing time travel, multiple timelines, characters who change names and appearances, and the like, the central premise concerns the mysterious disappearance of a little boy and the dogged search for him by his family and friends.
More than the main mystery, Dark has an aptly stygian aesthetic and cold, gloomy visual design that Brand New Cherry Flavor has in spades. Moreover, both shows get weirder and weirder as the episodes progress, gripping viewers until the head-scratching finale makes them question all that came before it.
1 Black Mirror - Stream On Netflix
Netflix's venerated original series Black Mirror is one of the most unsettling surreal sci-fi horror shows to be produced in the past decade. Depending on which chapter is selected, the trippy terror of David Lynch or baleful body horror of David Cronenberg can be found, two filmmakers who clearly influenced Brand New Cherry Flavor.
In its most ambitious entry yet, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch allows viewers to interactively participate in their own stories and dictate where the narrative goes. The hyper-surreality of the VR world is akin to what Lisa experiences in Hollywood as her mind begins to alter and present the illusion of free will.
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