Most stories about "the cloud" and "strangers on the internet" will make you cringe. But this modest little adult animated series takes the premise and absolutely runs with it. A grieving teenager starts getting messages from an online stranger, only to slowly realize that the stranger is her dead father. That is how "Pantheon" opens, and it might just be the best science-fiction series most people have never heard of.
It aired to little initial fanfare, got pulled from its original streaming home in a round of corporate cost-cutting, and nearly had its second season shelved for good before Netflix picked up both seasons to give it the audience it deserves. The show is created by Craig Silverstein ("Turn: Washington's Spies") and adapted from a collection of short stories by acclaimed sci-fi author Ken Liu. It is animated, but do not mistake it for a kids' cartoon. This is a dead-serious adult drama about grief, consciousness and the end of the world, told across two seasons and 16 episodes with a voice cast that is frankly ridiculous for a series this far under the radar.
