Emerald City is currently streaming in the US on Peacock Premium, and its 7/10 TMDB rating reflects what viewers who have already found it know. A tightly focused run that does not overstay its welcome. That rating comes from 210 viewer scores — enough to represent a genuine consensus rather than a handful of enthusiasts. The availability across streaming platforms means you can start tonight without hunting for a disc or a dodgy stream. Adria Arjona is the obvious draw, but once you are in, it is the writing and the ensemble that keep you watching. If it has been sitting on your watchlist untouched, there is no better time to finally start it.

The world-building is meticulous, but it is the characters who carry Emerald City through the more ambitious episodes. In the blink of a tornado’s eye, 20-year-old Dorothy Gale and her K9 police dog are transported to another world, one far removed from our own — a mystical land of competing kingdoms, lethal warriors, dark magic and a bloody battle for supremacy. This is the fabled Land of Oz in a way you’ve never seen before, where wicked witches don’t stay dead for long and a young girl becomes a headstrong warrior who holds the fate of kingdoms in her hands. Adria Arjona and Oliver Jackson-Cohen lead a cast that brings real weight to the material. It aired in 2017. The world-building is meticulous enough to sustain multiple rewatches, with details in early episodes that only make sense later in the run. It delivers reliably on what it promises, which is more than most of its competition manages.

Satisfying on multiple levels — something to enjoy on screen and something to think about after. The run is exactly the right length for the ideas it is exploring. The best science fiction uses its speculative framework to examine things that matter in the real world, and Emerald City does this with more subtlety than the genre usually allows itself. The special effects serve the story rather than substituting for it, which is the mark of a production that understands what genre television is actually for. Adria Arjona anchors it with a performance that makes the more abstract episodes feel personal.