Despite my efforts to portray myself as a giant misanthrope, I somehow find myself attending parties. I don't know why—there is a reason I have chosen a career for which it's my job to stare at screens—but adult life means other people, and other people, occasionally, means parties. Trouble is, no one at these parties is watching anything good. Do you know how many conversations about Game of Thrones I had this past weekend? At least five. And you know what? They were all boring. Game of Thrones is a show with only one thing left to say, and it's going to say it across six episodes in approximately one month's time. Why speculate when you could be talking about another great show, one that reminds you why you watch TV and talk about shows like Thrones in the first place?

When I tell people about The Expanse (streaming on Prime now), they usually say something like "I haven't heard of it." Which is fine, because who hears of any show anymore? Another response I've gotten was "That show is whack," which is what my dad said when I told him to watch it, except he was talking about Extant, a series he tried to watch probably in support of Halle Berry. They are not similar.

The Expanse is basically the show that Game of Thrones used to be and Westworld wishes it was. It's the kind of show that makes you remember that sprawling, heady genre TV interspersed with thrilling, violent action can be rewarding as hell. It makes you appreciative of TV as a medium, and angry that our culture's limited goodwill towards dense, indulgent series that take a while to get going is utterly wasted on extremely buzzy wet farts like every show that's trying to be the new Thrones. (Look, I hope Amazon's ambitious new Lord of the Rings show is good, but no one is promised tomorrow.)

The takeaway here isn't that The Expanse is just like Game of Thrones—instead, think of it as a show that lights up the same pleasure centers in your brain, slowly snaking its way through your cerebellum as you are initially confused by the sheer number of characters and locales until, five episodes in, you cannot stop watching and the entire clockwork of Earth, Mars, and the Belt is all you want to think about

But at first, it's mostly just a show that's a lot like Blade Runner. And that's a great place to start. Thomas Jane (of 2004's The Punisher fame) plays a private detective in the film noir tradition: washed up, down on his luck, more alcoholic carpet than man. He gets a case that puts him on the trail of an heiress gone missing, one that slowly introduces you to the hard science fiction future of The Expanse, where Earth is run by elitist jerks and Mars has a chip on its shoulder and the asteroid belt in between is full of blue collar workers exploited by both. (Aliens, as far as anyone knows, are fiction, and humanity has not left the solar system.) Meanwhile, the crew of a mining ship called the Rocinante stumbles upon something that makes them a target, something that, if they ever stop getting shot at, might lead them to war. These dual premises are the best kind of slow burn, like a theme park ride that lets you wander around a really cool space so you aren't even mad about the forty minute wait for the thing you paid for. But eventually, they collide, and when they do, it's really hard to let go.