If what grabbed you about Devs was its slow, deliberate camera work, enormous establishing shots, eerie architecture, atmospheric landscapes, and the feeling that almost every frame could stand alone as a photograph, there are several shows worth watching next.
What makes Devs visually distinctive is not just that it looks expensive. The series is patient. It often lets a shot breathe rather than cutting quickly, using wide compositions to place small human figures inside forests, cities, laboratories, and monumental architecture. San Francisco at night, the glowing Amaya complex, the surrounding woodland, and the gold-lit interiors all contribute to a sense that the environment is as important as the characters.
If you especially like wide static shots, locked-off compositions, negative space, and characters dwarfed by their surroundings, these are some of the best shows to try.
1. Tales from the Loop
Tales from the Loop is probably the closest overall visual companion to Devs.
The series combines quiet science fiction with enormous landscapes, strange machinery, rural environments, and an unusually restrained pace. Instead of constantly pushing the camera toward the characters, it frequently observes them from a distance.
Its wide shots are especially effective because the science-fiction elements are treated almost like part of the landscape. Giant machines sit silently in fields. Characters walk through enormous empty spaces. Buildings, forests, snow, and industrial structures dominate the frame.
There is also a great deal of negative space, which gives many scenes a lonely, contemplative feeling.
If your favorite Devs shots are the ones where a person is barely visible against an enormous environment, start here.
2. Ripley
Ripley is not science fiction, but it is one of the strongest recommendations if cinematography itself is your priority.
Shot in black and white, the series is filled with meticulously arranged static compositions. Staircases, hallways, windows, narrow streets, coastlines, churches, apartments, and Italian architecture become major visual elements.
The camera frequently stays still and allows characters to enter, cross, or leave the composition rather than following them around.
That approach makes many scenes feel closer to still photography than conventional television coverage.
Where Devs uses modern architecture and technological spaces, Ripley achieves a similar effect with old European architecture, hard shadows, geometric framing, and enormous areas of darkness.
For pure composition, it is one of the best-looking television series of recent years.
3. Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul may seem like an unusual recommendation after Devs, but visually the connection makes a lot of sense.
The series frequently uses extremely wide locked-off shots and lets entire scenes unfold without moving the camera. Characters may appear tiny at the bottom or edge of the frame while a parking lot, desert, building, road, or industrial structure occupies most of the image.
The cinematography is especially good at finding unusual places to position the camera. Sometimes it observes characters through windows, doorways, ceilings, machinery, car interiors, or distant architectural frames.
The result is a style where location and composition communicate as much as dialogue.
If you primarily want patient static framing rather than science fiction, Better Call Saul should be high on your list.
4. Severance
Severance replaces the forests and glowing laboratories of Devs with sterile corporate architecture.
Its underground offices are composed around symmetry, empty hallways, enormous rooms, repetitive furniture, and carefully controlled geometry. Characters often appear unusually small inside the frame, reinforcing the feeling that the building itself is overpowering them.
The camera movement is generally controlled rather than frantic, and many establishing shots emphasize the strange proportions of the workplace.
Outside the office, the series also makes strong use of snow, empty roads, isolated buildings, and subdued landscapes.
It is less interested in natural scenery than Devs, but few contemporary shows use architecture as effectively.
5. Dark
Dark is one of the strongest choices if you liked the ominous landscapes in Devs.
Forests, caves, roads, power infrastructure, houses, rain, and overcast skies are repeatedly used as establishing imagery. The town of Winden feels less like a simple location and more like an enclosed world.
The cinematography regularly returns to wide images of characters entering forests, standing outside buildings, or disappearing into large environments.
Unlike some modern mystery shows, Dark is willing to hold these images long enough for the atmosphere to register.
It is more narratively dense than Devs, but visually it shares the same interest in making locations feel mysterious and threatening.
6. The Leftovers
The Leftovers is less technological than Devs, but its cinematography often has the same patience.
The series uses large exterior compositions, lonely roads, suburban spaces, rural landscapes, hotels, institutional buildings, and empty public areas to create a strong sense of place.
Characters are frequently positioned against environments that seem much larger than they are.
The visual style becomes increasingly ambitious as the series continues, particularly when the story moves into more unusual locations.
If you appreciate cinematography that allows landscapes to carry emotional meaning, The Leftovers is an excellent choice.
7. Chernobyl
Chernobyl uses wide shots differently from Devs, but with equally impressive results.
Instead of beautiful technological spaces, it gives you enormous industrial structures, abandoned streets, Soviet architecture, concrete interiors, machinery, smoke, and empty landscapes.
Its establishing shots repeatedly emphasize scale. Individual people appear tiny compared with power plants, apartment blocks, military equipment, and contaminated landscapes.
There is a severe stillness to much of the cinematography that makes the environment feel physically oppressive.
If the monumental architecture of the Amaya facility was one of your favorite elements of Devs, Chernobyl is worth watching.
8. The Young Pope and The New Pope
These shows are excellent if you want enormous symmetrical interiors and characters surrounded by architecture.
Palaces, corridors, courtyards, churches, gardens, and ceremonial spaces are often photographed with highly controlled compositions.
Director Paolo Sorrentino frequently places characters at extreme distances or in the center of enormous symmetrical frames, creating imagery that can feel surreal even when nothing supernatural is happening.
The visual language is much more extravagant than Devs, but the fascination with scale, stillness, architecture, and meticulously designed frames is similar.
9. Homecoming
Homecoming, particularly its first season, uses extremely controlled visual storytelling.
Directed by Sam Esmail, it features geometric framing, long hallways, institutional architecture, unusual camera positions, slow movements, and carefully constructed compositions.
There is a strong Kubrick influence throughout the series.
While it does not have as many enormous landscapes as Devs, it creates a similarly unsettling feeling by making ordinary architecture seem strange.
If you enjoyed how Devs turns offices and technological environments into something almost sacred or threatening, Homecoming is a good match.
10. Mr. Robot
Mr. Robot has one of the most recognizable compositional styles in modern television.
Characters are frequently pushed toward the extreme edges or bottom of the frame, leaving enormous amounts of empty space above or beside them. New York architecture, office buildings, streets, subway stations, and nighttime exteriors become part of the psychological atmosphere.
The series also uses long takes and distant compositions extensively.
Its cinematography is more nervous and urban than Devs, but both shows understand that framing can make people look isolated, powerless, or trapped.
11. Rectify
Rectify is a quieter recommendation.
It is not science fiction and does not have the monumental production design of Devs, but its cinematography is extremely patient.
The series often watches characters from a distance rather than constantly cutting into close-ups. Small-town streets, houses, fields, porches, and ordinary landscapes are given time to breathe.
The result is understated rather than spectacular.
If what you really want is stillness, observational framing, and scenes that are comfortable remaining wide, Rectify deserves attention.
12. Station Eleven
Station Eleven offers some of the most beautiful landscape and city imagery among recent science-fiction dramas.
Its post-collapse world creates opportunities for abandoned urban spaces, forests, highways, airports, theaters, lakes, and enormous outdoor environments.
Compared with Devs, its cinematography is warmer and more humanistic. The images are less clinically controlled, but the series still understands the power of allowing people to occupy a relatively small portion of a large frame.
It is particularly strong if you want science fiction where landscape plays an important role.
13. Tokyo Vice
Tokyo Vice is worth considering if your favorite Devs imagery involves cities at night.
Tokyo is photographed through neon streets, distant skylines, narrow alleys, elevated roads, offices, clubs, train stations, and enormous urban environments.
The cinematography is often restrained and atmospheric rather than hyperactive.
It does not rely as heavily on completely static frames as some of the shows above, but its establishing photography gives the city a strong physical presence.
14. Legion
Legion is the least restrained show on this list, but one of the most visually inventive.
Its cinematography combines symmetrical architecture, unusual lenses, enormous rooms, theatrical sets, bold colors, surreal landscapes, and dreamlike establishing shots.
Where Devs is controlled and meditative, Legion frequently becomes deliberately bizarre.
Still, both series treat visual design as a central part of the storytelling rather than decoration.
If you want something that feels meticulously composed but much stranger, it is worth trying.
15. The Peripheral
The Peripheral offers polished near-future imagery with strong contrasts between rural landscapes and futuristic city environments.
There are sweeping countryside shots, technologically advanced interiors, dramatic architecture, and large-scale city compositions.
It is more conventionally photographed than Devs, so it does not have the same relentless visual discipline. However, it can still satisfy the desire for expensive-looking science fiction built around strong environments and wide establishing imagery.
The Best Choices for Wide Static Shots
If wide, static compositions are specifically what you are looking for, the ranking changes slightly.
The strongest choices are:
- Tales from the Loop
- Ripley
- Better Call Saul
- Severance
- Dark
- The Leftovers
- The Young Pope
- Chernobyl
- Rectify
- Homecoming
Tales from the Loop is probably the closest to the overall visual atmosphere of Devs. It combines science fiction, monumental objects, landscapes, stillness, and characters who frequently appear tiny inside the frame.
Ripley may be the strongest choice if composition itself matters more than genre. Its static black-and-white images are extraordinarily precise.
And Better Call Saul is one of the best examples of a television series trusting a wide locked-off camera and allowing an entire scene to play out within a carefully designed frame.
Why Wide Static Shots Feel So Different
A wide static shot changes the relationship between the viewer and the character.
Most television is built around coverage: wide shot, medium shot, close-up, reaction shot, and another close-up. The editing constantly tells the audience exactly where to look.
A static wide composition does something different.
The viewer has time to explore the frame.
Architecture becomes important. Distance becomes important. Empty space becomes important. The relationship between a person and the surrounding environment becomes visible.
A character standing alone in the middle of a huge laboratory communicates something very different from a close-up of the same character.
Devs repeatedly takes advantage of this.
The Amaya complex does not merely provide a background for the story. Its scale, symmetry, glowing surfaces, surrounding forests, and monumental design reinforce the show’s ideas about technology, determinism, human insignificance, and control.
The best shows on this list accomplish something similar: they use environments as part of the storytelling.
What to Watch First
If you want the closest thing to another Devs, watch Tales from the Loop.
If you want incredible static composition regardless of genre, watch Ripley.
If you want masterful locked-off wides where characters move through carefully constructed frames, watch Better Call Saul.
If you want architecture, symmetry, and unsettling institutional spaces, watch Severance.
If you want forests, darkness, rain, and ominous establishing shots, watch Dark.
And if the thing you loved most about Devs was simply seeing a filmmaker hold on a beautiful wide image instead of immediately cutting away, those five are the best places to start.
