Don't think. Don't blink.
Why it is hard sci-fi
A Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixins novel. The show commits to one of the most ambitious science premises on TV. A nearby alien civilisation, the San-Ti, lives on a planet in a chaotic three-star orbit and has decided to invade Earth. The transit will take four hundred years. In the meantime, the San-Ti have crippled human science using a sub-atomic computer called a sophon. The shows procedural texture is global science under coordinated suppression.
Science inside it
The three-body problem in celestial mechanics as the alien civilisations literal home environment, a working portrayal of high-energy particle-accelerator results as a probe of the alien interference, a sub-atomic computer as a fictional but coherent piece of physics, and a long-arc engagement with the political shape of a civilisation given four hundred years to prepare for invasion. The shows commitment to the science is unusually deep for TV.