TV Shows Like Dark
If you like Dark, here are 12 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
Netflix · Crime · Dark is ended
Dark is a show that earns its reputation by taking a simple premise, a missing child in a small German town, and building something genuinely disorienting out of it. The time-travel mechanics are not decoration; they are load-bearing. Every character is connected to every other across three generations in ways the show slowly, deliberately reveals. Watching it is like assembling a puzzle where the box has no picture on the lid. The atmosphere is relentless, the visual palette cold and grey, and the tone never breaks for comedy or relief. It is not comfortable television, and that is exactly the point.
The best shows like Dark
1. Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is essentially the blueprint for the atmospheric small-town mystery that Dark grew from. The investigation into Laura Palmer's death spirals outward into something far stranger than any crime procedural, and the surrounding woodland carries a menace that should feel immediately familiar. If Dark's forest made you uneasy, Twin Peaks has been doing that longer than almost any other show on television.
Stream on Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Paramount+ Amazon Channel, MUBI
Ended0%
2. Imperfect Women
Where Dark hides its secrets across centuries, Imperfect Women hides them within a friendship, and the slow unraveling of what three women have concealed from each other carries real tension. Fans of Dark who respond to the idea that the people closest to you are the ones most capable of upending everything will find a lot to sit with here. It is quieter than Dark, but the sense that nothing is quite as it was presented runs all the way through it.
Stream on Apple TV, Apple TV Amazon Channel
Ended0%
3. Dexter: Resurrection
Dexter: Resurrection is a different kind of show from Dark, more kinetic and more focused on character than atmosphere, but the thread connecting them is the weight of a past that will not stay buried. Dexter Morgan's reckoning with what he has done to his son echoes Dark's central obsession with how one generation's choices damage the next. Fans who responded to that particular guilt will find it here in a more direct, crime-forward form.
Stream on fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel , Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Likely Renewed65%
4. Bodies
Bodies is the most direct structural cousin to Dark on this list. One body, four detectives separated by decades, and a mystery that only makes sense when all four timelines are considered together. It has the same confidence that a complicated architecture will pay off, and the same willingness to make the viewer do real work. If the multi-generational puzzle of Dark was your favorite part of that show, Bodies was made for you.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
5. The Institute
The Institute starts from a premise Dark fans will recognize immediately: a child taken, a facility with dark purposes, and a nearby town that seems ordinary until it isn't. The psychological horror elements give it a different texture from Dark, but the feeling of children used as instruments by forces they barely understand is very much in the same key. The two storylines converging on each other also rewards the kind of patience Dark required of its audience.
Stream on fuboTV, MGM+ Amazon Channel, MGM Plus Roku Premium Channel, MGM Plus
Renewed100%
More on shows like Dark
Fans of Dark tend to want a few specific things from their next show. They want mystery with real architecture underneath it, not just cliffhangers that pay off with nothing. They want a sense that the writers knew the ending before they wrote the first episode. They want atmosphere that does actual narrative work, and they are fine with slow burns as long as the fire eventually arrives. A lot of viewers also respond to the way Dark uses place, the forest, the caves, the small-town claustrophobia, as something almost alive. The wrong recommendation here is a procedural that wraps up each week. The right one asks questions that take seasons to answer.
The five recommendations here cover that territory from different angles. Bodies is probably the closest structural match: a single corpse, four time periods, one city, and a mystery that demands you trust the process. Twin Peaks is the older, weirder ancestor of this whole genre, the show that proved network television could sustain genuine unease and surreal dread without fully explaining itself. The Institute brings the kidnapped-child premise into psychological horror territory, with the kind of facility-as-labyrinth dread that Dark fans will recognize. Imperfect Women pulls the timeline more toward the present and the personal, trading sci-fi for the secrets that friendships bury over decades. And Dexter: Resurrection sits a little apart from the others, leaning harder into crime thriller than atmosphere or mystery, though the father-son dynamic and the weight of accumulated past decisions will feel familiar to anyone who spent time with Dark's multigenerational guilt.
None of these will give you exactly what Dark gives you, because Dark is genuinely unusual in how tightly it controls its own mythology. But each one has something a Dark fan specifically will notice and appreciate, whether that is the patience, the dread, or the conviction that the past is never as far away as it looks.
More shows like Dark
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Dark?
- Twin Peaks is the most popular show similar to Dark in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Dark still on the air?
- Of the 12 shows similar to Dark listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Dark?
- The recommendations come from TMDB's similar-titles data, and each is shown with its current AI renewal verdict so you know which are still going.