TV Shows Like Elite
If you like Elite, here are 11 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 · Elite is ended
Elite works because it refuses to be polite about its central premise. Three scholarship kids land at Las Encinas, Spain's most exclusive private school, and the show wastes no time establishing that wealth is not just a backdrop here, it is a weapon. The class tension is constant and specific, and the murder mystery structure gives every episode a sense of dread that keeps the social drama from ever feeling trivial. The sex, the secrets, the shifting alliances between characters who both need and despise each other, all of it is in service of a story that is genuinely interested in who holds power and who pays for it.
The best shows like Elite
1. Riverdale
Like Elite, Riverdale puts a group of teens at the center of a murder mystery and then keeps piling on secrets, rivalries, and romantic entanglements until the whole town feels like it is about to collapse under the weight of them. The class and status dynamics are very much present, with old money families pulling strings in the background while younger characters try to survive the fallout. Fair warning: the show gets genuinely weird as it goes on, leaning into cults, supernatural elements, and full musical episodes, but if Elite's melodrama was part of the appeal, Riverdale takes that energy and runs hard with it.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
2. Pretty Little Liars
Pretty Little Liars shares Elite's core structure almost beat for beat: a tight group of friends, a mysterious disappearance, and a growing sense that everyone is hiding something. The anonymous tormentor sending messages to the four main characters creates the same kind of slow-burn paranoia that Elite builds through its flash-forward murder framing. Female friendship under extreme pressure is the emotional engine here, and the show is very good at making you suspicious of characters you thought you understood.
Stream on Hulu, HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
Ended0%
3. 56 Days
56 Days uses the same kind of structural trick Elite loves, moving between the present crime scene and the past events that led to it, to make a romance feel simultaneously tender and ominous. The central relationship is built on attraction and secrecy from the start, and watching it unfold while knowing it ends badly gives every quiet scene an edge. Fans of Elite's erotic thriller side will find this one lands in a similar emotional register.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Ended0%
4. Cross
For Elite fans who want the crime and mystery elements pushed to the foreground, Cross offers a detective who is genuinely haunted by violence rather than just professionally competent around it. The serial killer cases are dark and the personal damage the lead character carries gives the show emotional weight beyond the procedural plot. It is a different register from Elite, more adult and less focused on social dynamics, but the obsessive pursuit of killers through twisted circumstances will feel familiar.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel
Likely Renewed82%
5. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
Elite's interest in how privilege shapes crime, and how families use wealth to manage catastrophe, finds a real-world parallel in this dramatization of the Menendez brothers case. The brother-brother relationship at the center echoes some of Elite's most intense dynamics, and the show is unsparing about the way a glamorous surface can conceal serious damage. As a limited series it commits fully to its story without overstaying its welcome.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
More on shows like Elite
Fans of Elite tend to want a few things when they move on: a strong mystery engine underneath the relationship drama, a cast of young characters whose personal lives are as messy as their criminal entanglements, and a setting that feels like its own sealed world with its own rules. The class or status element does not have to be identical, but the best matches share that sense of a particular social ecosystem under pressure. A disappearance or a murder that everyone in the group is somehow connected to is almost non-negotiable.
The recommendations here cover that range well. Riverdale and Pretty Little Liars are the closest formal cousins, both built around teen friend groups cracked open by a central mystery. Pretty Little Liars leans hardest into paranoia and secrets, while Riverdale goes much stranger and more operatic, eventually embracing the absurd without entirely losing the emotional stakes. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story moves into true crime territory but keeps the brother-brother dynamic and the ugly machinery of a privileged family front and center. 56 Days is a tighter, more adult thriller, using a dual-timeline structure to peel back a romance that ends in a body. Cross is the furthest from Elite's teen world, a procedural built around a detective character, but it scratches the serial killer and dark crime itch for viewers who want the mystery element cranked up.
None of these are exact replacements, and that is fine. Elite has a specific flavor, Spanish, sun-drenched, morally slippery, that none of these shows replicate. But each one picks up at least one thread the show pulls hardest on, and together they cover most of what makes Elite worth watching in the first place.
More shows like Elite
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Elite?
- Riverdale is the most popular show similar to Elite in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Elite still on the air?
- Of the 11 shows similar to Elite listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Elite?
- 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.