TV Shows Like Penny Dreadful
If you like Penny Dreadful, 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.
Showtime · Sci-Fi & Fantasy · Penny Dreadful is ended
Penny Dreadful works because it trusts its audience to recognize the appeal of great source material. The show assembles literary monsters and antiheroes (Dracula, Dorian Gray, Frankenstein) and asks what would happen if they occupied the same haunted corner of Victorian London. It's a show built on the premise that these characters are interesting precisely because they're broken, curious, and willing to venture into dark places both literal and psychological. The gothic atmosphere matters, but the real engine is the collision between classical literature and modern sensibilities about trauma, obsession, and moral ambiguity.
The best shows like Penny Dreadful
1. Killing Eve
Like Penny Dreadful, Killing Eve centers on a character bound by obsession to another person, one of them operating outside normal moral constraints. The show shares that psychological depth and the sense that the hunter and hunted are locked in a dance neither can abandon, even as it destroys them.
Stream on Netflix, fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential
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2. The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone offers the same commitment to atmosphere and the strange, with each episode exploring how the supernatural or fantastical reveals something about human nature. If you appreciated Penny Dreadful's willingness to linger in uncomfortable psychological territory, you'll find that same quality here.
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3. The Hunger
The Hunger works directly with vampire mythology as a lens for exploring obsession, desire, and self-destruction. It has the erotic edge and the focus on characters trapped in cycles of their own making that define much of Penny Dreadful's appeal.
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4. The Nevers
The Nevers plants its characters in the same Victorian London that haunted Penny Dreadful, dealing with the marginalized and the powerful, the mysterious and the dangerous. It shares that gothic sensibility and the focus on characters navigating a world where the supernatural has become inescapable.
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5. Behind Her Eyes
Also sci-fi & fantasy · shares the london, england theme
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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More on shows like Penny Dreadful
What Penny Dreadful fans want from their next show is that same sense of sophisticated dread. They appreciate horror that doesn't shy away from the grotesque or the erotic, and they want to see complex characters navigate supernatural or extraordinary circumstances. They value atmosphere and psychological depth over jump scares. They're drawn to stories about obsession, about people trapped in cycles they can't escape, about the thin line between hunter and hunted. And they appreciate when a show respects the intelligence of its viewers enough to build narrative slowly and trust that patience will pay off.
The recommendations here approach these elements from different angles. Killing Eve shares Penny Dreadful's fascination with obsession and the psychology of charismatic monsters, while keeping things grounded in the real world. The Twilight Zone offers that anthology structure and the space to explore darkness in more condensed form. The Hunger works with actual vampire mythology and wraps it in erotic tension and self-destructive desire. Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities brings the same visual and narrative sophistication, the same willingness to make horror strange and beautiful. And The Nevers plants similar themes (the supernatural, the marginalized, the mysterious) in the exact same London setting, just a slightly different version of it.
More shows like Penny Dreadful
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Penny Dreadful?
- Killing Eve is the most popular show similar to Penny Dreadful in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Penny Dreadful still on the air?
- Of the 12 shows similar to Penny Dreadful listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Penny Dreadful?
- 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.