TV Shows Like Riverdale
If you like Riverdale, here are 10 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
The CW · Crime · Riverdale is ended
Riverdale earned its audience by committing fully to the bit. It took the wholesome, primary-colored world of Archie Comics and dragged it through cults, serial killers, musical episodes, and parallel universes, all while keeping a straight face. The pleasure of watching it is the pleasure of watching a show that refuses to pump the brakes. Small-town secrets pile on top of each other, the core group of teenagers ages into increasingly improbable situations, and the series keeps finding new ways to make Riverdale itself feel like a place where normal life is structurally impossible. It is melodrama played at maximum volume, and fans who stuck with it clearly have a taste for that.
The best shows like Riverdale
1. 56 Days
Like Riverdale, 56 Days structures its story around a central romance that turns out to be far more dangerous than it first appears. The dual-timeline format, reconstructing a relationship day by day while detectives circle the wreckage, creates the same sense of dread layered over intimacy that Riverdale does at its best. If you liked watching couples in Riverdale keep secrets from each other until everything explodes, this one delivers that in a sharper, more contained package.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Ended0%
2. HIS & HERS
HIS & HERS puts a detective and a reporter on opposite sides of a murder investigation while remaining married to each other, which is exactly the kind of tangled personal and professional mess Riverdale thrives on. The question of whether someone you love is capable of something terrible is a thread that runs through both shows. It is a tighter, more grounded story, but the tension between what you know about a person and what the evidence says will feel immediately familiar.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Ended0%
3. Imperfect Women
Riverdale fans who stuck around for the friendships as much as the murders will find a lot to like in Imperfect Women. A killing pulls three lifelong friends apart as the investigation starts revealing what they have been hiding from each other for decades, which maps closely onto the way Riverdale uses crime to pressure-test its core relationships. The betrayal and the bond exist at the same time, and the show is most interesting when it refuses to let either one win cleanly.
Stream on Apple TV, Apple TV Amazon Channel
Ended0%
4. Dexter: Resurrection
Dexter: Resurrection picks up with a character defined by the same question Riverdale asks about half its cast: can someone shaped by darkness actually change, or does it always catch up with them? The father-son dynamic between Dexter and Harrison, and the arrival of someone from Dexter's past threatening to expose everything, has the same energy as Riverdale's recurring cycle of buried secrets refusing to stay buried. It carries more prior mythology than the others on this list, but newcomers willing to piece things together will find a crime drama that takes its characters' capacity for harm seriously.
Stream on fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel , Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Likely Renewed65%
5. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
This is the most direct match for Riverdale fans who specifically loved the amateur detective side of the show. A teenage girl who does not believe the official story about a classmate's death starts pulling on threads, and the real killer turns out to still be very much around. It has the same small-community claustrophobia and the same sense that institutions and adults are either complicit or useless, so the young people have to sort it out themselves.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Renewed100%
More on shows like Riverdale
What those fans tend to want next is a mix of specific ingredients: a murder at the center, relationships that are complicated by deception, a sense that the surface of things is hiding something rotten, and enough momentum to keep you watching past midnight. Riverdale is also, at its best, about friendships under pressure, about what people will cover up for the people they love. That emotional core, buried under all the gothic excess, is what separates it from pure camp. The shows below all hit at least some of those notes, though they do it in different registers.
56 Days and HIS & HERS are the tightest, most structurally driven of the bunch, both built around a single mystery told from a dual perspective. Imperfect Women goes wider, spreading the tension across a friendship group rather than a couple, which will feel familiar to anyone who has watched Veronica, Betty, and Cheryl's loyalties fracture and reform. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is probably the closest match in terms of tone and audience: a young amateur detective, a cold case that refuses to stay cold, and a real sense of danger around the edges of what is ostensibly a teen mystery. Dexter: Resurrection is the outlier, arriving with decades of mythology attached, but its father-son dynamic and the question of whether a person can escape who they truly are puts it in conversation with Riverdale's recurring obsession with inherited darkness.
None of these shows are as deliberately absurd as Riverdale, and fans should not expect cult storylines or musical interludes. What they share is the conviction that crime and secrets and complicated people make for good television, and that a mystery is more interesting when the relationships involved are already under strain before the body is found.
More shows like Riverdale
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Riverdale?
- 56 Days is the most popular show similar to Riverdale in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Riverdale still on the air?
- Of the 10 shows similar to Riverdale listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Riverdale?
- 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.