TV Shows Like Squid Game
If you like Squid Game, 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.
Netflix · Action & Adventure · Squid Game is ended
Squid Game works because it takes a simple, almost absurd premise and follows it to its most brutal logical conclusion. Hundreds of desperate people, crushed by debt and bad luck, agree to play children's games for a life-changing sum of money. The catch, of course, is lethal. What keeps viewers locked in is not just the violence or the spectacle but the pressure it puts on ordinary people: who cooperates, who betrays, who breaks. The show is fundamentally about survival under systems that are rigged against the vulnerable, and it wraps that idea in tight plotting and relentless tension.
The best shows like Squid Game
1. Legends
Like Squid Game, Legends drops ordinary people into a world where the wrong move is fatal and trust is a liability. The undercover setting in 1990s Britain creates constant low-level dread, because the characters are always one slip away from exposure. If you liked watching Squid Game's players read each other for signs of weakness or loyalty, that dynamic is alive and well here.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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2. The Day of the Jackal
The Day of the Jackal runs on the same kind of tension Squid Game does: two forces in opposition, each highly capable, and a clock ticking underneath every scene. The Jackal is as cool and unreadable as Squid Game's masked overseers, and the British intelligence officer tracking him brings a dogged energy that mirrors the best players fighting to survive. The cat-and-mouse structure across Europe keeps the stakes immediate and the outcome genuinely uncertain.
Likely Renewed90%
3. Taxi Driver
Set in South Korea and driven by a deep anger at systems that fail ordinary people, Taxi Driver shares real DNA with Squid Game. A former special forces soldier using a fake front to deliver justice for victims of injustice is a premise that channels the same frustration with powerlessness that fuels Squid Game's contestants. It is more straightforwardly satisfying in its action, but it does not shy away from the ugliness underneath.
Stream on Rakuten Viki, OnDemandKorea, Kocowa Amazon Channel, Kocowa
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4. Trigger
Trigger is set in a South Korea where illegal firearms are flooding a society that treats guns as almost taboo, and that specific tension gives it an urgency that Squid Game fans will recognise. The pairing of a resolute cop with a mysterious partner echoes Squid Game's habit of keeping you slightly off-balance about who to trust. It is a tight, propulsive crime thriller with a strong sense of place.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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5. The Unit
The Unit is built around people who operate in extreme danger as a matter of routine, which gives it the same underlying current of dread that Squid Game sustains across its games. The covert missions force characters to stay composed under impossible pressure, and the secrecy that bleeds into their personal lives adds a layer of tension that never quite goes away. Fans of Squid Game who respond to characters carrying the weight of a world they cannot fully explain to anyone around them will find something here.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
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More on shows like Squid Game
Fans of Squid Game tend to want a few specific things when they go looking for something next: high stakes, a strong sense of danger that feels real rather than decorative, and a narrative engine that does not let up. They respond well to shows where characters are cornered and have to make hard choices fast. They also tend to appreciate a degree of mystery, an antagonist or a system they cannot fully read, and action that has weight to it. The recommendations below deliver on those fronts in different ways, some through cat-and-mouse chases, some through undercover work where one wrong move ends everything, and some through lone figures operating in moral grey zones.
The Day of the Jackal is the closest in spirit to Squid Game's tension architecture: a supremely skilled operator pursued by an equally determined opponent across high-pressure set pieces. Trigger slots in well too, bringing Squid Game's Korean setting and its concern with illegal systems threatening social order into a taut crime thriller. Taxi Driver also comes from South Korea and channels the show's interest in justice and institutional failure, though its approach is more cathartic and genre-forward. Legends and The Unit both lean into the undercover and covert-ops space, where characters live double lives under constant threat of exposure, which scratches a similar itch to the paranoia Squid Game builds so well.
None of these shows are Squid Game, and none of them try to be. What they share with it is a refusal to let their characters feel safe, and a story architecture built around people under extreme pressure making decisions with no good options. That is the core of what makes Squid Game so hard to stop watching, and it runs through each of these recommendations in its own way.
More shows like Squid Game
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Squid Game?
- Legends is the most popular show similar to Squid Game in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Squid Game still on the air?
- Of the 10 shows similar to Squid Game listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Squid Game?
- 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.