TV Shows Like Stranger Things
If you like Stranger Things, 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 · Action & Adventure · Stranger Things is ended
Stranger Things works because it earns its nostalgia. Set in a small Indiana town in the 1980s, it uses that specific, carefully detailed world as a container for something genuinely frightening: a government that experiments on children, a parallel dimension full of monsters, and a group of kids who have to figure it all out before the adults catch up. The show is scary, but the horror is inseparable from the friendship. What keeps people watching season after season is not just the Upside Down but the fact that they care deeply about the kids navigating it.
The best shows like Stranger Things
1. Fringe
Fringe runs on the same engine as Stranger Things: a hidden layer of reality bleeds into the ordinary world, and a small group of people, including a brilliant but deeply damaged scientist, are the only ones who can see the full picture. The alternate dimension storyline grows into something strange and ambitious, and the relationship between Walter, Peter, and Olivia has the same emotional weight as the friendships at the center of Stranger Things. If you liked the government-conspiracy thread and the sense that the science has gone somewhere it should not have, Fringe will feel immediately familiar.
Stream on Hulu
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2. True Blood
True Blood is darker and more adult than Stranger Things, but it shares one of the show's best qualities: a small town where the supernatural is not just backdrop but is woven into everyday community life. The show treats its monsters as real social and political forces, which gives it more texture than a straightforward horror series. Fans who enjoyed the idea of a hidden world pressing up against a recognizable American town will find plenty to grab onto here.
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3. Shadowhunters
Shadowhunters centers on a young person suddenly pulled into a secret world of demon hunters, vampires, and warlocks, and the appeal is very close to what Stranger Things delivers: a tight ensemble, escalating supernatural threats, and a protagonist who discovers she is more important to the larger conflict than she ever expected. The show leans into its young-adult roots, so it suits viewers who connected most with the coming-of-age and found-family elements of Stranger Things.
Stream on Hulu
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4. Van Helsing
Van Helsing strips the premise down to its bones: a woman with unique, unexplained power over monsters is humanity's last real weapon against a world that has already been overrun. The threat is bigger and the setting is bleaker than Stranger Things, but the core idea of someone with extraordinary abilities standing between ordinary people and something monstrous is the same. It moves quickly and does not spend a lot of time reassuring the audience that things will be okay.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
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5. Lazarus
Lazarus is an anime, which makes it the most stylistically distinct recommendation here, but the DNA is recognizable: a powerful organization, a drug developed with good intentions that turns catastrophic, and a task force assembled to contain the damage. For Stranger Things fans who were most gripped by the secret-experiment and government-conspiracy elements, Lazarus takes that premise into a near-future thriller with real momentum. It rewards viewers who like their conspiracies dense and their stakes global.
Stream on HBO Max Amazon Channel, YouTube TV, Adult Swim, HBO Max
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More on shows like Stranger Things
Fans of Stranger Things tend to chase a particular combination: supernatural threats that feel rooted in a real, grounded world, characters bound together by loyalty instead of obligation, and a mystery that keeps expanding the more you pull on its threads. They want shows that take the weird stuff seriously and do not wink at the audience. Government conspiracies and secret experiments are a bonus. So is a sense that the world these characters inhabit has rules, even if those rules are terrifying.
The recommendations here cover a useful range. Fringe is probably the closest match in tone and structure, a slow-burn mystery about fringe science and alternate dimensions that gets unsettling in ways that stick, and it builds a core trio you root for hard. Shadowhunters leans younger and more action-driven, focused on demon hunters uncovering a larger supernatural world, and it will appeal most to viewers who loved the coming-of-age and ensemble dynamics of Stranger Things. True Blood takes the small-town-with-supernatural-secrets premise in a much more adult direction, swapping Indiana for Louisiana and replacing government experiments with vampire politics, but the underlying tension between ordinary people and hidden creatures is very familiar. Van Helsing is post-apocalyptic instead of suburban, but it shares the core premise of a person with unexplained powers being humanity's best shot against monsters, and it moves fast. Lazarus is the outlier, an anime set in the near future built around a conspiracy, a miracle drug with deadly consequences, and a team assembled to fight a global threat. It is stylistically different from the others, but for Stranger Things fans who responded most to the experiment-gone-wrong plot and the sense of a world shaped by forces ordinary people do not understand, it offers something fresh.
None of these shows are identical to Stranger Things, and that is fine. The best recommendation is not a clone. Each of these finds a different angle on what makes the source show satisfying: the mystery, the monsters, the conspiracy, or the found family fighting back against something much bigger than themselves.
More shows like Stranger Things
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Stranger Things?
- Fringe is the most popular show similar to Stranger Things in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Stranger Things still on the air?
- Of the 12 shows similar to Stranger Things listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Stranger Things?
- 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.