TV Shows Like The Following
If you like The Following, 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.
FOX · Crime · The Following is cancelled
The Following works because it commits fully to its premise. Joe Carroll is not a procedural villain-of-the-week; he is a genuine threat who operates across an entire season, and the show earns real dread from watching Ryan Hardy dismantle Carroll's cult piece by piece while knowing the man is always several moves ahead. The dynamic between a disgraced FBI agent and a charismatic, literary killer gives the show a psychological edge that purely forensic crime dramas rarely bother with. It is not subtle, but it is intense, and that intensity is the whole point.
The best shows like The Following
1. Bones
Bones is a lighter show than The Following, but the FBI-led murder investigations and the recurring cast of specialists working cases together will feel comfortable to fans of the procedural side of the show. The partnership at the center of Bones carries most of the emotional weight, and the cases themselves range from routine to genuinely dark. It is a good option if you want the crime-drama framework without the sustained intensity of a season-long villain arc.
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2. The Blacklist
The Blacklist shares The Following's central trick of pairing an FBI agent with a brilliant, self-serving criminal who has his own agenda. Raymond Reddington has the same theatrical menace as Joe Carroll, and the show keeps expanding the conspiracy around him in ways that will feel familiar to anyone who enjoyed watching Carroll's web grow. Fans who liked the tension between Hardy and Carroll will find a similar dynamic here, stretched across multiple seasons.
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3. MINDHUNTER
Where The Following makes its serial killers operatic, Mindhunter makes them clinical, and that contrast is part of its appeal. The show is built around FBI agents trying to understand how killers think, which is exactly the intellectual core that makes The Following interesting beneath all its thriller mechanics. If you want the psychology pushed to the foreground and the action pulled back, this is the natural next step.
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4. Goliath
Goliath replaces the FBI with a down-on-his-luck lawyer, but the structure is the same: one compromised protagonist pulling on a thread until a vast and dangerous conspiracy unravels around him. Billy McBride has the same stubborn, self-destructive quality as Ryan Hardy, and the show keeps raising the stakes in ways that make each episode feel consequential. Fans who responded to The Following's sense of mounting threat will find a lot to like here.
Stream on fuboTV, MGM+ Amazon Channel, MGM Plus, Philo
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5. The Sinner
The Sinner is slower and quieter than The Following, but it lives in the same psychological territory: violence that does not make obvious sense, and a detective who is personally unsettled by the cases he pursues. The haunted-investigator angle is handled with real care, and the mysteries are genuinely strange in ways that recall Carroll's more unsettling moments. It works as a more intimate version of the same obsession.
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More on shows like The Following
Fans of The Following tend to want a few specific things. They want a cat-and-mouse structure with a memorable antagonist, not just a case file. They want pressure on the protagonist, someone who is personally compromised or damaged in ways that make their job harder. And they want the sense that the conspiracy or threat is bigger than any single episode, so that stakes accumulate rather than reset every week. The shows below deliver on those expectations in different combinations.
The Blacklist is the most direct heir to that formula, pairing a charismatic criminal with an FBI agent who cannot fully trust him, and stretching the mystery across seasons. Mindhunter goes in a different tonal direction, grounding the serial-killer material in procedural realism, but the slow accumulation of dread and the psychological intimacy with killers will feel very familiar. The Sinner shares The Following's interest in the psychology behind violence, following a detective who is as haunted as the cases he works. Bones is the lightest of the group, a more character-driven procedural, but FBI investigations and murder mysteries give it obvious common ground. Goliath is the outlier, swapping the FBI for a courtroom, but the same DNA is there: a burned-out, difficult protagonist uncovering a conspiracy that keeps getting deadlier.
None of these are perfect matches, and that is fine. The Blacklist runs long and occasionally loses the thread. Mindhunter is deliberately slow in ways The Following never is. But taken together, they map out most of the territory a fan of the show would want to explore next.
More shows like The Following
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like The Following?
- Bones is the most popular show similar to The Following in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like The Following still on the air?
- Of the 11 shows similar to The Following listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like The Following?
- 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.