TV Shows Like The Originals
If you like The Originals, 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.
The CW · Sci-Fi & Fantasy · The Originals is ended
The Originals works because it takes the supernatural and roots it in something specific: a city, a family, and a grudge that has festered for a thousand years. New Orleans is not just a backdrop here. The French Quarter's history, its layered politics of witches, werewolves, and vampires all vying for control, gives the show a texture that most fantasy dramas never bother to build. The Mikaelsons are monsters who love each other fiercely and destroy everything around them because of it, and that tension is what keeps viewers locked in season after season.
The best shows like The Originals
1. True Blood
Set in small-town Louisiana, True Blood builds a world where vampires have gone public and the politics of coexistence are messy and often violent. It shares The Originals' fondness for using supernatural factions as a stand-in for real social tensions, and it has the same steamy, dangerous atmosphere that the bayou seems to demand. If you liked the way The Originals made Louisiana feel like a place with its own rules, True Blood leans into that even harder.
Stream on Hulu, HBO Max Amazon Channel, YouTube TV, HBO Max
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2. The Strain
The Strain takes the vampire concept and rebuilds it from the ground up as a disease outbreak thriller, which makes it feel genuinely threatening in a way that more romantic takes on the genre sometimes lose. Fans of The Originals who appreciated the show's willingness to let its monsters be actually dangerous will find a lot to chew on here. It is grimmer and more procedural in style, but the sense of an ancient evil force arriving to reshape a city maps directly onto what the Mikaelsons do to New Orleans.
Stream on Hulu, Philo, AMC Plus Apple TV Channel , AMC+ Amazon Channel
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3. Legacies
Legacies is the most direct continuation for fans of The Originals, following Hope Mikaelson at a school for young supernatural beings. It is lighter in tone than its predecessor, leaning into the younger characters and a more episodic structure, but the mythology is the same and the emotional core, that witches, werewolves, and vampires are all trying to figure out who they are, carries over intact. Think of it as the Mikaelson legacy continuing through the next generation.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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4. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina
Also sci-fi & fantasy · shares the witch theme
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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5. Angel
Angel follows a vampire with a soul trying to earn redemption one case at a time in Los Angeles, and like The Originals it is fundamentally about whether a creature capable of great evil can ever genuinely change. The noir atmosphere and the ensemble of morally complicated characters give it a similar weight to the Mikaelson drama. It is a spin-off that found its own voice quickly, much like The Originals itself did.
Stream on Hulu
Cancelled0%
More on shows like The Originals
Fans of The Originals tend to want a few specific things from their next show: supernatural creatures treated with real menace, a sense of place that feels almost like a character in itself, power struggles that are genuinely dangerous rather than decorative, and some emotional weight beneath the bloodshed. They are not looking for a sanitized version of this world. They want the ugliness and the loyalty existing side by side.
The shows here cover a wide range of that territory. True Blood and Interview with the Vampire both plant their flags in Louisiana and take vampires seriously as figures of dread and desire. Legacies stays inside the Mikaelson family tree directly, picking up the story through Klaus's daughter Hope at the Salvatore School. Angel goes darker and more personal, following a vampire trying and often failing to be something better than what he is. The Strain takes the vampire mythology in a completely different direction, stripping out the romance and replacing it with biological horror and an outbreak narrative set in New York City. Together they give fans of The Originals several different angles on the same core obsessions.
What unites all five is a willingness to use the supernatural as a lens for examining loyalty, identity, and what people are willing to do to protect what they love. None of them are particularly gentle shows. The Strain is probably the most brutal, while Legacies is the lightest in tone, and the others land at different points in between. But each one has something that a fan of the Mikaelsons will recognize immediately.
More shows like The Originals
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like The Originals?
- True Blood is the most popular show similar to The Originals in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like The Originals still on the air?
- Of the 12 shows similar to The Originals listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like The Originals?
- 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.