TV Shows Like The Strain
If you like The Strain, 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.
FX · Sci-Fi & Fantasy · The Strain is ended
The Strain works because it commits fully to its premise. It takes the vampire myth and strips out the romance, replacing it with something closer to a pandemic thriller, where the horror is biological and the stakes keep escalating from a single grounded mystery to a full-scale war for civilization. Dr. Ephraim Goodweather is a flawed, recognizable protagonist, not a chosen hero but a scientist who is in over his head and knows it. The show is at its best when it leans into that procedural, outbreak-investigation energy and lets the monster mythology build slowly underneath it. The New York setting matters too. It is a city under siege, and the show earns its apocalyptic mood by treating the spread of the infection as something systemic rather than supernatural hand-waving.
The best shows like The Strain
1. You
The Strain is, at its core, about watching something predatory work its way through New York, and You scratches a similar itch from a psychological angle. The show puts you inside the perspective of a dangerous, obsessive man and makes that proximity uncomfortable in exactly the right ways. If you liked the creeping dread of The Strain's early episodes, You delivers that same slow-burn unease with a different kind of monster.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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2. The Originals
The Originals shares the same genre DNA as The Strain, mixing vampire mythology with drama and mystery, and it takes its central conflict seriously rather than playing it for camp. The Mikaelsons are ancient, ruthless, and genuinely threatening, and the show's city-under-siege dynamic, set in New Orleans, echoes The Strain's sense of a place being claimed by something dark. Fans who want more lore, more ensemble conflict, and more vampire politicking will find a lot to like here.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
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3. True Blood
True Blood treats vampires as a social and political reality rather than a secret, which gives it a different texture than The Strain, but the underlying darkness is very much there. It handles the idea of vampires as something genuinely dangerous that society has to reckon with, and its Southern Gothic atmosphere has the same genre-blending quality that makes The Strain feel distinct. It is a bloodier, more irreverent show, but fans who enjoyed the world-building and the threat of the infection will find the mythology here equally rich.
Stream on Hulu, HBO Max, HBO Max Amazon Channel
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4. Z Nation
Z Nation swaps vampires for zombies but keeps the epidemic-scale stakes and the team-of-survivors dynamic that drives The Strain. The premise, transport the one person whose blood might save humanity across a ravaged country, has the same urgency as Eph's race against the spreading strain. It is a scrappier, more genre-aware show than The Strain, but the survival pressure and the ensemble chemistry are real.
Stream on fuboTV, Peacock Premium, AMC Plus Apple TV Channel , AMC+ Amazon Channel
Cancelled0%
5. The Beauty
The Beauty is probably the closest tonal match to The Strain's first season on this list. It is built around an FBI investigation into a mysterious virus that transforms people in grotesque ways, and it leans hard into body horror and the procedural mechanics of tracking an outbreak. If what hooked you on The Strain was the early episodes where Eph and his team were still piecing together what they were dealing with, The Beauty lives almost entirely in that mode.
Stream on Hulu, YouTube TV
On the Bubble42%
More on shows like The Strain
Fans of The Strain tend to want a few things carried over: a dark, genre-bending atmosphere, monsters or predators that feel genuinely threatening rather than romantic, and a story with enough procedural grounding that the horror has weight. They also respond to shows where ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances and have to figure things out on the fly, where the ensemble matters as much as the lead.
The recommendations here cover a lot of that ground from different angles. True Blood and The Originals both live inside vampire mythology, though they take warmer, more political approaches to the material than The Strain's cold-blooded dread. The Originals in particular shares the same genre cocktail of fantasy, drama, and mystery, and it has a similarly sprawling ensemble fighting over a city. Z Nation transplants the epidemic-scale survival premise into zombie territory, keeping the cross-country urgency and the team-of-strangers dynamic. The Beauty is the closest in spirit to The Strain's first season, built around an FBI investigation into a mysterious, body-horror virus, and it draws directly on the outbreak-thriller side of the show's appeal. You is the outlier here, a psychological crime drama rather than a horror-fantasy, but it shares The Strain's habit of getting inside the head of a deeply unsettling figure and making the audience sit with that discomfort.
None of these shows are perfect replicas of The Strain, and that is probably fine. True Blood is lighter in tone and has more fun with its premise. The Originals can be melodramatic in ways The Strain mostly avoids. Z Nation leans into genre self-awareness rather than straight tension. But each one has something a Strain fan will recognize: a world where something deeply wrong is spreading, and people scrambling to stop it or survive it.
More shows like The Strain
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like The Strain?
- You is the most popular show similar to The Strain in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like The Strain still on the air?
- Of the 11 shows similar to The Strain listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like The Strain?
- 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.