“Stranger Things” is over and finding a new show to replace such a cultural juggernaut can be a daunting task.
What made the cultural hit so good? Misfits becoming heroes? A small town beset with a horrifying secret? The mix of horror and humor and a handful of other genres all blended together? Maybe it’s everything. Luckily, “Stranger Things’” home on Netflix has plenty of hidden gems to dive into after you’ve recovered from the end of your time in Hawkins.
Here are five shows to binge-watch after finishing “Stranger Things,” all available on Netflix.
Dark
“Dark” remains to this day the best original offering Netflix has ever released. It is often pitched as a German “Stranger Things,” but that is a wildly reductive way to describe one of the all-time great time travel stories. The three-season show explores a town through three time periods, each 33 years apart, as a group of people try to stop a cycle that’s destined to destroy the world.
It’s a whip-smart series that does have a bit of a learning curve as viewers track the residents of the town at different periods of their lives and often interact with themselves. Investment in “Dark” is the best thing any fan of sci-fi could do.
Midnight Mass
“Midnight Mass” was clearly the story Mike Flanagan had been building toward telling for years, and he knocked it out of the park. The story follows a man who returns to his small island town off the mainland just as a darker threat follows a new pastor working at the community’s single church.
Despite being a (spoiler alert) vampire story, the larger tale being told is Flanagan’s long treatise on the benefits and failings of religion, morality, God and sobriety. His hands are on every frame and line of dialogue in “Midnight Mass,” and each subsequent rewatch manages to lend something new to the viewer – just like all the best stories do.
The Umbrella Academy
Few Netflix shows have nailed the misfits banding together to save the world troupe better than “The Umbrella Academy.” The series follows a group of has-been heroes that grew up fighting crime with an assortment of powers, only to become estranged until a death in their found family brings them back together. What follows is four seasons of bats–t storytelling that works more often than it doesn’t – or has any right to.
Pantheon
“Pantheon” went relatively unnoticed when it first premiered because it was relegated to AMC+. But with the two-season run finally on Netflix, the series can hopefully find the larger audience it deserves. The animated series follows three unlikely protagonists who find themselves at the center of a global conspiracy as the world is on the brink of uploading human consciousness into machines.
Castle Rock
Stephen King was doing connected universes before they were cool, and “Castle Rock” serves as a love letter to his expansive work. The series takes place in the titular town, where so many of the writer’s stories have taken place. The series only lasted two seasons – with the second being a little too lost in the sauce of playing in King’s toy box – but the first season follows a man returning to town after years, right as a boy is discovered living in the abandoned wing of Shawshank Prison.
It’s a contemplative and horrific season of TV that features King alum Sissy Spacek in one of the best roles of her career. If you consider yourself a Constant Reader and have always wanted to see characters from “Misery,” “‘Salem’s Lot,” and more interact, than this is the show for you.
