Shows Like Riverdale
If you loved Riverdale's Crime and Drama storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Scream: The TV Series
What starts as a YouTube video going viral, soon leads to problems for the teenagers of Lakewood and serves as the catalyst for a murder that opens up a window to the town's troubled past. Everyone has secrets. Everyone tells lies. Everyone is fair game.
The Better Sister
Chloe moves in New York's most elite circles with her lawyer husband Adam and teenage son Ethan by her side while her estranged sister Nicky tries to make ends meet and stay clean. When Adam is brutally murdered, the investigation sends shockwaves through the family and exposes long-buried secrets.
56 Days
When an unidentified body is found in a luxury apartment linked to Oliver Kennedy and his girlfriend Ciara Wyse, Detectives Lee Reardon and Karl Connolly reconstruct the couple's deadly romance across the past 56 days.
The End of the F***ing World
James is 17 and is pretty sure he is a psychopath. Alyssa, also 17, is the cool and moody new girl at school. The pair make a connection and she persuades him to embark on a darkly comedic road trip in search of her real father.
Veronica Mars
In the fictional town of Neptune, California, student Veronica Mars progresses from high school to college while moonlighting as a private investigator under the tutelage of her detective father.
One of Us Is Lying
The story of what happens when five high schoolers walk into detention and only four make it out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide.
Eyewitness
Two teenage boys secretly meet up in a cabin, bear witness to a shooting and barely escape with their lives. Desperate to keep their relationship a secret and in fear of being found by the perpetrator, they remain silent but soon learn that what has been seen cannot be unseen -- and when you witness a horrible event, it changes everything.
HIS & HERS
Two estranged spouses — one a detective, the other a news reporter — vie to solve a murder in which each believes the other is a prime suspect.
More Shows Like Riverdale
The Purge
Set in a dystopian America ruled by a totalitarian political party, the series follows several seemingly unrelated characters living in a small city. Tying them all together is a mysterious savior who’s impeccably equipped for everything the night throws at them. As the clock winds down with their fates hanging in the balance, each character is forced to reckon with their pasts as they discover how far they will go to survive the night.
Hannibal
Both a gift and a curse, Graham has the extraordinary ability to think like his prey—he sees what they see, feels what they feel. But while Graham is pursuing an especially troubling, cannibalistic murderer, Special Agent Jack Crawford teams him with a highly respected psychiatrist – a man with a taste for the criminal minded – Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew makes plans to leave her hometown for college, but finds herself drawn into a supernatural murder mystery instead.
Murder in a Small Town
Karl Alberg moves to a quiet coastal town to soothe a psyche that has been battered by big-city police work but finds himself needing to call upon all his skills to solve the murders that continue to wash up on his shore.
Crime
Detective Inspector Ray Lennox investigates the disappearance of a schoolgirl while battling cocaine addiction and a mental breakdown.
CSI: Vegas
Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.
Barnaby Jones
Barnaby Jones is a television detective series starring Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether as father- and daughter-in-law who run a private detective firm in Los Angeles. The show ran on CBS from January 28, 1973 to April 3, 1980, beginning as a midseason replacement. William Conrad guest starred as Frank Cannon of Cannon on the first episode of Barnaby Jones, "Requiem for a Son" and the two series had a two-part crossover episode in 1975, "The Deadly Conspiracy".
Mosaic
Explore the psychological underpinnings of love and murder in a small mountain resort town while following popular children’s book author and illustrator Olivia Lake, whose literary success makes her a local celebrity in the tight-knit community.
Only Murders in the Building
Three strangers share an obsession with true crime and suddenly find themselves wrapped up in one.
Pretty Little Liars
Based on the Pretty Little Liars series of young adult novels by Sara Shepard, the series follows the lives of four girls — Spencer, Hanna, Aria, and Emily — whose clique falls apart after the disappearance of their queen bee, Alison. One year later, they begin receiving messages from someone using the name "A" who threatens to expose their secrets — including long-hidden ones they thought only Alison knew.
Twin Peaks
The body of Laura Palmer is washed up on a beach near the small Washington state town of Twin Peaks. FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is called in to investigate her strange demise only to uncover a web of mystery that ultimately leads him deep into the heart of the surrounding woodland and his very own soul.
Defending Jacob
A family's lives are irreparably disrupted when the 14-year-old son is accused of murdering a fellow classmate.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Riverdale (2017): Crime and Drama themes, similar pacing, and comparable production quality. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface series most likely to resonate with fans of Riverdale.
See full details for Riverdale (2017)