Top 6 Best TV Shows Like Penny Dreadful (Ranked & Where to Stream)

Grimy cobblestone alleys reeking of coal smoke and xenophobia anchor this Victorian-styled fantasy, where mythic fae refugees clash with human oppressors in the sprawling metropolis of the Burgue. Orlando Bloom plays a war-weary inspector tracking an occult serial killer, while Cara Delevingne brings fierce defiance to an exiled faerie navigating the city’s hostile underbelly. The show works because it treats its political rot and creature design with total dramatic earnestness. If you crave the opulent period production, smoky London-esque geography, and visceral gothic romance of Penny Dreadful, this urban fantasy hits the exact same vein of melancholy monster tragedy.

Tom Sturridge anchors Neil Gaiman’s comic adaptation with a pale, icy stillness, portraying Dream of the Endless as an aloof cosmic sovereign piecing his shattered realm back together after a century of occult captivity. What sets the series apart is its episodic flexibility, drifting from a harrowing diner standoff stripped of all human sanity to a tender stroll through centuries alongside Death herself. It delivers high-concept mythic fantasy soaked in velvet shadows and quiet heartbreak. Audiences hunting for shows that share Penny Dreadful's lyrical reverence for classic literary archetypes, doomed romanticism, and sumptuous horror aesthetics will feel right at home in the Dreaming.

Robert and Michelle King treat demonic possession not as cheap jump-scare fodder, but as an insidious contagion thriving in modern online rabbit holes, deepfakes, and courtroom loopholes. Katja Herbers and Mike Colter share magnetic friction as a fiercely skeptical forensic psychologist and a devout Catholic priest-in-training investigating phenomena that defy rational explanation. The show balances biting dark comedy with nightmarish body horror and religious dread. While swapped into modern New York, it captures that exact raw, spiritual torment and possession-fueled intensity that Eva Green channeled so fearlessly on Penny Dreadful.

Dust storms, evangelical radio sermons, and apocalyptic portents collide across the Great Depression in Daniel Knauf’s criminally underappreciated HBO relic. The narrative pivots on a slow-boil collision course between Nick Stahl’s enigmatic chain-gang healer traveling with a freak show and Clancy Brown’s terrifyingly charismatic California preacher. It is an unvarnished study of prophecy, ancient avatars of light and dark, and grueling rural grit. Anyone missing the occult heavy lifting, esoteric religious lore, and dread-soaked period mood that defined Penny Dreadful will find this short-lived saga intoxicating.

Set against the gaslit streets of 1890s Victorian London, an inexplicable cosmic event suddenly gifts marginalized citizens—primarily women known as the Touched—with bizarre, combat-ready anomalies. Laura Donnelly leads the charge as Amalia True, a hard-drinking, bruising widow running an orphanage sanctuary while unraveling an aristocratic conspiracy and hunting a gleefully sadistic serial killer. The series pairs razor-sharp drawing room banter with bruising physical brawls and steampunk gadgetry. For viewers seeking Penny Dreadful's distinct London atmosphere, high-society gothic intrigue, and tormented female leads wielding terrifying power, this truncated mystery delivers that specific period thrill.

A decrepit American town with shifting roads traps anyone who drives past its borders, unleashing nocturnal, flesh-eating ghouls who wear sickeningly polite human smiles. Harold Perrineau commands the screen as the unraveling sheriff trying to maintain order while trapped residents disintegrate under unrelenting psychological pressure and gruesome nightly sieges. John Griffin crafts a brutal, puzzle-box nightmare where every answer spawns three fresh horrors. If your favorite element of Victorian gothic television was the suffocating, inescapable dread and monstrous violence lurking just beyond the threshold, this relentless horror series scratches that visceral itch.