32 Best TV Shows Similar to House of the Dragon
Conan O'Brien Must Go
NetworkMax,
SimilarA Dance to the Music of Time, Power Rangers Dino Force Brave,
Scully The Wimbledon Poisoner, Tiger Lily, 4 femmes dans la vie, Troubles,
It's been four long years since Conan O'Brien has graced our television screens, ever since his late-night TBS show, Conan, ended in 2021. Since then, he's kept busy, of course, with podcasts like Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend and guest spots on shows like Murderville. But the late-night legend couldn't possibly keep away from the limelight for long; even at the ripe age of sixty, the guy is still the same spry, lanky chaos demon he always was, a tall column of Irish awkwardness more than willing to play the fool for a laugh. That's most acutely felt in his remote travel segments, like Conan Without Borders, where he travels everywhere from Finland to Ireland to suss out the sights, tastes, and people of Earth. Think of him like Anthony Bourdain, with absolutely zero shame or culinary knowledge.
For those who missed those segments, rest easy, as Max has gifted us with four episodes of full-length travelogue mayhem in the form of Conan O'Brien Must Go. Each installment, funny enough, spins off from an episode of his podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan: He speaks to an interesting new guy or gal from a foreign country, then flies out to meet them and take in the surrounding environs. Of course, he does this the only way he knows how: By making a complete spectacle of himself.
Conan O'Brien Must Go (Max)
In the show's opening minutes, a deceptively Werner Herzog-ian voice purrs to us that to appreciate the grandeur of our mother Earth, you must sometimes defile it. Cut to Conan: "Behold the defiler." That's the tack Must Go takes in its exploration of countries as exotic and beautiful as Norway, Argentina, Thailand, and Ireland: Let Conan loose in these nations, sometimes (but not always) with a game companion or fan along the way, and witness the devastation. One week, he'll make a Norwegian hip-hop song with an enthusiastic fan; the next, he'll try to help another fan get his podcast from four listeners to a whopping five -- all through the power of aggressive ad reads for yerba mate. Continue Reading →
Fallout
SimilarBlack Scorpion, Dark Angel, Dark Skies,
Earth 2 Knots Landing, LBX Girls, Mortal Kombat: Conquest, Noah's Arc,
Planet of the Apes Sonic the Hedgehog, Sweet Tooth, The 100, The Tribe, ThunderCats, Thunderstone, World's End Harem,
Few titles in the world of video game RPGs are as stylistically significant and cherished by fans as Interplay Entertainment’s Fallout. First published in 1997, the post-apocalyptic RPG has spawned countless sequels (including the acclaimed Fallout: New Vegas) and garnered millions of devoted fans through meticulous worldbuilding and its (now signature) atomic age-inspired retrofuturist aesthetic.
Thanks to shows like The Last of Us proving naysayers wrong and paving the way for high-budget, critically acclaimed video game adaptations, Prime Video has joined forces with Bethesda to bring the Fallout franchise to the small screen with an eight-episode series of the same name. Bolstered by source material with a baked-in sense of aesthetics and a pair of winning leads in Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins, Fallout is a clever, twisted apocalyptic odyssey that soars as both a video game adaptation and a standalone series.
Starring Purnell, Goggins, and Aaron Clifton Moten, Fallout follows Lucy (Purnell), an idealistic, sheltered “Vault Dweller” who has spent her entire life in an idyllic vault built to keep wealthy Americans happy and healthy in the event of nuclear devastation. When surface raiders disrupt her vault’s peaceful existence and kidnap her father, Lucy is forced to leave the safety of Vault 33, encountering all manner of unlikely enemies and allies along the way. Continue Reading →
Still Up
SimilarChicken Nugget, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide,
Night owls and insomniacs will tell you it's special being awake while most of your family, friends, and community slumber. How sometimes weightless and creative you can feel when everyone else strives for that healthy rest. They’ll also often tell you how lonely and frustrating it can be. Wandering your home or the world outside all alone because their bodies’ circadian rhythm actually makes sense. Continue Reading →
Der Schwarm
SimilarGolden Years, The Incredible Hulk,
The sea is always a great setting for a story. It’s both soothing and menacing; water is cleansing and purifying, and a consistently replenishing source of food. But it’s also dangerous and uncompromising. Water is one of nature’s greatest antagonists, it can get into virtually anything, softening it, weakening it, eventually breaking it apart. But nothing on earth would survive without it. It’s a brilliant metaphor for so many things, as it’s constantly changing and moving and covers wondrous and monstrous secrets. It works even better in visual mediums like TV and film because it’s beautiful to both look at and listen to. The CW’s new eco-thriller, The Swarm, makes good use of its watery locations in establishing an aura of tranquil menace: everything seems calm and orderly, but there’s trouble bubbling up just below the surface. Continue Reading →
Cruel Summer
SimilarBaywatch Nights,
HIStory Nine: Nine Time Travels, The Twilight Zone,
In its first season, Cruel Summer was a roller coaster of a television show. It offered a new twist, loop, or drop around every corner. Cruel Summer Season 2, by contrast, feels more like the Slingshot. For one, the journey is much easier to understand and anticipate. Of course, there are still thrills to be hand. Still, it lacks a certain gonzo quality. As a result, this season is better and more logically plotted, but also significantly less likely to leave a viewer’s head spinning. Continue Reading →
Slip
You ever have a really great orgasm? Like so strong it sends you into an entirely different dimension? Now imagine that’s not a metaphor. Welcome to the premise of creator-writer-director-star Zoe Lister-Jones’ Slip. Continue Reading →
Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields
The acclaimed documentarian joins The Spool to discuss Brooke Shields, her work, her life, and her relationship to "Brooke Shields" the image.
In 1981, Roger Ebert wrote a profile on Brooke Shields in which he—quoting a press agent—said, “She will be with us for the rest of our lives.” That turned out to be remarkably prescient, but neither the agent nor Ebert could have anticipated the myriad number of ways Shields has been with us in that time. Yes, she is extraordinarily beautiful. But many equally attractive people have come and gone, while Shields remains a consistent part of pop culture’s firmament. From her early appearances in films like Pretty Baby (1978), The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Endless Love (1981) and her controversial TV ads for Calvin Klein jeans, all of which focused on her sexuality while she was literally a child, to her shift in the later Eighties to become America’s Virgin to her reinvention as a comedic actress in the Nineties to becoming an advocate for those suffering from postpartum depression (and suffering the slings and arrows of Tom Cruise in full asshole mode as a result), Shields has been a persistently relevant figure in the American popular consciousness.
While Shields has lived much of her life in the public eye, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, a fascinating two-part documentary from Lana Wilson now streaming on Hulu, proves that she still has a great deal to say. Given access to nearly a half-century’s worth of archival material, which she presents alongside contemporary interviews with Shields, Wilson paints a fascinating, eye-opening portrait that demands a new consideration of Shields and her career. Much of her story is harrowing, be it specific to her life—her wrenching descriptions of sexual assault and her tumultuous relationship with her mother—or experiences too many young women in the spotlight share. (If you think having someone inquire about the state of your virginity sounds awful, imagine having talk show hosts do so on live television.) And yet, not only has Shields survived, she is thriving. She has found peace with herself and is able to look back on her life with a sense of control over it. Continue Reading →
Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches
NetworkAMC+,
SimilarCigarette Girl,
Roswell Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan,
AMC’s newest installment in Anne Rice’s ‘Immortal Universe’ may not blow you away, but it’s intriguing enough to warrant a longer look. With the Disneyfication of mainstream television, it’s a relief to know that some networks are still willing to take a risk on a less well-known franchise. While not as much as a household name as its predecessor Interview With the Vampire, Mayfair Witches presents a slowly unraveling southern gothic, whose promise far outshines its performance. Continue Reading →
The Witcher: Blood Origin
No doubt Netflix’s goal in releasing the Witcher spinoff The Witcher: Blood Origin was to tide audiences over. They wanted to give the fans a little something while waiting for Henry Cavill’s final season as Geralt. Conveniently framed as a tale told to Jaskier (Joey Batey) by Elf storyteller Seanchaí (an always welcome Minnie Driver), Blood Origin finally digs into the Conjunction of the Spheres, which created the world of men and monsters we’ve already seen. Continue Reading →
1923
SimilarBates Motel,
StudioMTV Entertainment Studios,
It’s almost difficult to imagine as much happened in one day of the year 1923 as happens in one episode of the television series 1923, the newest installment of the multigenerational Dutton saga from Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone and 1883 series. And if as much happened in 1923’s premiere episode occurred every day of the year 1923, what a truly exhausting year that would’ve been. Continue Reading →
The Last Kingdom
Lars Von Trier is a complicated figure. The Danish director has ardent fans, fervent critics, and a whole host of international film watchers in-between. After 25 years of varying other projects, he returns to his favorite hospital in The Kingdom Exodus, the five-episode third and final season of his acclaimed supernatural series. The sepia-toned world hasn’t changed much, though, as Von Trier has gone through several scandals, health concerns, and personal challenges over the last two-and-a-half decades. His vision remains undeterred. Continue Reading →
Wednesday
SimilarKomi Can't Communicate, Stand Up!!, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
Jenna Ortega is having quite the year. Between the success of Ti West’s brilliant slasher X and leading the new Scream franchise, she’s poised to become our next reigning Queen of Creepy. This looks even more likely now as she brings the definitive goth teen to life in Netflix’s Wednesday, helmed by Tim Burton. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Prodigy
SimilarStar Trek Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,
StarringDee Bradley Baker,
Can you have Starfleet without Starfleet? That’s the essential question Star Trek: Prodigy asks in the back half of its first season. As the villainous Diviner (John Noble) told his daughter last time, the advanced vessel ferrying the series’ young heroes contains a weapon that could decimate the Federation. If that weren’t enough, the flesh-and-blood Vice Admiral Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) has reason to think whoever’s piloting the Protostar stole the ship and marooned her dear friend, Chakotay. So despite how badly the show’s main characters want to join Starfleet, there’s a plethora of reasons to stay far, far away for the time being. Continue Reading →
The Peripheral
SimilarFate/Apocrypha,
Pride and Prejudice Tales from the Neverending Story, The Family Game, The Far Pavilions, The Strain,
North Carolina, 2032. Flynne Fisher (Chloë Grace Moretz) is a skilled gamer. Pro gaming (usually helping some rich schmucks win victories they couldn't on their own) is a viable way for her and her cyborg'd-former-Marine brother Burton (Jack Reynor) to earn extra cash. They live with their ailing mother Ella (Melinda Page Hamilton) a half-step ahead of financial ruin in a town more or less run by spiritual-cousin-to-Road-House-villain-Brad-Wesley Corbell Pickett (Louis Herthum, Westworld). Continue Reading →
Interview with the Vampire
NetworkAMC+,
SimilarCigarette Girl,
Roswell Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan,
When I got to my first advanced writing course in college, our professor, a large woman with a positively terrifying intellect, asked us all to tell the rest of the class what our favorite book was. I, at barely 19, told a room full of adults that I loved the writings of Anne Rice more than anything. I’d read and reread The Vampire Chronicles many times since I was fifteen, and the Lives of the Mayfair Witches since I was twelve. To say these books had a significant impact on my adolescence and young adulthood is an understatement. In those pre-internet days, I’d satisfied my love of storytelling by filling entire notebooks with my Anne Riceaverse Fan Fiction. It’s what made me want to be a writer. So you can imagine how mortified I was when Professor Arl, barely holding back an eye roll, told me that, yes, Anne Rice was very popular with teenage girls but was—at best—escapist beach reading. Continue Reading →
The Patient
The Patient’s Dr. Alan Strauss (Steve Carrell) is a man of ritual. One can tell it from how he cuts his fruit, interacts with clients, and even walks through his home. The deliberate editing from Amanda Pollack and Daniel A. Valverde in the pilot help emphasize this point. Ritual upon ritual surrounds him. Continue Reading →
Bad Sisters
SimilarCatterick, Murder Most Horrid, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Three Days of Christmas,
StudioABC Signature,
From Promising Young Women to Big Little Lies, we’re in a golden age of female revenge stories. Looking to add to the ranks is AppleTV+’s new series Bad Sisters. It follows the tight-knit group of sisters who slowly turn on their prick-ish brother-in-law after years of misogynistic torture. It’s a dash of thriller Big Little Lies with a sprinkle of the comedy of 9 to 5, all set in a coastal Irish town. Continue Reading →
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
SimilarJustice League Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Sonny Boy, Star and Sky: Star in My Mind,
StarringGinger Gonzaga, Jameela Jamil, Josh Segarra, Renée Elise Goldsberry,
Thanks to all the pre-release press with show creator and head writer Jessica Gao, viewers already know what She-Hulk: Attorney At Law won’t be: a courtroom dramedy. Unfortunately, after the first episode, “A Normal Amount of Rage,” it isn’t clear what kind of show it will be either. Continue Reading →
Black Bird
SimilarMillennium, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King, Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan, Tiger Lily, 4 femmes dans la vie,
When Black Bird opens with its Mogwai-penned and performed score and its series of voyeuristic but vague imagery, one will likely have an idea what kind of show they’re in for. And they will probably be correct. Continue Reading →
Under the Banner of Heaven
Chances are that if you know any Mormons at all, they’re far more likely to be ex-Mormons. Despite claims that the Mormon Church is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States (source: the Mormon Church), in reality, like most organized religions in America, membership has been on a steady decline for the past decade. Along with the same issues other churches face, the Latter Day Saints also suffer from years of bad P.R., forever associated with magic underwear, child brides, and polygamy, though the latter two aren’t permitted within the modern Mormon Church, and haven’t been since the 19th century. Every church has its members who take things a little too literally, however, and that occasionally results in tragedy, as illustrated by FX’s docudrama Under the Banner of Heaven, a chilling true story about death and faith. Continue Reading →
Halo
Halo is a big deal. It's the game series that made the Xbox, the game series that drew the blueprint and set the standard for first-person shooters in the 21st century. Its most recent installment, Halo Infinite, drew rave reviews and was a major financial hit. In addition to the stories told in the games themselves, Halo also boasts an extensive transmedia presence—novels, audio dramas, and animated anthologies, amongst other mediums—that's beloved by the lore-digging side of fandom. That passion, and the infamously spotty history of video-game-to-other-medium adaptations, means that Paramount Plus' Halo: The Series faces an uphill battle. Continue Reading →