25 shows to watch if you like Riverdale
By Sundi Rose
Pretty Little Liars
Pretty Little Liars comes as close as it can to Riverdale’s eerie tone with its constant murders, stalking, and unsettling use of cyber terror. It pulls no punches with it’s audiences in terms of plot twists and sudden left turns.
The premise: A handful of beautiful high school girls begin to receive cryptic, threatening messages from an anonymous and seemingly all-knowing source — “A.”
Following the “death” of their close friend Allison, Spencer, Aria, Hanna and Emily grew apart from their once close-knit group. A year into high school, the remaining four start getting messages threatening to expose all their “secrets.” The invisible enemy brings the girls back together, as they fight to keep their collective misdeeds hidden.
Why you’ll like it: It’s wildly unpredictable. Much like Riverdale, the writers never fully commit to a plot line or character arc, and things change from scene to scene. For a teenage drama, it has a lot of terrifying moments, both implied and outright. It comes hard for its (also age-inappropriately cast) characters, putting them through all classic soap opera tropes. Riverdale took a page from Pretty Little Liars when it comes to evil twins, red herrings and serial killers. The two shows could be first cousins.
Where to find it: All seven seasons are on Netflix, but keep a notepad handy. The crazy plot twists are complicated, and you’ll need it to keep them all straight.