26 Best TV Shows Similar to Westworld
X-Men
Regardless of what one thinks of nostalgia—a toxic force or a pleasant refuge from the chaos that is existence—there’s no denying its significant role in shaping and guiding our pop culture. Rather than simply rallying against it, we must, from time to time, acknowledge it and evaluate its accuracy. The launching of X-Men ’97 gives The Spool a unique opportunity to look back at ’97’s progenitor, the early 90’s series X-Men, also commonly known as X-Men: The Animated Series.
However, this is not a task for one person. An objective of this size requires a team-up, in the Merry Marvel Tradition. Tim Stevens, The Spool’s steadfast TV Editor, whose stoicism conceals a maelstrom of doubt and rage, much like ruby quartz holds back optic blasts, tackled the first half of the series. Then, Justin Harrison, our near-feral writer with a gift for mentorship and a head full of implanted memories, closes things down with his take on the second half of season 3 and all of seasons 4 and 5.
With that, there’s no time to waste. Hop in the Blackbird and come with us for a look at the highlights—and occasional lowlight—of the X-Men! Continue Reading →
X-Men '97
SimilarBatman, Batman: The Animated Series, Birds of Prey, Captain Midnight, Captain Star, Deadly Class, Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes, Flash Gordon, Gekisou Sentai Carranger, GoGo Sentai Boukenger, Inazuman, Invincible,
Justice League Mirai Sentai Timeranger, Ninpuu Sentai Hurricaneger, Power Rangers, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Seijuu Sentai Gingaman, Silver Surfer, Sonic the Hedgehog, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, Super Crooks, Tales from the Crypt, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Avengers: United They Stand, The Flash, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men: Evolution,
As the saying goes, only '90s kids will remember the severe cultural impact X-Men: The Animated Series had on a particular strain of latchkey millennials. For many, the show, which ran from 1992-97 on the Fox Kids programming block, was the arguable apex of the Marvel superhero team's on-screen representations. It was thrilling, exciting, and for the time, surprisingly mature in its handling of the sociopolitical issues that spawned the comics in the first place -- racism, xenophobia, homophobia. It carried an element of serialized storytelling that was rare for kids' TV and took its characters and their respective issues seriously. Plus, that theme song just slammed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQjdm8BdJO4
Disney+, in its infinite wisdom, knows how to keep the franchise going while they anxiously figure out how to incorporate the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Deadpool & Wolverine should give us a portent, however grim) -- and to keep the '90s kids satiated with a heaping helping of nostalgia while we wait. So goes X-Men '97, a straightforward continuation of The Animated Series that updates its "too sophisticated for kids" remit all the way to the present day and lands on something interesting, if far from perfect, in the process.
Picking up months after the original series' finale, X-Men '97 shows a world reeling from the death of Charles Xavier in the final episode of the animated series: Mutants are mistrusted more than ever, and a growing fifth column of right-wing human militants called the Friends of Humanity are gathering up mutants and taking them down with stolen Sentinel technology. Naturally, it's up to the X-Men to stop them -- if they can pull themselves together and work as a team. Scott Summers (Ray Chase) is the next natural choice for leader, but he's torn between his duty to his fellow X-Men and his desire to start a family with Jean Grey (Jennifer Hale), a move that has ol' Wolverine (Cal Dodd) itching with jealousy. Continue Reading →
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
SimilarFamily Guy, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, The Sound of Your Heart,
StarringNoel Fielding,
There is perhaps no more annoying phrase to hear from someone recommending a TV series in the streaming age than, “It’s very good, but you do have to wait a few episodes.” Regretfully, this writer nonetheless must employ it in reviewing The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin. When the series finds its footing, it is equally adept at the goofy gag and the droll declaration. It’s just that it doesn’t settle into that groove until the third of six episodes provided to critics.
The premise revolves around a decidedly ahistorical take on the British outlaw Dick Turpin (Noel Fielding, late of The Great British Baking Show). For those not steeped in 18th-century English criminal lore, Turpin was a highwayman who became something of a legend after his execution at the age of 33. Fans of new wave pop star Adam Ant may recall the singer briefly made Turpin a sartorial touchpoint with the inclusion of a tri-corner hat in his rotation.
In co-creators Claire Downes, Ian Jarvis, and Stuart Lane’s The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, Fielding’s interpretation of the character hardly reflects the historical or legendary figure. Rather Turpin patrols the lawless outskirts of the Georgian era as a thoroughly modern man. A vegan who’s terrible with a gun and worse with his fists, he seems more drawn to the theatrics of criminality than the violence or even the money. As a result, he frequently confounds the odds through his stubborn insistence on making unusual choices and a healthy dose of good luck. Continue Reading →
Criminal Record
SimilarAgatha Christie's Poirot Baywatch Nights, Brimstone, Broadchurch, CSI: Miami, Jack the Ripper, La Mante, Luther, Millennium,
Sherlock Holmes The Twilight Zone, Tientsin Mystic,
AppleTV+’s new crime drama compellingly juggles issues of race, internal politics, and family dynamics.
Criminal Record drips with a sinister sense of foreboding in the first episode’s cold opening. Daniel Hegarty (Peter Capaldi), a high-ranking cop moonlighting as a car service driver, guides an age-mismatched couple to their destination, trying to play nice with them. The man of the lovers obnoxiously probes Hegarty for gruesome tales. In reply, the detective briefly indulges them before trailing off. To bring things to a close, he declares he’s seen far worse than what he’s described, and more often besides.
Nothing more happens. We never see the couple again. Presumably, Hegarty got them where they were going without anything further of interest occurring. Still, the scene bristles and pulses with danger. One can easily imagine Hegarty arresting them both. Or, worse, revealing his corruption and killing them both. Criminal Record isn’t that kind of show, as it turns out. However, the series smartly sets its tone in those early moments. No matter what it shows the audience after that, it’s impossible to shake the sense that this aging cop, played by Capaldi as somehow both spry and fragile, could be a ticking time bomb. Continue Reading →
Jul i Blodfjell
When you’re done watching the usual stuff, consider one of these very bizarre attempts at holiday cheer.
When AMC released their holiday programming lineup this year, it seemed like an attempt at a joke: in addition to a handful of aging comedies that have nothing to do with Christmas (or any other holiday for that matter), like Uncle Buck and Caddyshack, the now-ubiquitous Elf was scheduled to air no less than sixteen times in thirty days, and that wasn’t counting the December 2nd “anniversary celebration” marathon. Second to Elf was National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, scheduled to air twelve times. Filling out the remaining time not occupied by Elf or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was woeful C-tier fare nobody enjoyed the first time around, like Christmas With the Kranks and Fred Claus.
In the era of streaming, finding Christmas entertainment now requires keeping track of who has the rights to show what special or movie at any given time. Gone are the days of CBS airing A Charlie Brown Christmas every year for decades: now it's under the sole domain of Apple TV+. Its former companion How the Grinch Stole Christmas is available only on Peacock, and all manner of Muppet-related programming is exclusive to Disney+. If the pickings aren’t slim, then they’re disbursed like so much reindeer feed across multiple platforms. Continue Reading →
The Goldbergs
NetworkNBC,
Similar'Allo 'Allo!, Astro Boy, Catterick, Fawlty Towers, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace,
Great News I Dream of Jeannie, LA to Vegas, Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, Off Centre, Red Dwarf, Taxi, That '70s Show,
The Cara Williams Show The John Larroquette Show The War at Home, Two and a Half Men,
In 1983, a group of crooks broke into a vault at the Heathrow International Trading Estate in London, patrolled by Brink’s Mat security conglomeration. The Brinks company was already famous for a famous robbery, one that was carried out in the '50s in the North End in Boston, an incident that turned into a charmingly strange movie by William Friedkin in 1978. Continue Reading →
The Consultant
When Christoph Waltz is at his best playing a villain in films like Inglorious Basterds, he presents as gentle and almost naively sweet before revealing an endless capacity for cruelty. At his worst, as with his Blofeld, he presents as all menace and violence and ends up with the effectiveness of a kitten. The former is delightful to behold; the latter can crash an entire film. Unfortunately, The Consultant forces Waltz to be the menacing kitten. Continue Reading →
Moonhaven
NetworkAMC+,
SimilarSonny Boy,
What is it about living through cataclysmic times that makes us crave apocalyptic entertainment? Are we just clinging to the hope that humanity gets plucky and figures shit out before it’s too late? AMC’s new sci-fi adventure Moonhaven, an uneven but…well, plucky creation of Peter Ocko tries to answer just that. Set some 200 years in the future, Moonhaven shows humanity at two very divergent stages. While things like climate change, war, famine, and plagues continue to rage on unchecked on the Earth, it’s forever Opposite Day on the Moon, where a small chunk of humanity has been living under the protective eye of IO, an artificial intelligence tasked with helping those people fix Earth, somehow. Continue Reading →
Stranger Things
The one thing that no one can deny is Stranger Things Season 4 remains aggressively itself right up to the end. Its final two episodes, feature-length films onto themselves, serve everything that one could enjoy about the first seven episodes with a side of everything that frustrates and annoys. The good news is that the bad bits remain a side dish, not the main course. The better news is that ratio tips even further in favor of what’s enjoyable. Continue Reading →
Ozark
SimilarBrimstone, Broadchurch, Jack the Ripper, Tientsin Mystic,
StudioMRC,
Previous seasons of Netflix’s Ozark followed Martin and Wendy Byrde’s (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney) quest to survive death and prove their family’s worth to the cartel and their violent rivals. Now, in the fourth and final season, the Byrdes must figure out if they can survive without their dark, criminal lives. They sacrificed a lot to get to the top—but what would they sacrifice to stay there? Thanks to this ask and its answers, Ozark Season 4 Part 1 is slow-burn suspense at its finest, with the Byrde’s maneuvering to stay on top, no matter the personal costs. Continue Reading →
The Expanse
SimilarCrusade, Golden Years, Missions, Stargate Atlantis, Terra Formars: Bugs-2 2599, The Ark, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
StarringShohreh Aghdashloo,
There’s a song that was popular in the aughts with the lyric “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end,” and it feels like the most fitting description of The Expanse. It’s a show that has changed identities more times than Sidney Bristow and managed to retain a strong, cohesive narrative, with this season bringing its final arc full circle. Not to the proto-molecule, but to the struggle of the Belters to get their fair shake from Earth and Mars, something Joe Miller (Thomas Jane) dreamed of in the very first episode, something Fred Johnson (Chad Coleman) lived and died for. Continue Reading →
Star Trek: Discovery
Similar3rd Rock from the Sun, ALF, Battle of the Planets, Ben 10,
Caprica Doctor Who,
Eureka Seven Farscape, Getter Robo: Armageddon,
Roswell Space: 1999, Star Wars: Droids,
Stargate SG-1 The Journey of Allen Strange, The Transformers, Valvrave the Liberator,
StarringAnthony Rapp, Blu del Barrio, David Ajala, Doug Jones, Mary Wiseman, Sonequa Martin-Green, Wilson Cruz,
Plenty of Star Trek shows hit their stride in season four. The timing makes sense. After four years together, the cast and crew have all had time to jell. The writers have had long enough to hone the show’s voice and course correct for any missteps. And there’s still enough mileage left in the original premise and characters to take them to interesting places. Continue Reading →
One of Us Is Lying
There has been something of a teen thriller renaissance of late. Shows like Cruel Summer, The Wilds, Panic, and Outer Banks have mined the teen streaming audience to deliver stories that all had at least something about them worth watching. Joining the fold this week is Peacock’s One of Us Is Lying, an adaptation of the Karen McManus book of the same name. Continue Reading →
Master of None
SimilarTaxi, The Head, The Nanny,
After a four-year absence, Master of None returns to Netflix with a new tone and new focus, but it still grapples with the same emotional beats of the first two seasons. This time around, creator Aziz Ansari focuses his efforts behind the camera, only appearing in two brief cameos in season three’s five-episode arc. Instead, all of the action is focused on Denise (Lena Waithe) and her partner Alicia (Naomi Ackie), who are rusticating in a cottagecore fantasy that not even TikTok could call sustainable. Rather than the buzz of traffic and the cramped quarters of the city, we see Denise and Alicia’s relationship develop against the bucolic splendor of open fields and towering trees. Continue Reading →
In Treatment
At The Spool, generally, we try to keep the work front and center. We try to center the work, not ourselves. I say all of that here as a preface because I am both a therapist and a therapy client. I’m reviewing In Treatment as a fictional dramatic work, but I’m also honest enough to acknowledge that framing and guiding some of my opinions will be my own experiences and, while I hesitate to use the term, expertise. Continue Reading →
The Handmaid's Tale
SimilarCigarette Girl, Millennium, Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King,
Roswell Soul Land 2: The Peerless Tang Clan,
In the spirit of full disclosure, I need to say this: I’m not a big fan of The Handmaid’s Tale. There’s something about a show that is so unrelentingly grim—without even the occasional glimmers of light—that just makes me feel like I’ve been ground down into a salty meat paste. This is why I checked out of Game of Thrones before I even knew the words “Red Wedding,” because I couldn’t bear to watch Sansa Stark beaten, humiliated, and tortured anymore. So while I can say that Handmaid’s has strong writing and still boasts some of the most gorgeous photography of any show out there, I still don’t enjoy it. Can anyone say they actually enjoy it? And when did the incessant castigation of women become primetime entertainment? Continue Reading →
Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist
NetworkNBC,
SimilarFurther Tales of the City,
Six weeks after her father Mitch’s (Peter Gallagher) death and funeral, Zoey (Jane Levy) emerges from her self-imposed exile, spurred on by Mo (Alex Newell). In her disconnect from the world, things have changed. Joan (Lauren Graham) is on her way to greener pastures. Leif (Michael Thomas Grant) has done his best to run the fourth floor in her absence, resulting in a fraternity-like atmosphere with Tobin (Kapil Talwalkar) as the unofficial lead “brogrammer.” Her dueling love interests Simon (John Clarence Stewart) and Max (Skylar Astin) have become friends. Life moved on while she sat out and recovered. Or tried to recover, anyway. Continue Reading →