Summary

• Fans of The Vampire Diaries can enjoy similar supernatural dramas like The Originals and Legacies.
• The CW's Nancy Drew and shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer offer fresh takes on supernatural stories.
• Series like First Kill, Wolf Pack, and Grimm are compelling options with unique takes on the supernatural genre.

Fans who love supernatural dramas will find a lot of shows like The Vampire Diaries to enjoy. The Vampire Diaries centered on Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev) and her hometown of Mystic Falls. Elena and her close circle of friends discover that vampires, werewolves, and witches exist and many have a long history with the small town. At the center of the supernatural stories were brothers (Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley) who became vampires decades earlier and have a history of falling for the same woman.

The Vampire Diaries creates an interesting mythology around its characters and produced two spin-off series. The Originals focuses on the original family of vampires, while Legacies focuses on the new generation with the next generation from the other two shows. When fans of The Vampire Diaries want to find something similar to watch when they miss the show, there is plenty to choose from - from supernatural stories to high school dramas to monster-hunting shows, there is something for everyone.

30 Angel (1999-2004)

A Vampire Helps People In Need

Before Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries began to rule The CW, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel set the template for what made these supernatural urban fantasies successful. While The Vampire Diaries has much in common with Buffy, thanks to the young adults navigating life while living among monsters, Angel is also a good comparison, as Angel was the antihero vampire long before Damian and Stefan showed up on TV.

Angel was a vampire with a soul who moved to Los Angeles and opened up a detective agency where he helped people in need. He teamed with a Watcher, a vampire hunter, a demon, and a woman who would one day become a witch. While saving people in need makes it different from The Vampire Diaries, seeing vampires living a life most don't expect is very comparable to what fans of that later show fell in love with.

29 Lost Girl (2010-2015)

A Fae Starts A Detective Agency To Help People

Lost Girl is a Canadian supernatural series that aired on SyFy in the United States and ran for five seasons. The series is about a succubus named Bo (Anna Silk) who learns how to control her hunger and instead sets out to use her unique powers to help people in need. In a lot of ways, it is like Angel, but with a succubus instead of a vampire, and it plays well with fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as it has a strong female hero fighting to help the innocent.

Much like Elena in The Vampire Diaries, Bo is someone who has to learn about the supernatural aspects of the world around her, and in this case, it is the world of the Fae. When the local Fae demands that Bo choose a side (light or dark), Bo declares that she is neutral and makes enemies with some very powerful beings. The hierarchy in The Vampire Diaries is very similar, and in both cases, no one makes it easy for the female heroes.

28 A Discovery Of Witches (2018-2022)

A Vampire & A Witch Team Up To Protect The World

One of the fun parts of The Vampire Diaries is watching the different sects of monsters interact, and often it results in a battle. In A Discovery of Witches, the main focus is on two supernatural beings who have been at war for eons. Vampires and witches have been battling for a long time, so the twist in this series comes when one vampire ends up befriending a witch and teaming with her to stop the end of the world.

The Vampire Diaries has a lot of conflict between vampires and witches, which is similar in this series. However, with Matthew Goode starring as the vampire and Teresa Palmer as the witch who decides to protect a sacred book that evil people could use to bring about Armageddon, it works perfectly. They battle various supernatural creatures throughout the show's three seasons.

27 Interview With The Vampire (2022- )

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles On TV

Interview with the Vampire has been adapted before as a movie. However, when looking at Anne Rice's books, they set the template for much of what people expect to see in these television dramas about vampires. Rice is the one who created the gothic vampire romances tinged with positive LGTBQ+ love stories, and that carried over to everything from True Blood to The Vampire Diaries.

This latest adaptation comes from AMC, where Lestat and Louis meet up in a very different situation and time period than the books, but it works well in the new context. There have been two seasons and a crossover series based on the Mayfair Witches, and this is allowing the giant Anne Rice shared universe to play out. The first two seasons cover Interview with the Vampire, and the third season will adapt The Vampire Lestat. Fans of The Vampire Diaries will find plenty of similarities.

26 iZombie (2015-2019)

A Zombie Helps Solve Crimes

Based on the DC comic book series by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred, iZombie has a hero who is actually a zombie. In this case, it is a young woman named Liv (Rose McIver) who is attacked at a boat party and turned into a zombie. However, as long as she feeds, she keeps control of her brain and humanity. She also learns that if she eats the brain of a corpse, she can see their past memories, especially before their death.

Since she works in a coroner's office, she uses these skills to solve murder cases while hiding the fact she is a zombie from the police. However, the series really veers into more of a Vampire Diaries focus when the world learns zombies are real and has to decide to live with them or destroy them all. The love stories focus on keeping one's humanity, and moral tales of right or wrong help fans of both shows cross over and enjoy these very different experiences.

25 Nancy Drew (2019-2023)

A Nancy Drew Adaptation With Supernatural Elements

The series takes the idea of the original Nancy Drew novels and remakes it for the modern era, giving the characters new backstories.

The CW’s Nancy Drew remake might not include vampires, but it does include other supernatural entities, primarily of the ghost and spirit variety. The series takes the idea of the original Nancy Drew novels and remakes it for the modern era, giving the characters new backstories. Also, instead of basic mysteries, Nancy Drew features some supernatural drama. There are small-town mysteries to discover, as Horseshoe Bay isn’t all that different from Mystic Falls when it comes to keeping the ghosts of the town’s past hidden.

The story of Nancy Drew is much more compressed than The Vampire Diaries though, with most of the action of the four seasons taking place in less than a year. Kennedy McMann stars as Nancy Drew. While the series ended after four seasons, there was also a spin-off that aired on The CW called Tom Swift, which was set in what the network called its "Drew-niverse."

Available to stream on Max

24 Legacies (2018-2022)

One Of The Vampire Diaries Spin-Offs

When looking for shows like The Vampire Diaries, fans don’t have to look much further than the two spinoffs. While The Originals mostly runs concurrently with the events of The Vampire Diaries when it begins, Legacies does not. Instead, it’s set after the events of the series. It follows 17-year-old Hope Mikaelsson (Klaus Mikaelson and Hayley Marshall's daughter) as she attends the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted, specifically geared to help young people with supernatural powers navigate their lives.

Hope is a tribrid - with vampire, witch, and werewolf DNA. Matt Davis also returns from The Vampire Diaries to reprise his role as Alaric Saltzman, someone who looks after and helps train the young vampires, werewolves, and witches. The series expands the show's lore, even including different gods in Legacies stories. Legacies lasted for four seasons.

Available to stream on Netflix

23 First Kill (2022)

Two Friends Are On Opposite Sides Of A Vampire-Human War

If the conflict between vampires and humans is what appeals to Vampire Diaries fans, as well as the romance that can result between the two species, then First Kill is an appealing option. The series gives a new take on vampire mythology, but it also makes hunting vampires a family legacy. Two teenage girls find themselves on a collision course when their families are on opposite sides of the vampire-human line. One is from a family of hunters, expected to kill her first vampire.

The other is from a family of vampires, expected to kill her first human to become an adult. When the two fall for one another, their lives become much more complicated. Unfortunately for fans, First Kill only has one season and Netflix canceled it in 2022. There was a fan push for a renewal, but it doesn't look like the story will continue after it's run on Netflix.

Available to stream on Netflix

22 Veronica Mars (2004-2019)

A High School Student Starts Her Own PI Agency

The Vampire Diaries begins with a teenage girl telling the story of extraordinary events in her life when she discovers vampires in her small town. Veronica Mars doesn’t tell the story of vampires, but the heroine in this show tells the stories of her own (very different) small town. Just as Elena slowly uncovers the truth about the supernatural beings that live among her family, Veronica slowly uncovers the truth about town tragedies, like the murder of her best friend.

12 years after it aired its final third season, there was a movie made in 2014 thanks to a crowdfunding campaign.

Veronica’s bond with her friends drives the story, as does her love story with a bad boy, much like Elena in The Vampire Diaries. This was also the rare example of a show's fans saving it. 12 years after it aired its final third season, there was a movie made in 2014 thanks to a crowdfunding campaign. Then, five years after that, Hulu brought it back for a new fourth season.

Available to stream on Hulu

21 Wolf Pack (2023)

A Teenage Werewolf Series

Though Wolf Pack has garnered more comparisons to Teen Wolf than The Vampire Diaries, the show does have plenty in common with both. The series takes a pair of teenagers who know nothing about werewolf lore and puts them right in the middle of a werewolf conflict as they are bitten and discover two of their classmates are natural-born werewolves. The series works to bond a group of teens around the mystery of which one of the werewolves is killing people around town.

They have to stick together to survive, whether they want to or not. It’s not unlike the different groups of vampires who ally to fight a larger enemy in The Vampire Diaries. Based on the book by Edo van Belkom, the series ended up canceled after just one season on Paramount+. One thing that might bring in fans of classic urban fantasy television is the fact that Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, had a role as a human investigator in the series.

Available to stream on Paramount+