9 Must-See TV Shows for Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fans

Daniel Nations
9 min readOct 9, 2019

Sometimes dismissed as simply a teen show by the “unknowing ones,” those miserable souls doomed to walk the earth without knowing the greatness that is the Scooby Gang, Buffy the Vampire Slayer shaped the future of television. The show that gave us the shocking death of a major character long before Game of Thrones and put “the big bad” into our television vernacular, Buffy was a crazy mix-up of great storylines, fantastic drama, excellent writing, and a we-don’t-take-ourselves-too-seriously sense of humor.

There will never be another Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There may be a show with the same name, but that show — that special magic spell of a show — will never be truly repeated. The best we can do is look to shows that inherited those special traits that made Buffy so addicting.

What you won’t find in this list are shows that would sound similar if you simply read the synopsis. There’s no Charmed on this list. Simply having female protagonists in a supernatural setting doesn’t cut it. And as much as I would love to put The Boys on the list based on mixing action, supernatural, and comedy together into a great show, its essence is a bit more Kick Ass meets Preacher.

So what is the essence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? If it could be expressed, we’d have the formula to repeat it. Even Joss Whedon might have a problem really distilling that essence, and he created it. Buffy is… Buffy. Some of the shows on this list are pretty obvious, but for others, they can best be described with something along the lines of… “it’s Buffy… only with Norse mythology!”

Angel

I did say there would be some pretty obvious selections on the list. The only reason Angel gets mentioned first is because it is a spin-off of Buffy. And a very good one despite jumping a rather vicious shark to set up the last season. Even with the shark-jumping, every season of this show is fantastic.

Angel takes a few episodes to really hit its stride, but once it gets going, it will give you that Buffy-like feel like no other show. Bonus: many of the Buffy characters make…

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Daniel Nations

I am a writer, game developer, husband, father, dog owner, independent, gamer and wannabe herpetologist. http://www.nations-software.info/