If you’re hunting for shows like The 100 to fill the void left by one of television’s most ambitious YA dystopias, you’ve got options, and some of them are genuinely excellent. The 100 ran from 19 March 2014 to 30 September 2020 across seven seasons on The CW, telling the story of the descendants of nuclear apocalypse survivors who return to Earth from a space station to find that life, in various frightening forms, has carried on without them. Based on the young adult novel series by Kass Morgan, it started a little rocky then grew into something genuinely layered, proof that YA doesn’t have to be shallow. What drives it, beyond the premise, is the revelation (courtesy of an artificial intelligence named A.L.I.E., revealed to be responsible for the nuclear devastation that wiped out civilisation 97 years before the series begins) that the people in power are almost never telling the whole truth.
That theme (of manipulation, withheld information and institutions that cannot be trusted) runs through most of the best shows the genre has to offer. Here are ten worth your time.
The Best Shows Like The 100 for Dystopian Drama
Silo (2023 –) is the obvious first port of call. Where The 100 sends survivors down from space to a blasted Earth, Silo traps what remains of humanity underground, inside a massive 144-level structure protecting roughly 10,000 people from an allegedly poisoned world above. Rebecca Ferguson plays Juliette Nichols, an engineer pulled into a murder investigation alongside the local sheriff, played by David Oyelowo. The surface-level premise is neo-noir mystery; the deeper game is about the lies the silo’s leadership tells to keep order. Sound familiar? Stream it on Apple TV.
Snowpiercer (2020 – 2024) takes a different kind of enclosed world (a perpetually moving train circling a frozen planet) and turns it into a class-war melodrama. Set in a future where stopping the train means everyone dies, the story pits Daveed Diggs’s Tailie detective Andre Layton against Jennifer Connelly’s Melanie Cavill, the train’s engineer and head of hospitality, as an uprising forces them onto opposite sides of a conflict neither fully controls. It improves significantly on first impressions and earns its ending. Available on Peacock, Hulu and Prime Video.
The Wilds (2020 – 2022) swaps the post-nuclear wilderness for a remote island. A group of teenage girls survive a plane crash en route to an empowerment programme in Hawaii, only to discover the whole thing was engineered as a social experiment. The manipulation at the heart of it puts it squarely in The 100’s territory, even without the overt sci-fi trappings. Stream it on Prime Video.
Tribes of Europa (2021) is set in 2074, 45 years after a global technological collapse shattered European society into warring micro-states. Three siblings from the peaceful Origines tribe stumble upon advanced technology that makes them a target for the aggressive Crows and the militaristic Crimsons. It’s on Netflix and moves quickly.
Shadowhunters (2016 – 2019) earns its place here largely on demographic grounds, like The 100, it’s adapted from a popular YA novel series (Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments) and puts young women as reluctant warriors at its centre. Katherine McNamara plays Clary Fray, who discovers her mother has been lying to her about her origins her entire life. Three seasons, a satisfying conclusion, available on Hulu.
More Shows Like The 100 to Add to the Queue
12 Monkeys (2015 – 2018) starts as what feels like a retread of the Terry Gilliam film before finding its own footing as a show genuinely interested in free will versus predetermination. James Cole, a scavenger from 2043, travels back to 2015 to stop the plague that ends the world. Extended timelines, complex character dynamics, impossible choices. Stream on Prime Video.
Heavenly Delusion (2023) is the wildcard, a post-apocalyptic anime running two parallel stories. One follows children in a sterile, monitored environment called Heaven; the other follows bodyguard Kiruko and companion Maru picking their way across a monster-filled, devastated Japan. It gets strange, and strange in interesting ways. On Hulu.
3% (2016 – 2020) is a Brazilian series in which impoverished young Inlanders get one shot at escaping to a futuristic offshore utopia: a gruelling series of tests called The Process. Most fail; many don’t survive. The success rate is, as advertised, 3%. It sits in Hunger Games territory thematically but carries the same sense as The 100 that the young are considered expendable by those running the system. On Netflix.
The Rain (2018 – 2020) is a Danish series in which a virus carried by rainfall wipes out most of Scandinavia. Siblings Simone and Rasmus emerge from their bunker six years on and head across country looking for safety and their missing father, one of them, it turns out, may hold the key to stopping the virus entirely. Three seasons, a decisive ending, on Netflix.
All of Us Are Dead (2022 –) confines its apocalypse to a single high school. A viral outbreak turns a Korean school into ground zero, the students are quarantined, and help (in the grand tradition of these shows) does not arrive. What makes it work is the attention paid to how class and social hierarchy don’t dissolve under pressure; they calcify. The closed-school setting is used brilliantly, and there’s enough soapy drama to keep things moving between the horror. On Netflix.
Any of the above will scratch the itch. Start with Silo if you want the closest tonal match to The 100’s second and third seasons, the ones where the show really found what it was doing.
