Missing ‘Pretty Little Liars’ 15 Years Later? 10 Similar Shows to Watch
Freeform brought its A-game 15 years ago with the premiere of Pretty Little Liars on June 8, 2010 — long enough ago that the cable channel was still called ABC Family at the time.
Created by I. Marlene King and based on a book series by Sara Shepard, PLL follows four former best friends reunited by the disappearance of the queen bee of the group and spooked by messages from an anonymous “A” who knows their dirty little secrets.
Simple so far, right? Well, as the series progresses, viewers encounter not just the Original A, but also Big A, the A-Team, and Uber A a.k.a. A.D., plus Red Coat, the Black Widow, and the Black Swan, among other shadowy figures in this complicated thriller. “I loved [Pretty Little Liars], like, 100%… but so many times watching it, I would be so confused,” one Reddit user wrote.
The shows described below should prove less confusing but no less twisty, so they could scratch that itch if you’re missing Pretty Little Liars a decade and a half later. (But really, if you haven’t seen the first three, can you really call yourself a PLL obsessive?)
Ravenswood
PLL’s first spinoff took Caleb Rivers (Tyler Blackburn) from Rosewood to the nearby town of Ravenswood, where he finds a tombstone with his name on it. Turns out, the setting for this supernatural drama is plagued by a generations-long curse, and he’s just one of the youths affected.
Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists
Freeform also aired a spinoff based on The Perfectionists, another one of Shepard’s book series. This one brought back PLL’s Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse) and Mona Vanderwaal (Janel Parrish) for a sordid story about the first murder in a college town populated by overachievers.
Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin
This streaming series takes the action to another fictional town in the PLL universe, the blue-collar berg of Millwood, and introduces a new set of Liars, one forced by another “A” to own up to their secrets and those of their parents. And this is the first PLL spinoff to last longer than one season — its second and final season is subtitled Summer School.
Desperate Housewives
Four neighbors are haunted by the downfall of one of their friends, and another neighbor seems to have all the dirt. Sound familiar, PLL fans? This mid-2000s pop-culture sensation might as well have been called Pretty Adult Liars, and while it’s more comedic than PLL, believe us when we tell you it gets just as dark.
Gossip Girl
And speaking of secrets, the titular blogger of this 2000s series (and, for that matter, its 2020s reboot) seemed to know everything about everyone. And as privileged Upper East Side teens connived, lied, and manipulated their way to scholarly and social success, Gossip Girl was right there to take them down. XOXO!
One of Us Is Lying
Now imagine someone killing off the Gossip Girl blogger, and you’ve got this TV drama. Adapted from a Karen M. McManus novel, One of Us Is Lying tracks one high school’s online gossipmonger, his mysterious death, and the five adolescents who each have a motive to kill him. (And that’s not even the show’s last murder…)
Cruel Summer
For two seasons before its cancellation — the retro-styled Freeform anthology Cruel Summer told tales of teens imperiled by criminal acts, including but not limited to abduction and murder. (Maybe if Taylor Swift had released her “Cruel Summer” just a little earlier, this show would have gotten a popularity boost.)
Light as a Feather
Based on a book of the same name by Zoe Aarsen, this Hulu supernatural thriller follows five high schooler whose innocent game turns deadly, forcing them to figure out why they’re in danger and if the culprit is hiding in their ranks. Like other shows on this list, Light as a Feather didn’t last long, but it did earn 10 Daytime Emmy nominations.
Yellowjackets
At least PLL’s Liars didn’t start eating each other, unlike the teens of this series. A plane carrying the eponymous girls’ soccer team crashes in the remote Canadian forest, the survivors battle the elements, each other, and their own psyches, while flash-forwards reveal the psychological impact of that ordeal.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Based on the same Lois Duncan book that inspired the big-screen horror film series of the same name, this show starts with a group of young adults covering up a fatal car accident on their graduation night. Of course, they live to pay the consequences, since at least one person knows what they did last summer.
From TV Guide Magazine
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