Watching Pretty Little Liars from 2010 to 2017 was a wildly enjoyable experience. The charming and intriguing mystery show lasted for seven seasons and told the story of a group of teenage girls who gets stalked by a merciless bully. In every creepy episode, viewers itched to find out who the cyberstalker really was.
The queen bee of the friend group, Allison, went missing, leaving Emily, Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Spencer behind. The four girls continued living their lives for a while without any issues, but when their secrets started coming back to haunt them, they realized that they were in serious trouble.
Here are 10 shows will give you the same goosebump-inducing vibes you got while watching Pretty Little Liars back in the day.
Riverdale
Riverdale is just as dark as Pretty Little Liars, if not darker. Even though Riverdale is based on the lighthearted comic books from decades past, the live-action CW show is far from family-friendly. It’s about a teenage boy named Archie Andrews and his group of rebellious high school friends, Jughead Jones, Veronica Lodge, and Betty Cooper. The first season of Riverdale starts out with Archie involved in an inappropriate relationship with his music teacher. In Pretty Little Liars, Aria has an affair with one of her teachers, too. This is only the beginning of the high school-esque similarities.
The Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries is obviously a show about vampires, werewolves, and witches, and even though Pretty Little Liars doesn’t have supernatural creatures of that nature lurking around, there are still evil characters to watch out for in both. TVD is about a human teenage girl who gets caught up in a messy love triangle with two vampire brothers. In the end, she has to choose the one that’s right for her. Pretty Little Liars includes a couple of love triangles as well.
Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists
Of course Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists would be a part of this list, given that it’s a spinoff of the original show. It doesn’t include the bulk of the cast members viewers know and love, but it does still have Sasha Pieterse and Janel Parrish. This spinoff takes place a few years in the future after the finale episode of Pretty Little Liars comes to an end. Instead of focusing on high school kids, this show is about girls in college.
Gossip Girl
There are so many reasons why Pretty Little Liars and Gossip Girl are comparable. For starters, both shows include cyberstalkers who are obsessed with high school girls. In Gossip Girl, Dan Humphrey disguises himself as a female blogger to post gossip tidbits online in order to write himself into the popular crowd at his elite prep school. Weirdly enough, his plan actually works. The cyberstalker in Pretty Little Liars is a lot creepier.
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew is the perfect show to compare to Pretty Little Liars since the girls in PLL do their best to solve mysteries in almost every episode. In Nancy Drew, the title character spends time working as a brilliant detective to crack cases in her hometown. When she gets blamed for a murder, she realizes that she must link up with other kids from her high school in order to clear her name.
How to Get Away with Murder
For some reason, murderers are able to get away with scary behavior in every season of Pretty Little Liars. How to Get Away With Murder has a similar premise, but with a group of college students trying to cover up crimes they’ve committed. Although the age ranges are different in the two shows, the vibes remain the same. Getting away with illegal activity on a murderous level is a huge factor in both.
Make It or Break It
The Pretty Little Liars dynamic of four teenage girls harboring a wealth of secrets is very reminiscent of Make It or Break It. In Make It or Break It, four girls are training to compete in the Olympics by honing in on their gymnastic skills. The main girl is named Emily and she joins a new training center with the help of a scholarship thanks to her natural talent. She’s immediately forced to deal with mistreatment from other girls who are clearly jealous of her and what she brings to the table. Jealous teenage girls and blackmail are heavily incorporated into both shows.
Revenge
The subject of getting vengeance for past wrongdoings is huge in both Pretty Little Liars and Revenge. The latter is a drama that premiered in 2011 and starred Emily VanCamp. She plays the role of the beautiful and mysterious Emily Thorne, who arrives in the Hamptons to seek⏤you guessed it⏤revenge for wrongdoing done to her father by some very bad people. Someone choosing to return to their old town in order to seek vengeance? Sounds very similar to PLL if you ask us! Revenge is deliciously sinister and you’ll enjoy every twisty minute.
Dance Academy
Dance Academy only lasted for three seasons, but the drama series is similar to Pretty Little Liars in many ways. Although PLL doesn’t include any dance sequences in its episodes, there’s still plenty of similar drama when it comes to relationship turmoil between teenagers who think they know what love is at such a young age.
The Lying Game
Just like in Pretty Little Liars, The Lying Game includes a whole lot of lying. It’s about two girls named Emma and Sutton who have no idea that they’re identical twins separated at birth. One girl grows up trying to navigate the foster system while maintaining a gentle heart. The other gets adopted by wealthy parents who spoil her beyond measure. When they finally cross paths, all the lies that have been told come to the surface.
Any of these shows are sure to give you the same thrills and chills that made Pretty Little Liars a staple of television screens for years, but fans looking to return to the world of the show will be thrilled to learn that Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin is set for release in 2022.
