From Ryan Murphy and based on a 2018 article by Reeves Wiedeman in New York‘s The Cut, The Watcher tells the story of a real-life family who move into their dream home. Soon, though, they start receiving strange, threatening letters from a mystery watcher. Then they start having disconcerting run-ins with neighbors.
If you haven’t seen The Watcher yet, you can stream the whole first season on Netflix now. Just hit the link below.
Netflix
Netflix is still the leading premium streaming service, with over 200 million worldwide subscribers. It offers thousands of movies and TV shows to binge watch, including its always growing list of original films and series, including Stranger Things, The Witcher, Bridgerton, and many more.
Shows like The Watcher
The Shrink Next Door
Combining humor and a wild true crime premise, The Shrink Next Door has a lot in common with The Watcher. Based on a true story, it follows a man trying to get better with the help of a therapist. But soon, the therapist isn’t just helping solve personal problems, he’s inserting himself into his patient’s life and taking it over. Starring Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd, this Apple TV Plus original didn’t get much attention, but you may enjoy it if you’re looking for a new show like The Watcher.
Apple TV Plus
Apple TV Plus has quickly become a major player in the streaming game since its launch in 2019. Its slate of original programming includes shows like Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, Foundation, and For All Mankind as well as movies like The Banker, Greyhound, and Palmer.
Dirty John
This anthology series takes true crime stories ripped from the headlines and dramatizes them. What the seasons have in common is a focus on love gone wrong. Season one follows a woman’s relationship with a charismatic man who she soon realized was been keeping secrets and is capable of extreme manipulation and betrayal.
Big Little Lies
Not based on a true crime story, Big Little Lies is instead based on the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty. Still, it’s a show like The Watcher in its treatment of privileged people in a foreboding setting. The entire first season builds up to a crime we know little about. We follow women in Monteray as they deal with relationships, abuse, and the PTA, and as they all hurtle toward a shocking event.
HBO Max
HBO Max is your home for Warner Bros-made movies and TV shows like The Lord of the Rings, the DC Comics superheroes, and more. It’s also the home for new and original movies and shows available nowhere else.
The White Lotus
Like Big Little Lies, The White Lotus opens with the revelation that someone has died. From there, we jump back in time as guests arrive at a luxury resort in Hawaii. Over the course of a few days, the guests interact with hotel staff and with each other, butting heads over their perfect getaways. It’s part of a growing genre of shows about rich people behaving badly, and it’s terrific.
The Stranger
A picture-perfect life suddenly thrown into disarray by mysterious strangers? The Stranger is another Netflix show like The Watcher about how fragile the dream of domestic normalcy can be. A family man is driven mad on a quest for answers about the people he loves when a stranger approaches him with explosive revelations.
Truth Be Told
If you like the true crime origins of The Watcher, you may enjoy Truth Be Told, a show like The Watcher that follows a true crime podcaster. Famous after cracking a major murder case, podcaster Poppy Parnell is haunted by doubts. Could her original suspect have been wrongfully convicted? Did she ruin an innocent man’s life?
You
A dark crime show told from the perspective of a stalker rather than that of his victims, You might appeal to fans of The Watcher. In You, Joe, a charming bookstore employee, seems like a catch when he begins pursuing Beck, a new customer. What seems at first like a typical meet cute quickly turns dark. Joe isn’t what he seems, and he’ll stop at nothing to win Beck over.
Those are just a few shows like The Watcher that you can check out if you enjoyed the Netflix original series.
What are you going to watch next? Did we miss any of your favorite shows like The Watcher?
