5 Gripping TV Shows Like The Shards to Watch Next

This article contains discussions of addiction and sexual assault.

Viewers drawn to glossy, overheated teen dramas populated by impossibly polished twenty-somethings will likely find plenty to latch onto in “The Shards.” The FX series brings together prolific showrunner Ryan Murphy and author Bret Easton Ellis, whose books include “American Psycho” and “The Rules of Attraction.” Given Murphy’s long-running fascination with 1980s style and excess — and Ellis’s own deep ties to that era — it is almost surprising the two had not collaborated before. Their first project together adapts Ellis’s 2023 novel of the same name, a semi-autobiographical but heavily fictionalized story inspired by his senior year at a Los Angeles high school in 1981.

The cast of “The Shards” is stacked with recognizable names and rising talent. Mike Flanagan regular Igby Rigney plays a teenage version of Ellis during his final year at the prestigious Buckley School, while Homer Gere — son of Richard Gere — appears as mysterious new student Robert Mallory. Pop singer Hayes Warner plays Bret’s girlfriend, Debbie Schafer, and Kaia Gerber, daughter of Cindy Crawford, takes on the role of Susan Reynolds, a popular student and student body president. Graham Campbell plays Thom Wright, the football team’s star quarterback and Susan’s boyfriend. Evan Rachel Wood and Wes Bentley also star as Debbie’s unsettling parents, Liz and Terry Schaffer, with recurring and guest appearances from performers including Ivy Wolk, Jordan Roth, Dot-Marie Jones, Anthony Ramos, and James Wolk.

If “The Shards” has left you looking for another stylish, thorny series about teenagers navigating secrets, obsession, danger, and desire, there are several shows worth adding to your watchlist. From emotionally intense high school dramas to a teen detective mystery and a series spun from a beloved movie, here are five shows to try next.

“Euphoria” is an obvious place to start, though it is not a light watch. Created by Sam Levinson and adapted from an Israeli teen drama, the HBO series earned Zendaya two Emmy Awards for her performance as Rue Bennett, a teenager returning to school after leaving rehab while still struggling with drug addiction. Rue frequently narrates directly to the audience, giving the show its confessional, fourth-wall-breaking edge. Back in the hallways, she forms a powerful bond with new student Jules Vaughn (Hunter Schafer), a transgender girl exploring her identity, while orbiting classmates including Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie), Nate Jacobs (Jacob Elordi), Cassie and Lexi Howard (Sydney Sweeney and Maude Apatow), and Rue’s dealer and close friend Fezco O’Neill.

During its inaugural season, which aired all the way back in 2019, “Euphoria” took a genuinely interesting approach to its storytelling, devoting one episode each to the teens, their backstories, and their specific issues. (The performances were uniformly good to boot; during that first season, Schafer, Jacobs, and “Grey’s Anatomy” veteran Eric Dane got a compelling, albeit disturbing, storyline that showed off each actor’s range.) Throughout its second season and its third and final outing (which aired in 2022 and 2026, respectively, with a huge timp jump in between), “Euphoria” pretty definitively lost its way, but the first season is still exceptionally good, and if you love “The Shards,” this is a perfect pick for you.

Created by Marlene King and adapted from the young adult novel series of the same name by Sara Shepard, “Pretty Little Liars” is, to put it bluntly, a fully insane show. (Seriously, there’s an episode where the titular four Liars are locked inside of a giant dollhouse by a maniac, and we’re just to supposed to accept this as a thing that really happens. It’s delightfully bizarre in practice, but sort of has to be seen to be believed.) When the series opens, we meet the show’s four leads — hopeful writer Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale), overachieving student Spencer Hastings (Troian Bellisario), fashionista and queen bee Hanna Marin (Ashley Benson), and talented athlete Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) — who spend a year mourning their best friend Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse), who’s still missing by the time the narrative begins. When the four girls start getting insidious, creepy text messages from an anonymous contact known only as “A” who seems to know all of their secrets, they wonder if Alison is still alive … and how she could potentially expose Spencer, Hannah, Aria, and Emily to the world.

“Pretty Little Liars” is a wild show in that it does manage to include some genuinely thoughtful character arcs — Emily comes out as queer during Season 1 in a touching storyline — but again, this is also a show where characters endure absolutely absurd and dangerous situations on a nearly constant basis. (Also, Aria dates a teacher as a high schooler, Ian Harding’s Ezra Fitz, and not only is that largely presented as okay, the two go on to get married. Yuck.) If the campiness of “The Shards” is what makes that show work for you, there’s little doubt that it was inspired by “Pretty Little Liars,” so add that to your watchlist.

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There are layers to the one-season adaptation of “Cruel Intentions,” which aired on Amazon Prime Video in the fall of 2024. It is, of course, adapted from the hit 1999 movie, which was directed by Roger Kumble and stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillippe, and Selma Blair, which itself was adapted from the 1782 novel “Les Liaisons dangereuses,” originally written by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Do these layers make the “Cruel Intentions” show into a worthwhile or even good series?

Well, not really — if we’re being honest. Still, this is an easy one-season binge-watch that’s perfect for fans of “The Shards” if you’re really craving a show about rich people behaving in absolutely abominable ways … and rich teens at that. In the small screen take on this now-familiar story, “The White Lotus” Season 3 star Sarah Catherine Hook takes on the role of Caroline Merteuil (Gellar’s Kathryn in the film), with Zac Burgess as Caroline’s stepbrother Lucien Belmont (Phillippe’s Sebastian in the movie), Savannah Lee Smith as Annie Grover (Witherspoon’s Annette Hargrove), and Sara Silva as Celeste “CeCe” Calloway (Blair’s Cecile Caldwell).

In this version of “Cruel Intentions,” the action takes place in college rather than in high school like the movie, which makes everything slightly less twisted as Caroline and Lucien set out to seduce Annie to preserve their reputation at the fictional Washington D.C. school Manchester College. The original “Cruel Intentions” is borderline unwatachable today, but unfortunately, the TV show doesn’t have quite enough bite to make a great successor. Again, though — like “The Shards,” it’s a great excuse to watch wealthy, gorgeous young people get into absurd situations.

If you’re looking for something as deliciously twisted and heightened as “The Shards” but are looking to, frankly, have even more fun, you definitely want to binge-watch all of the original “Gossip Girl” series. Based extremely loosely on the young adult novel series by Cecily von Ziegesar (which in turn were, similar to “The Shards,” based similarly loosely on her experiences at privileged New York preparatory schools), “Gossip Girl” opens its story as teenage socialite Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) unexpectedly returns to Manhattan’s Upper East Side after a stint at a New England boarding school, surprising everyone — especially her best friend Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), who happily stepped into Serena’s place as queen bee in her absence. Equally shocked are Blair’s boyfriend and Serena’s secret lover Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), Brooklyn outcast Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) and his social-climbing sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen), and bad boy Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick).

“Gossip Girl” is, in the very best way, actively insane. Sure, things start innocuously enough — the “weirdest” thing about the show’s early seasons, besides the teenage characters wantonly drinking at a variety of New York City bars while understage, is that new couple Dan and Serena have to deal with the romantic history between Rufus Humphrey (Matthew Settle) and Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford) — but by the time we get into the back half of the show’s 6 seasons, things go delightfully off the rails. (Blair marries a prince! Dan writes a tell-all book about his friends! Chuck owns a hotel before his 21st birthday!) Take our word for it, though, and embrace the absurdity; “Gossip Girl” is totally worth it, thanks in very large part to Meester’s unbelievable central performance as the wise-cracking, brilliant Blair. The 2021 reboot, though? That’s a skip.

Veronica Mars, the titular teen detective played by Kristen Bell, has lived many lives — between three TV seasons, a crowd-funded movie in 2014, and a likely final fourth Hulu season in 2019 — but if you love “The Shards,” revisit the original UPN series that made Bell into a star. When we first meet Bell’s Veronica, she’s having  a rough time. First, her entire world is upended when her best friend Lilly Kane (Amanda Seyfried in flashbacks) is brutally murdered at her home; in the aftermath of Lilly’s death, Veronica’s boyfriend and Lilly’s brother Duncan Kane (Teddy Dunn) abruptly stops talking to Veronica. As the small and fictional California town of Neptune is rocked by a teenage girl’s murder, Veronica’s dad and Neptune’s sheriff Keith Mars (a spectacular Enrico Colantoni) accuses Lilly’s father, tech magnate Jake Kane (Kyle Secor), of the murder, only to be fired in disgrace. Oh, and if all of this wasn’t bad enough, Veronica has another mystery to solve: the identity of the person who drugged and subsequently sexually assaulted her at a high school party.

Bell’s snappy, smart voiceover keeps “Veronica Mars” feeling breezy even when it tackles extremely dark topics, and with supporting turns from Jason Dohring, Percy Daggs III, and Tina Majorino as bad boy Logan Echolls and Veronica’s friends Wallace and Mac, respectively, you’ll be hooked. As for “The Shards,” it’s streaming on Hulu now.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).