16 Shows like 'Gossip Girl' to Watch Next
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Hey, Upper East Siders. Whether you just watched Gossip Girl for the first time or the fifteenth, it’s surely left you riding high on all the drama, intrigue, secrets, and a particularly tangled web of hookups, friendships, and rivalries. Now, to avoid the post-Gossip Girl crash back down to reality, you have a few options: You can start the show back from the beginning—a perfectly valid choice, no shame here—or you can seek out another series with a similar vibe.
If you’ve opted for the latter, look no further than the list below. We’ve rounded up 16 shows that have something in common with Gossip Girl, whether it’s a similar premise, the shared Manhattan setting, overlaps in the cast and crew, or, as in the case of Bridgerton, another anonymous gossip columnist driving the show forward. Whatever direction you choose to go in, here’s hoping it captures at least some of the magic of a good old-fashioned Gossip Girl rewatch.
1. ‘Pretty Little Liars’
Like Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars includes an anonymous person whose identity serves as a main mystery of the show. Unlike Gossip Girl, however, PLL’s “A” says and does things much darker and more sinister than the N.Y.C. gossip columnist ever did—and also (spoiler alert!) turns out to be more than one person as the show’s seven seasons unfold.
2. ‘You’
Dan Humphrey returns! This time, Penn Badgley plays the extremely creepy Joe, who’s prone to obsessing over the women he falls in love with to the point of stalking and even sometimes killing. Now’s the perfect time to catch up on You’s first four seasons, since the fifth, which is due sometime in 2024, is set to be the series’ last.
3. ‘Riverdale’
If you thought Gossip Girl’s plot was confusing, just wait until you dive into Riverdale’s seven seasons, which are chock full of plot twists, love triangles, make-ups, and break-ups, plus a hefty dose of supernatural abilities, time-travel, and cold-blooded murder.
4. ‘90210’
A spinoff of the ‘90s classic Beverly Hills, 90210 that began a year after Gossip Girl’s 2007 premiere and lasted almost as many episodes, the series serves as the West Coast counterpart to Gossip Girl’s Manhattan setting.
5. ‘Euphoria’
This one’s for anyone who’s ever wished that Gossip Girl’s high school seasons were about 100 times grittier, with much more sex, drugs, and dangerous situations. HBO’s got you covered.
6. ‘The O.C.’
Another California-based take on the dramatic ups and downs of young adult lives, The O.C. was the first hit series developed by Gossip Girl co-creator Josh Schwartz. Plus, in a fun real-life twist, one of its stars, Adam Brody, married Leighton Meester, one of his counterparts on GG.
7. ‘Bridgerton’
Bridgerton may not seem like an obvious next step after binging Gossip Girl. After all, it’s set in 1800s England—about as far from a mid-aughts N.Y.C. high school as you can get—when teenagers and young adults were expected to abide by very prudish societal rules. But, if you dig a little deeper, they actually have quite a bit in common: Not only does Bridgerton contain plenty of will-they, won’t-they romances and lots of sex, but the ton is also haunted by an anonymous gossip columnist who just can’t resist stirring up trouble.
8. ‘The L Word’
The L Word was groundbreaking for its depiction of lesbian and bisexual women. And, like in Gossip Girl, all of those characters were linked by a series of hookups, relationships, and other romantic and sexual entanglements, all of which were tracked by an online site known as "The Chart."
9. ‘The Carrie Diaries’
Before Carrie Bradshaw was the Carrie Bradshaw, she was just Carrie, a Connecticut high schooler determined to make her way in the NYC magazine industry. Both The Carrie Diaries and Sex and the City are great follow-up options to Gossip Girl, but this one might take the cake, as it shares GG's coming-of-age vibes and high-school-level intrigue.
10. ‘Dynasty’
Gossip Girl co-creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage were also behind this five-season wonder, a reboot of the mega-popular ‘80s soap opera, so you know it’s gotta be good—and brimming with dramatic twists and turns.
11. ‘Younger’
Yet another show about secrets and lies in New York City, Younger follows a fortysomething woman who gets a job in publishing after a contentious divorce—but only by passing herself off as a twentysomething, a ruse she then has to keep up for seven seasons. As a bonus, it also stars Hilary Duff, who had a recurring role in Gossip Girl as Olivia Burke!
12. ‘Revenge’
There’s truly no shortage of TV shows that are completely shaped and defined by a major secret. In this one, a young woman moves to the Hamptons and takes on a new identity—purely so she can take revenge on the people who she blames for destroying her family decades before.
13. ‘Elite’
This Spanish Netflix show has a lot in common with Gossip Girl: Both are set at elite high schools, and both recount the teenage messiness that ensues in those settings. Elite, however, focuses specifically on a trio of scholarship students at the school and also includes flashes forward throughout each season that lead up to a big mystery reveal.
14. ‘Jane the Virgin’
Those who love Gossip Girl for its huge ensemble cast, countless side plots, and fun fashion will likely fall in love with Jane the Virgin, which is a hilariously over-the-top take on traditional telenovelas—complete with love triangles, amnesia plots, secret identical twins, dramatically resurrected characters, and plenty more throughout its five seasons to keep your head spinning.
15. ‘The Bold Type’
The characters in this Freeform series are a bit older than those in Gossip Girl, but their lives are no less messy. The Bold Type follows a trio of young women who are working at a women’s magazine in New York City. And fun fact: The show's fictional magazine, Scarlet, is based on Cosmopolitan, and the whole show was actually inspired (and executive produced) by former Cosmo editor-in-chief Joanna Coles.
16. ‘Baby’
Another of Netflix’s international offerings, this Italian series follows two high school girls whose lives are pretty different from Serena and Blair’s other than the fact that they share a serious secret. In this show, Chiara and Ludovica have both been drawn into an underground teenage prostitution ring.
