10 Gripping Shows Like The 100 You Need to Binge Right Now

Following its premiere in September of 2004, Lost quickly became a pop culture phenomenon and one of the biggest shows on television. The feature length pilot remains one of the best in recent memory. The series revolves around the survivors of the crash of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815. 

Lost is a twist laden, genre-and-time-bending mystery set against the backdrop of an enigmatic island where nothing is ever quite as it seems. 

This is the series that made J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof household names. While the series aired, the volatile alliances, evolving threats, shifting timelines, and compelling plot created as many questions as they resolved, and left fans constantly off-balance. 

Unfortunately, Lost failed to stick the landing with its mediocre-at-best final season, but for the first four or five seasons nothing else on TV could quite compare. 

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ABC’s latest sci-fi tinged thriller has unfortunately flown a bit under the radar and is on the bubble for a second season pickup. 

If you’re looking for a twist-laden, sci-fi mystery where nothing is quite as it seems and you can never find sure footing, then Emergence is one for you. 

The story follows small-town police chief Jo Evans, who finds a seemingly orphaned girl among the wreckage of a plane crash. 

She quickly discovers the girl, Piper, is more than she appears. Piper has a host of unexpected powers. When a mysterious group attempts to kidnap the young girl, Jo’s life is turned upside down as she works to protect Piper and discover just exactly who (and what) she is. 

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This NBC drama—currently in its sophomore season—centers around another mysterious flight. However, in the case of Montego Air Flight 828, the inciting incident isn't a crash. Instead, after experiencing a patch of turbulence, the flight lands safely in New York City.  

But when the passengers deplane, they discover that five and a half years have passed while they were in the air. 

As the passengers attempt to reintegrate into lives that have moved on without them, some experience prophetic visions of the future. 

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Based on the 2000 film of the same name, Frequency was built around an intriguing multi-timeline premise but was sadly cancelled after only one season. Raimy, a NYPD detective in 2016, finds her deceased father’s old ham radio in the attic one night. 

When a thunderstorm hits, Raimy soons finds herself chatting over the radio with a man who very much appears to be her father, Frank. But Frank, a disgraced NYPD detective, was murdered while undercover in 1996. 

When Raimy lets it slip to Frank that he is dead and when it happens, a ripple effect is created changing Raimy’s present in way both drastic and mundane. 

Now, Raimy must work across time via the ham radio to solve a decades-old murder case and set the timelines straight. Frequency made the most of an intriguing premise and a talented cast, resulting in one very binge-able season. 

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Imagine The 100 by way of Jurassic Park. Honestly, if that’s not enough to pique your interest, I don’t know what is. Terra Nova begins in the year 2149 on an Earth that has been ravaged by overpopulation and stripped of its resources. 

When a temporal rift to an alternate Earth that resembles a prehistoric world is discovered, a group of pilgrims are sent through to colonize this new world.  

The series center around the colonists trying to survive in this new world—which they call Terra Nova—while fending off another group seeking to strip the resources and send them back to 2149. 

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This remake of the classic 1960s series follows the Robinson family, who are among a group of humans selected for an interstellar mission to colonize the Alpha Centauri Star System. 

When a breached hull forces the group to evacuate, the survivors—including the Robinsons—must learn to survive on a seemingly habitable but hostile planet. The Robinsons are left to contend with life in a dangerous new environment and growing fissures among the remaining survivors. 

With a second season that improves on the first in almost every way, Lost in Space is definitely worth digging into. 

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This HBO series, inspired by the 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name, has one of the best first seasons of TV in recent memory. 

Set against a near-future backdrop, Westworld is an alternate reality theme park populated by eerily humanoid robots designed to give humans escape and adventure in a supposedly safe Old West-inspired fantasy world. 

There’s a dark history to Westworld however, and those harmless robots may be more than they appear. 

Between the phenomenal performances (this is the best Anthony Hopkins has been in years), the shifting timelines, and blurred lines between the humans and the robots, Westworld really keeps viewers on their toes.

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This series from Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof really hit its stride in its second season and put together a truly brilliant final season with its third. 

When two percent of the world’s population suddenly and simultaneously disappear from the Earth—an event called the “Sudden Departure”—those left behind are forced to pick up the pieces. 

Set in the years following the Sudden Departure, the series focuses largely on two families, the Garveys and the Murphys, as they struggle to come to terms with the world’s new status quo and the unexpected chaos that results. 

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This Netflix original sees a busload of Connecticut teenagers return early from a camping trip only to discover that everyone else has disappeared and a mysterious forest has sprung up around their town, cutting them off from the outside world. 

What begins as a chaotic exercise in newfound freedom quickly devolves into a Lord of the Flies scenario, as the isolated teens struggle to create a new society and discover what happened to their loved ones.

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Watchmen—also created by Damon Lindelof—is not so much based on the groundbreaking comic book by Alan Moore and David Gibbons as it is a fascinating continuation of that story. 

Set decades after the disappearance of Dr. Manhattan and the terrifying events in New York, Watchmen moves the story to Tulsa, Oklahoma where the police wear masks to protect their identities from a Rorschach-inspired group of white nationalists. 

A brutal murder sets off a chain of events that leaves detective Angela Abar questioning everything she thought she knew, and pulled into a potentially horrifying mystery that could reshape society as she knows it. 

It’s a labyrinthine and thought-provoking thriller that comes about as close as anything else has to perfect season of television.