
Shows that feel likeThe X-Files (1993–2018)
If you loved The X-Files, the closest series we have are Sense8 (2015), American Gods (2017) and The Expanse (2015). All three share The X-Files' cerebral and dreamlike feel, which is what we rank on before quality.
Seen the big three already? The under-the-radar pick below is Project Blue Book (2019).
If The X-Files hit the spot, these will too

Ordinary people caught in something inexplicable and hunted for it
The difference: Warm and sensual, with the paranoia backgrounded

Hidden powers moving through roadside America, seen in strange fragments
The difference: Hallucinatory and unhurried — mood and myth instead of case files

A missing-person case that unravels into something enormous and hidden
The difference: Hard sci-fi politics across the solar system, with no paranormal edge

A believer and a sceptic sent out to explain away UFO sightings
The difference: Period Cold War drama, more earnest and far less eerie

Weekly cases stacked on top of a slow-building surveillance conspiracy
The difference: Action-forward and tech-grounded — punch-ups rather than dread

Institutions protecting themselves at the expense of the truth
The difference: Social realism, and no mystery beyond the human kind

Institutional conspiracy closing around someone who cannot trust anyone
The difference: One tight British thriller, entirely real-world

Two agents pursuing a conspiracy with a mythology behind every case
The difference: Slick network thriller — no ambiguity, and much less eerie

A man who knows too much, moving against forces that own everything
The difference: 1814 London, filthy and personal

FBI agents applying method to horrors that shouldn't be possible
The difference: Straight profiling, nothing paranormal

Both are working the same pair: fbi, conspiracy
The difference: Trades the ideas of The X-Files for an angle of its own

Common ground: conspiracy
The difference: Takes it somewhere less twisty than The X-Files does
In the mood for more twisty?
all twisty shows →The best-reviewed series that share The X-Files’ defining feeling.









