5 Series To Stream On Netflix If You Loved Jenna Ortega In Wednesday

As great as Jenna Ortega is, the real appeal of her Wednesday show on Netflix is that it appeals to so many different kinds of audiences. Older fans who grew up watching The Addams Family TV show or the famous 90s movies wasted no time tuning in, but the show also drew younger audiences curious about the killer cast and altogether kooky storyline. And one show that perfectly replicates that vibe is The Babysitters Club.

Chances are that many of you grew up reading the original books the show is based on, and we’re happy to report that the series is generally very faithful to those novels. And it manages to appeal to adult audiences not by adding gratuitous sex or violence but instead by leaning into the absurdity of its premise and storylines. What results is a wonderful comedy that parents who grew up reading the books can easily share with their teenage children.

You’ll notice that many of the series on our list are very different from one another, and the reason for that is simple: different fans love Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday for different reasons. And if you particularly enjoyed that Netflix show for the premise of having a special academy for children with abilities, you’ll likely love The Umbrella Academy. This is a show that focuses on the grown lives of former students who were once a superhero team, but these days, they’re much less heroic and much more dysfunctional.

The general premise involves children born on the same day and time, each boasting special powers. A crazy billionaire gathers together as many of these children as he can and tries to create a superhero team, but the series wastes no time reminding us that this isn’t the kind of superhero story you might expect from Marvel or DC. Anchored by the strong presence of Elliot Page, this show is sure to appeal to anyone who loved watching the youthful rebellion of Wednesday Addams.

Some of the shows on our list already had a built-in audience (much like Jenna Ortega did by starring in an Addams Family spinoff), including A Series of Unfortunate Events. Originally, Jim Carrey starred in the film Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, and now the Netflix show A Series of Unfortunate Events caters to a slightly older audience. Fortunately, Neil Patrick Harris is a game replacement for Carrey as he plays Count Olaf, a nefarious (and hilarious) actor trying to swindle the Baudelaire children of their family fortune after the sudden death of their parents.

Fans of the original books are sure to enjoy this series, especially because it gets to adapt so much more literary material than a single film ever could. But even if you’re new to the universe, you’re sure to fall in love with its cast of colorful characters and the titular series of increasingly unfortunate events. And the cast is arguably even better than Wednesday’s, thanks in no small part to veteran character actor Patrick Warburton playing Lemony Snicket.

Riverdale originally premiered on The CW, and it has many of the landmarks that you’d expect from CW’s prime-time programming. Specifically, it boasts a cast of young characters who seemingly exist for only two reasons: to get horny and to cause drama. But the real reason that we’re recommending it to fans of Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday is that much like her Netflix show, Riverdale found ways to get increasingly more bizarre over time.

We don’t want to give you too many spoilers, but over the course of this show, you’ll get so much more than the standard teenybopper drama. Our beloved characters will deal with things like zombies, a multiverse worthy of Marvel, and (lest we forget) an encounter with Satan himself. The stories, like the seasons themselves, often vary wildly in quality, but Riverdale can boast two things that fellow CW show The Flash cannot: it never gets boring, and it’s always memorable (even if for all the wrong reasons).

If we had to pick just one series to recommend to fans of Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday, it would definitely be The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Like Wednesday, this show features a strong female protagonist who must navigate an increasingly bizarre world that often turns on a dime from whimsical to downright deadly. Like the comic book source material it is based on, the show straddles a fine line between appealing to younger audiences with its youthful cast and appealing to older audiences with its mature storytelling.

Now, we won’t lie to you: there is good news and bad news when it comes to Sabrina. The good news is that, unlike many Netflix shows, it was allowed to tell a full and complete story, but the bad news is that the final season didn’t exactly stick the landing. But we had so much fun along the way that, quite frankly, we can’t wait to stream this one again.