20 best shows like American Ninja (1985)

The lives of the elite Navy Seals as they train, plan and execute the most dangerous, high-stakes missions our country can ask.

Everything changes when Alex Rider learns that his uncle Ian has actually been killed in the line of duty as a British spy. The normal teen is approached by the head of The Department and pressured to help investigate his uncle's death. Alex reluctantly assumes a new identity and goes undercover in a remote boarding school called Point Blanc.

Syd Burnett has left her complicated past behind to become an LAPD detective. Paired with a new partner, Nancy McKenna, a working mom with an equally complex past, Syd is pushed to examine whether her unapologetic lifestyle might be masking a greater personal secret. These two women don't agree on much, but they find common ground when it comes to taking on the most dangerous criminals in Los Angeles.

Lawyer-by-day Matt Murdock uses his heightened senses from being blinded as a young boy to fight crime at night on the streets of Hell’s Kitchen as Daredevil.

Following an emotional breakup, tough but tender FBI super-agent Will Chase (codename: “Whiskey Cavalier”) is assigned to work with badass CIA operative Frankie Trowbridge (codename: “Fiery Tribune”). Together, they lead an inter-agency team of flawed, funny and heroic spies who periodically save the world (and each other) while navigating the rocky roads of friendship, romance and office politics.

A dysfunctional family of superheroes comes together to solve the mystery of their father's death, the threat of the apocalypse and more.

Falling Skies opens in the chaotic aftermath of an alien attack that has left most of the world completely incapacitated. In the six months since the initial invasion, the few survivors have banded together outside major cities to begin the difficult task of fighting back. Each day is a test of survival as citizen soldiers work to protect the people in their care while also engaging in an insurgency campaign against the occupying alien force.

Revolution focuses on the struggle to survive 15 years after a global blackout.

Set two generations before the destruction of the legendary Man of Steel’s home planet, Krypton follows Superman’s grandfather — whose House of El was ostracized and shamed — as he fights to redeem his family’s honor and save his beloved world from chaos.

Follow a disillusioned teen recruited into a storied high school for assassins. Maintaining his moral code while surviving a ruthless curriculum, vicious social cliques, and his own adolescent uncertainties may prove fatal.

Robin Hood is a British television programme, produced by independent production company Tiger Aspect Productions for BBC One, with co-funding from the BBC America cable television channel in the United States. Based on the traditional stories of legendary English folk hero Robin Hood, the programme started on 7 October 2006. Series two commenced broadcasting on 6 October 2007 with the final two episodes on 29 December 2007. Series three began airing on 28 March 2009 for a thirteen episode run. The series was axed by the BBC after series three following the departure of multiple characters, including lead actor Jonas Armstrong.

A dark comedy following a multicultural mix of men and women deployed as Army medics to a forward operating base in Afghanistan nicknamed “The Orphanage.” Together, they endure a dangerous and Kafkaesque world that leads to self-destructive appetites, outrageous behavior, intense camaraderie and occasionally, a profound sense of purpose.

Gritty, intense, evocative and emotional, "Over There" takes you to the front lines of battle and explores the effects of war on a U.S. Army unit sent to Iraq on their first tour of duty, as well as the equally powerful effects felt at home by their families and loved ones.

Last Resort is an American military drama television series. When the crew of the U.S. Navy Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, the USS Colorado, pick up a U.S. Navy SEAL team off Pakistan's coast, the Colorado receives an order to launch nuclear ballistic missiles at Pakistan.

Chuck is an American action-comedy/spy-drama television series created by Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak. The series is about an "average computer-whiz-next-door" named Chuck, played by Zachary Levi, who receives an encoded e-mail from an old college friend now working for the Central Intelligence Agency; the message embeds the only remaining copy of a software program containing the United States' greatest spy secrets into Chuck's brain.

Agent Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) puts together a team of agents to investigate the new, the strange and the unknown around the globe, protecting the ordinary from the extraordinary.

A covert team of special forces operatives risk their lives on undercover missions around the globe, while their wives maintain the homefront, protecting their husbands' secrets.

A gritty, action-packed crime drama set during the brutal Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the second half of the 19th century. The series follows Ah Sahm, a martial arts prodigy who immigrates from China to San Francisco under mysterious circumstances, and becomes a hatchet man for one of Chinatown’s most powerful tongs.

Andromeda is a Canadian/American science fiction television series, based on unused material by the late Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, developed by Robert Hewitt Wolfe, and produced by Roddenberry's widow, Majel Barrett. It starred Kevin Sorbo as High Guard Captain Dylan Hunt. The series premiered on October 2, 2000 and ended on May 13, 2005. Andromeda was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and produced by Tribune Entertainment and Fireworks Entertainment. It was distributed by Global TV in Canada and syndicated in the United States on WGN and other channels. It was picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S. halfway through season four. Andromeda is one of two TV series based upon concepts Roddenberry had created as early as the 1960s and 1970s. The name Dylan Hunt had also been used for the hero of two TV movie pilots Roddenberry had produced in the mid-1970s, Genesis II and Planet Earth, which had a similar premise. The other series posthumously created from Roddenberry's notes is Earth: Final Conflict.

Three years after the zombie virus has gutted the country, a team of everyday heroes must transport the only known survivor of the plague from New York to California, where the last functioning viral lab waits for his blood.

A hit man from the Midwest moves to Los Angeles and gets caught up in the city's theatre arts scene.

400 years after the extinction of the human race, a small group of humans are revived by an alien civilization. The colony of revived humans encounter struggles with the aliens who extinguished humankind centuries before, while trying to understand and get along with the mysterious aliens who revived them.

Relive a heroic fight for survival during the Iraq War, when the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood was ferociously ambushed on April 4, 2004, in Sadr City, Baghdad — a day that came to be known in military annals as “Black Sunday.”

Laura Holt, a licensed private detective, opens a detective agency but finds that potential clients refuse to hire a woman, however qualified. To solve the problem, Laura invents a fictitious male superior whom she names Remington Steele. Through a series of events that unfold in the first episode, "License to Steele," a former thief and con man, whose real name is never revealed, assumes the identity of Remington Steele. Behind the scenes, Laura remains firmly in charge.

Set in 17th century Paris, musketeers Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan are members of an elite band of soldiers who fight for what is just. They are heroes in the truest and most abiding sense – men that can be trusted and believed in to do the right thing, regardless of personal risk.

When heroes alone are not enough ... the world needs legends. Having seen the future, one he will desperately try to prevent from happening, time-traveling rogue Rip Hunter is tasked with assembling a disparate group of both heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat — one in which not only is the planet at stake, but all of time itself. Can this ragtag team defeat an immortal threat unlike anything they have ever known?

Two teenagers from very different backgrounds awaken to newly acquired superpowers which mysteriously link them to one another.

After a tragic ending to her short-lived super hero stint, Jessica Jones is rebuilding her personal life and career as a detective who gets pulled into cases involving people with extraordinary abilities in New York City.

When his antiques dealer dad winds up in hospital following a rather mysterious accident, book-smart Barnaby teams up with NYC tough girl Nina to save the family's cash-strapped business.

After their plane crashes into the Amazon River, each member of the Powell family starts to show signs of new, unique and distinct super powers.

Follow a teenage girl and a trio of fallen gods on a perilous journey as they attempt to bring an end to a demonic reign of chaos and restore balance to their world. Inspired by the 16th Century Chinese fable “Journey to the West.”

The economic and cultural growth of town of Centennial, Colorado, through the intertwining lives of the brave men and women inhabiting it. Spanning two centuries from the settling of the area in the 1700s, to the late 1970s.

David Haller, AKA Legion, is a troubled young man who may be more than human. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he’s confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.

Set in a single room of an average American motel, each episode tells a different story of the assorted characters who pass through it.

The Doom Patrol’s members each suffered horrible accidents that gave them superhuman abilities — but also left them scarred and disfigured. Traumatized and downtrodden, the team found purpose through The Chief, who brought them together to investigate the weirdest phenomena in existence — and to protect Earth from what they find.

The complex world of our bravest military heroes who make personal sacrifices while executing the most challenging and dangerous missions behind enemy lines.

Their mission is simple: Find a cure. Stop the virus. Save the world. When a global pandemic wipes out eighty percent of the planet's population, the crew of a lone naval destroyer must find a way to pull humanity from the brink of extinction.

Three people's fates are interwoven in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 A.D., during which Germanic warriors halt the spread of the Roman Empire.

A 15-year-old from LA spends the summer at her mom's childhood home on an island off the coast of England, where she bonds with a mysterious horse.

With the Ancients' city of Atlantis discovered in the Pegasus Galaxy by Stargate Command, Dr. Elizabeth Weir and Major Sheppard lead a scientific expedition to the ancient abandoned city. Once there, the team not only find themselves unable to contact Earth, but their explorations unexpectedly reawaken the Ancients' deadly enemies, The Wraith, who hunger for this new prey. Now with the help of newfound local allies like Teyla Emmagan, the Atlantis Team sets about to uncover their new home's secrets even as their war of survival against the Wraith begins.

Track the intertwined real-life stories of three U.S. Marines – Robert Leckie, John Basilone, and Eugene Sledge – across the vast canvas of the Pacific Theater during World War II. A companion piece to the 2001 miniseries Band of Brothers.

Dominion is an epic supernatural drama set in the near future. Specifically, 25 years after "The Extinction War," when an army of lower angels, assembled by the archangel Gabriel, waged war against mankind. The archangel Michael, turning against his own kind, chose to side with humanity. Rising out of the ashes of this long battle are newly fortified cities which protect human survivors. At the center of the series is the city of Vega, a glistening empire that has formed from the ruins of what was once Las Vegas.

Wanda Maximoff and Vision—two super-powered beings living idealized suburban lives—begin to suspect that everything is not as it seems.

"The Cape" is a drama series following Vince Faraday, an honest cop on a corrupt police force, who finds himself framed for a series of murders and presumed dead. He is forced into hiding, leaving behind his wife Dana and son, Trip. Fueled by a desire to reunite with his family and to battle the criminal forces that have overtaken Palm City, Vince Faraday becomes "The Cape" - his son's favorite comic book superhero - and takes the law into his own hands.

Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from the 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. Torchwood follows the exploits of a small team of alien hunters, who make up the Cardiff branch of the fictional Torchwood Institute, which deals mainly with incidents involving extraterrestrials.

Merlin's Apprentice is a British miniseries that aired on Channel 4 in 2006. The series is a sequel to the 1998 miniseries Merlin starring Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson. In this sequel, Merlin awakes after a nap of fifty years.

Ben Hur is a TV miniseries that first aired in 2010. Based on Lew Wallace's1880 novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the series was produced by Alchemy Television Group in association with Drimtim Entertainment and Muse Entertainment in Montreal. It aired on Canada's CBC network on April 4, 2010, and aired later in 2010 on ABC in the United States. Ben-Hur was directed by Steve Shill, and stars Kristin Kreuk, Ray Winstone, Art Malik, Hugh Bonneville and Joseph Morgan as Judah Ben-Hur. The film was written by Alan Sharp.

The adventures of woodsman Richard Cypher, who discovers that he was born to fulfill a prophecy of becoming a guardian hero to oppressed people. With the help of a mysterious woman named Kahlan and a wise old wizard named Zedd, he must stop a ruthless and bloodthirsty tyrant from unleashing an ancient evil and enslaving the world.

A shipping magnate hires four experts from various fields to investigate what happened to his ships that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle. The team discovers a threat that might unravel time itself and cause the world to end.

Ichabod Crane is resurrected and pulled two and a half centuries through time to unravel a mystery that dates all the way back to the founding fathers.