20 best shows like Critters (1986)

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

This scripted anthology series mashes up wildly different genres to tell suspenseful stories with funny, imaginative twists. Each episode turns familiar tropes inside out to create a curated and eclectic collection of stories filled with equal parts nostalgia and modern satire.

In the year 2093, a team of scientists aboard the Nightflyer, the most advanced ship ever built, embarks on a journey to find other life forms. Their mission takes them to the edge of the solar system, and to the edge of insanity, as they realize true horror isn't waiting for them in outer space—it's already on their ship.

Each episode transports the audience to worlds of wonder through the lens of today’s most imaginative filmmakers, directors and writers. A reimagining of the original anthology series by Steven Spielberg.

Mork & Mindy is an American science fiction sitcom broadcast from 1978 until 1982 on ABC. The series starred Robin Williams as Mork, an alien who comes to Earth from the planet Ork in a small, one-man egg-shaped spaceship. Pam Dawber co-starred as Mindy McConnell, his human friend and roommate. In 1997, the episode "Mork's Mixed Emotions" was ranked #94 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time list.

Set in a near-dystopian future, a former cop is forced to take part in a death race where the cars run on human blood. You lose a leg and you lose your head.

A skeptic is forced to work with a firm believer of the paranormal on unexplained occurrences in Los Angeles.

Monsters is a syndicated horror anthology series which originally ran from 1988 to 1991 and reran on the Sci-Fi Channel during the 1990s. As of 2011, Monsters airs on NBC Universal's horror/suspense-themed cable channel Chiller in sporadic weekday marathons.In a similar vein to Tales from the Darkside, Monsters shared the same producer, and in some ways succeeded the show. It differed in some respects nonetheless. While Tales sometimes dabbled in stories of science fiction and fantasy, this series was more strictly horror. As the name implies, each episode of Monsters featured a different monster which the story concerned, from the animatronic puppet of a fictional children's television program to mutated, weapon-wielding lab rats.Similar to Tales, however, the stories in Monsters were rarely very straightforward action plots and often contained some ironic twist in which a character's conceit or greed would do him in, often with gruesome results. Adding to this was a sense of comedy often lost on horror productions which might in some instances lighten the audience's mood but in many cases added to the overall eeriness of the production.

Tremors: The Series is a television spin-off of the Tremors franchise. Originally airing out of order on the Sci-Fi Channel, it was later aired in its proper sequence on the G4 Network.

Anything can turn spooky in this horror anthology series based on the best-selling books by master of kid horror, R.L. Stine. In every episode, see what happens when regular kids find themselves in scary situations, and how they work to confront and overcome their fears.

What did the world look like as it was transforming into the horrifying apocalypse depicted in "The Walking Dead"? This spin-off set in Los Angeles, following new characters as they face the beginning of the end of the world, will answer that question.

FBI agent Audrey Parker arrives in the small town of Haven, Maine to solve a murder and soon discovers the town's many secrets—which also hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of her lost past.

We love to play games with our children. But what happens when someone else starts to play with them too? Someone we don't know. Can't see. Can't hear. In The Whispers, someone or something -- is manipulating the ones we love most to accomplish the unthinkable. An unseen alien force has figured this human weakness out. They have invaded earth and are using our most unlikely resource to achieve world domination – our children.

When a young boy vanishes, a small town uncovers a mystery involving secret experiments, terrifying supernatural forces, and one strange little girl.

In a world mostly wiped out by the plague and embroiled in an elemental struggle between good and evil, the fate of mankind rests on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail and a handful of survivors. Their worst nightmares are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the Dark Man.

R. L. Stine's The Haunting Hour is a Canadian/American original anthology horror-fantasy series, with episodes each half an hour long. The series is based on The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It Movie, and the books The Haunting Hour and Nightmare Hour anthology by R. L. Stine.

Living his best life in post-apocalyptic LA, a slacker strives to find the girl of his dreams while outwitting mindless ghouls and cliquish gangs.

Firestarter: Rekindled is a 2002 television miniseries and the sequel to the film adaptation of the Stephen King novel Firestarter. It stars Marguerite Moreau as now-grownup Charlie McGee, Danny Nucci, Dennis Hopper, and Malcolm McDowell as Charlie's old nemesis from the original story, John Rainbird.It debuted as a Sci Fi Pictures two-night miniseries on the Sci Fi Channel.

M.I. High is a BBC children's spy-fi adventure series. It was produced for the BBC by the independent production company Kudos, who also produced the hit BBC spy drama Spooks. It follows in the success of the Young Bond and the Alex Rider series of books and films. M.I. High is recorded in high definition and is shown on the CBBC Channel and CBBC Outputs on BBC One and BBC Two. M.I. High is also shown on the BBC HD Channel. Repeats also frequently air in Australia on ABC3. As of October 2012 the series has began airing on the UKTV channel Watch.

Crash-landed alien Harry takes on the identity of a small-town Colorado doctor. Arriving with a secret mission, he starts off living a simple life…but things get a bit rocky when he’s roped into solving a local murder and realizes he needs to assimilate into his new world. As he does, he begins to wrestle with the moral dilemma of his mission and asking the big life questions like: “Are human beings worth saving?” and “Why do they fold their pizza before eating it?”

A thriller set two hundred years in the future following the case of a missing young woman who brings a hardened detective and a rogue ship's captain together in a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history.

Based on the stories of Stephen King, the series intertwines characters and themes from the fictional town of Castle Rock.

Meet the team of the UMP cruiser, a barely-functional starship led by an aggressively cheerful Captain with a with a barely-competent crew, including a clueless navigator, a brain damaged mechanic, a bickering couple,a man with gills raised to be an organ farm for his brother and ART, the billionaire turned robot. When their ship is drawn into a different universe, they must to learn to work together while dealing with space clouds, robot rebellions, and the occasional alien attack.

A young boy's horror comic book comes to life in this anthology series of terrifying tales.

A group of troubled passengers wake up on a damaged spaceship abandoned in deep space, each having left behind a dark past in search of a fresh start on a newly colonized planet. As their terrifying situation spirals into paranoia, they come to realize that the greatest threat to their dream of starting over – and indeed their lives – is something far darker than the pasts they were so desperate to escape.

After a fortuitous drug bender saves his life, addict Jake ventures out into the quiet streets… unaware that most of the world already died in their beds. Now, battling sleepless fatigue and encroaching delirium, Jake teams with a scrappy teenager, overnight doctor and red-eye pilot to search for answers… and just maybe find a way to sleep again.

Meet The Thundermans, a typical suburban family that happens to have astounding superpowers. At the center of the action are the 14-year-old Thunderman twins, who share the same bathroom, the same school, and the same annoying little siblings. Their only difference? The sister is a super student with a super sunny disposition who super looks forward to being a superhero someday, and her twin brother is a super villain.

A ghost-hunting duo team up to uncover and film paranormal sightings across the U.K. and share their adventures on an online channel. Their supernatural experiences grow more frequent, terrifying, and even deadly as the pair begin to uncover a conspiracy that could threaten the entire human race.

The space family Robinson is sent on a five-year mission to find a new planet to colonise. The voyage is sabotaged time and again by an inept stowaway, Dr. Zachary Smith. The family's spaceship, Jupiter II, also carries a friendly robot who endures an endless stream of abuse from Dr. Smith, but is a trusted companion of young Will Robinson

Four young friends' paper routes are disrupted on Hell Day 1988, when they unknowingly time travel to 2019. While searching for a way home, they come face-to-face with their adult selves and learn how to work together to save the world.

After a massive alien artifact lands on Earth, Niko Breckinridge leads an interstellar mission to track down its source and make first contact.

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

After a rash of disappearances and a likely murder, an inquisitive, young female production assistant on a wildly popular television show called Cult joins a journalist blogger in investigating the rabid fans of the series who might be re-creating crimes seen on the program, in real life.

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

The Outer Limits is an anthology series of distinct story episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end. Unlike the original incarnation of the series, which was a pure anthology with each episode completely unrelated to the others, the revival series maintained an anthology format, but occasionally featured recurring story elements that were often tied together during season-finale clip shows.

Follows the crew of the not-so-functional exploratory ship in the Earth's interstellar fleet, 400 years in the future.

The Secret World of Alex Mack is an American television series that ran on Nickelodeon from October 8, 1994 to January 15, 1998, replacing Clarissa Explains It All on the SNICK line-up. It also aired on YTV in Canada and NHK in Japan, and was a popular staple in the children's weekday line-up for much of the mid-to-late 1990s on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Repeats of the series aired in 2003 on The N, but it was soon replaced there. The series was produced by Thomas Lynch and John Lynch of Lynch Entertainment, produced by RHI Entertainment, Hallmark Entertainment and Nickelodeon Productions and was co-created by Tom Lynch and Ken Lipman. For home video releases, it was released under the Hallmark Home Entertainment label, making it the first Nickelodeon show not to be released by Paramount Home Video or Sony Wonder.

Tales from the Crypt, sometimes titled HBO's Tales from the Crypt, is an American horror anthology television series that ran from June 10, 1989 to July 19, 1996 on the premium cable channel HBO for seven seasons with a total of 93 episodes. The title is based on the 1950s EC Comics series of the same name and most of the content originated in that comic or the four other EC Comics of the time. The show was produced by HBO with uncredited association by The Geffen Film Company and Warner Bros. Television. The series is not to be confused with the 1972 film by the same name or Tales from the Darkside, another similarly themed horror anthology series. Because it was aired on HBO, a premium cable television channel, it was one of the few anthology series to be allowed to have full freedom from censorship by network standards and practices as a result, HBO allowed the series to contain graphic violence as well as other content that had not appeared in most television series up to that time, such as profanity, gore, nudity and sexual situations, which could give the series a TV-MA rating for today's standards. The show is subsequently edited for such content when broadcast in syndication or on basic cable. While the series began production in the United States, in the final season filming moved to Britain, resulting in episodes which revolved around British characters.