10 TV Shows To Watch If You Like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a gorgeous story-driven, fantasy turn-based RPG that's taking the genre by storm. The characters, art direction, original lore, and satisfying combat have garnered universal praise and certainly make this title the one to beat for Game of the Year. And if you consume television as much as you do Clair Obscur, there are plenty of shows to consider next.
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PostsSure, there won't be anything remotely close to the originality that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 captures with its unique narrative, but there are themes and remnants of the game present in other fantasy, sci-fi, and mystery shows. Below is a list of the most relevant and closely related, whether in premise or the wonderful characters.
10 Carnival Row
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Travis Beacham and René Echevarria
Orlando Bloom, Cara Delevingne, Simon McBurney, Tamzin Merchant, David Gyasi, Karla Crome, Jamie Harris, Andrew Gower.
79% (Audience Score)
7.7
2
Amazon Prime Video
Metaphor: ReFantazio is a game to play if you enjoyed Clair Obscur, and Carnival Row is a TV show that gives the best of both worlds in terms of the themes from Metaphor and an original dark fantasy premise like Expedition 33. It also stars Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne as reunited lovers Inspector Rycroft Philostrate and faerie Vignette Stonemoss.
Set in a fantasy version of the Victorian era, Carnival Row is a neighborhood within the main city of The Burgue that's host to both humans and mythological creatures like fae and fauns, but these mythological folk are an oppressed group by society. The series follows their struggle to be accepted while a serial killer targeting fae is at large.
9 The Returned (Les Revenants)
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Fabrice Gobert
Anne Consigny, Clotilde Hesme, Frédéric Pierrot, Grégory Gadebois, Guillaume Gouix, Pierre Perrier, Yara Pilartz, Jean-Francois Sivadier, Ana Girardot, Jenna Thiam, Swann Nambotin, Brune Martin, Constance Dollé, Matila Malliarakis.
97%
8
2
Amazon Prime Video
Clair Obscur is a video game designed by French developer Sandfall Interactive, and the story is also set in a fantasy world inspired by the Belle Époque period of France, so if you want a compelling French television series with a unique twist on the story beat of people departing, The Returned (Les Revenants) is an excellent companion show, though with a tinge more supernatural horror.
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PostsThe Returned is about a group of deceased people from a small Alpine village in France suddenly coming back to life and returning to their loved ones, seemingly healthy as though they never died. As you can imagine, this event is met with great shock, and there's lots of drama, mystery, and suspense.
8 Manifest
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Jeff Rake
Josh Dallas, Melissa Roxburgh, J.R. Ramirez, Luna Blaise, Parveen Kaur, Matt Long, Daryl Edwards, Jack Messina, Ty Doran, Athena Karkanis, Holly Taylor, Ellen Tamaki, Jared Grimes, Garrett Wareing, Ali Lopez-Sohaili.
72%
7
4
Netflix
Manifest is another show where characters are gone for a long time but then suddenly and inexplicably come back, though it's very different. In this show, passengers aboard Montego Air flight 828 on their way back home to New York from Jamaica mysteriously arrive five years later than their departure date, with the public presuming them dead in that span.
The main passenger family the show centers on is the Stones, of which college mathematics professor Ben Stone, his sister, NYPD detective Michaela 'Mick' Stone, and Ben's son, Cal, were on 828 and are now resettling into their new reality. Mick gets what are called 'callings,' and the passengers share a telepathic connection, with the sci-fi mystery reaching biblical proportions.
7 Outlander
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Ronald D. Moore
Caitriona Balfe, Sam Heughan, Tobias Menzies, Sophie Skelton, Richard Rankin, John Bell, Duncan Lacroix, Graham McTavish, David Berry, César Domboy, Lauren Lyle, Caitlin O'Ryan, Grant O'Rourke.
90%
8.3
8
Starz, Netflix
Like most RPGs, Clair Obscur entails romantic relationships, and a TV series heavy on romance, while interweaving fantasy and historical drama, is Outlander. Based on the novels by Diana Gabaldon, Outlander sees wartime nurse Claire Randall disappear from 1940s Scotland to the 18th century, where she meets Scottish warrior James Fraser and soon discovers that her husband's ancestor was a cruel British army captain.
This time travel phenomenon is caused by a stone circle with magical properties at the fictional site called Craigh na Dun. Stuck in the past, Claire falls in love and marries Jamie, with the two overcoming a lot and eventually building their own Fraser's Ridge settlement in North Carolina on the eve of the American Revolution.
The elements of love and your loved ones disappearing from time periods and with possibly no hopes of ever reuniting are highly evocative of the emotional themes present in Clair Obscur.
6 His Dark Materials
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Jack Thorne
Dafne Keen, Kit Connor, Ruth Wilson, Amir Wilson, Will Keen, Brian Fisher, Ariyon Bakare, Ruta Gedmintas, Simone Kirby, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lewin Lloyd.
84%
7.8
3
HBO Max
His Dark Materials is a fantasy show based on the book trilogy of the same name by Sir Philip Pullman, previously adapted into the 2007 film, The Golden Compass. In the role of protagonist Lyra Belacqua is Logan, Deadpool & Wolverine, and The Acolyte star Dafne Keen, and she's joined by a star-studded supporting cast. The cinematography, writing, and visuals are top-notch.
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PostsThis series is about exploring alternate universes, and the one Lyra is in has magic and animal companions called daemons, which are manifestations of their human owner's souls from birth. There's a complex family history to Lyra's character, and she'll have to go up against The Magisterium, an antagonistic religious ruling body, while also discovering more about Dust.
5 The Wheel Of Time
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Rafe Judkins
Rosamund Pike, Daniel Henney, Madeleine Madden, Zoë Robins, Marcus Rutherford, Hammed Animashaun, Josha Stradowski, Dónal Finn, Kate Fleetwood, Ceara Coveney, Priyanka Bose, Taylor Napier, Natasha O'Keeffe.
88%
7.2
3
Amazon Prime Video
The Wheel of Time is right in the wheelhouse of Expedition 33, pun intended. Gone Girl's Rosamund Pike leads as powerful sorceress Moiraine Damodred, who wields the One Power and now seeks the reincarnation of the Dragon to fight against the forces of the Dark, which leads her to a village harboring five young adventurers, one of whom she suspects is the Dragon Reborn.
The show is based on the fantasy book series of the same name written by the late author Robert Jordan and completed by Brandon Sanderson. The VFX is amazing here, the scenery and fantasy locations as stunning as any in Clair Obscur, and the intro episode will hook you straightaway, just like the game's opening prologue.
Perhaps one of the major parallels to Clair Obscur is the concept of time in The Wheel of Time, which sees the world on a seven-spoked wheel that moves through different ages.
4 The 100
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Jason Rothenberg
Eliza Taylor, Bob Morley, Marie Avgeropoulos, Isaiah Washington, Lindsey Morgan, Richard Harmon, Paige Turco, Henry Ian Cusick, Christopher Larkin, Jarod Joseph.
93%
7.5
7
Netflix
The 100 is a post-apocalyptic show that ran on the CW for seven seasons, adapted from the novels written by Kass Morgan. It blends science fiction and fantasy, centering on a group of 100 imprisoned teens forcibly sent to Earth from an orbiting space station called the Ark to assess if the surface is habitable after a nuclear apocalypse that occurred 97 years ago.
The central hero of The 100 is Clarke Griffin, who essentially embarks on an expedition to a nuclear-ravaged Earth with her friends and other miscreants from the Ark, and they must band together to survive while also forming new relationships. What awaits them, however, is various existing enemy factions, as well as deadly mutated creatures.
The executive story editor on The 100 is Akela Cooper, who is the co-writer of the horror movies Malignant, Blumhouse's M3gan, Hell Fest, and The Nun 2. Cooper was also a writer and producer on Netflix's Luke Cage series and a story editor on Grimm.
3 Lost
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J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Jeffrey Lieber
Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Josh Holloway, Jorge Garcia, Naveen Andrews, Terry O'Quinn, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Harold Perrineau, Emilie de Ravin, Henry Ian Cusick, Dominic Monaghan, Michael Emerson, Elizabeth Mitchell, Ken Leung.
86%
8.3
6
Netflix, Hulu, Disney+
Lost starts out as a simple and harrowing concept; a plane crash on a seemingly deserted island brings a group of strangers together to survive. However, there's much more mystery to the island as well as the characters, who are all connected in ways they don't yet know, and there's plenty of drama and excellent storytelling across its six seasons.
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Posts 1Lost is indeed one of the most original sci-fi television series that was way ahead of its time, bringing amazing character development and suspenseful twists and turns, not to mention its world-building that unlocks more and more secrets of the island and introduces more supernatural and mind-bending concepts. No television show will ever feel the same once you experience Lost.
2 The Leftovers
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Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta
Justin Theroux, Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, Liv Tyler, Margaret Qualley, Chris Zylka, Carrie Coon, Ann Dowd, Kevin Carroll, Jovan Adepo, Janel Moloney.
91%
8.3
3
HBO Max
The heartbreaking visual of the citizens of Lumiére suddenly vanishing into petals and dust during Clair Obscur's opening ceremony of the Gommage could only remind you of HBO's The Leftovers. It's a show about an unexplained phenomenon where two percent of the world's population mysteriously vanish, created by Lost's Damon Lindelof and author Tom Perrotta.
The Leftovers follows the lives of the Garvey family, torn apart by the 'Sudden Departure.' Justin Theroux plays police chief Kevin Garvey, who lives with his daughter Jill, played by Margaret Qualley. Meanwhile, Kevin's wife joined a cult called the Guilty Remnant, an antagonistic force reminding everyone of the departures, and the series is a meditation on grief as much as it is about connection.
1 Shadow And Bone
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Eric Heisserer
Jessie Mei Li, Ben Barnes, Archie Renaux, Freddy Carter, Amita Suman, Kit Young, Sujaya Dasgupta, Danielle Galligan, Daisy Head, Calahan Skogman, Zoë Wanamaker.
83%
7.5
2
Netflix
Visually, spiritually, and thematically, Netflix's Shadow and Bone is the closest fantasy series you'll get to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It's based on the Grishaverse book series by author Leigh Bardugo, and it likewise features an original fantasy world, this one inspired by Imperial Russia and Slavic culture, rather than Belle Époque France.
In Shadow and Bone, Grisha is the name for magic-wielders, and Alina Starkov, the main protagonist at the center of the series, is one of the most powerful, with her powers being sought by the villainous General Kirigan. Instead of The Paintress, the main threat needing to be destroyed is the Shadow Fold, a dark rift where dangerous creatures called the Volcra lurk, created by the Darkling.
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