Another season of Game of Thrones has come and gone in blood, fire, and shocking twists. But as you hunker down for season six of the show to begin sometime in 2016, you may be wondering what to watch in the meantime.
Fortunately for you, we are experts of the television arts, and we've spent our time combing streaming libraries and programming listings for the series that will be perfect fits for the Thrones-size hole in your heart. In fact, we've found 17 of them.
Banshee
Game of Thrones airs on HBO, a network known for quality television. What's less known is that HBO has a scrappy younger sibling that's started making some excellent programming of its own. Consider Banshee, for instance, a series about an ex-con who adopts the identity of the sheriff of a small town in Pennsylvania, only to find himself embroiled in a series of unlikely battles against local crime lords. (Also, the Amish are here, as is a Native American tribe.) The show has some of TV's absolute best fight scenes, and when it's on its game, it's a rocketship.
Watch it: The first season is on Amazon Prime. All three seasons are on MaxGo, Cinemax's streaming site for subscribers.
Black Mirror
Like nothing else on TV, Black Mirror takes the basic idea behind The Twilight Zone (a new science fiction story with new characters every week) and updates it for our age of interconnection. The prime minister of the United Kingdom might have to have sex with a pig to save the life of one of the royals. A lonely woman conjures the presence of her dead lover via his social media accounts. A reality TV show is the only salvation offered to residents of a far-future civilization. And so on. Though only seven episodes of the show exist so far, Black Mirror has easily taken a position as one of the best shows of the era.
Watch it: The series is streaming on Netflix.
Boardwalk Empire
It's easy to forget now, but a few months before Game of Thrones debuted, HBO debuted this 1920s-set gangster epic, which was expected to become its next mega-hit. Instead, Thrones took that position, and Boardwalk ran for a respectable five seasons before exiting the airwaves in late 2014. The time is ripe, however, to rediscover everything that made Boardwalk as good as it could be. Yes, the pacing could be a touch too stately in every season's early going, but those seasons always built to beautiful cataclysms. Plus, it was one of the few shows as unafraid as Game of Thrones of bumping off major characters.
Watch it: The first two seasons are on Amazon Prime, while the entire five-season run is on HBO Go.
Deadwood
This critic's pick for the greatest TV series ever made, Deadwood is another show from the period when HBO was making pretty much anything it could. Like Game of Thrones, this series has dozens of series regulars and semi-regulars, but it crams all of them into one tiny town on the edge of the frontier in post–Civil War America. The show is a fantastic deconstruction of the Western, filled with some of the best dialogue in TV history and rich, rewarding character work. It also boasts an ensemble cast that's second to none and a wonderful, symbolic retelling of the birth and life of the American West. Sadly, the show was ended too soon, but don't let that keep you from its wonders.
Watch it: All three seasons are on Amazon Prime.
Hannibal
By all rights, the story of cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter should never have been revived. But when NBC decided to make a new series about the character, it at least had the good sense to hire showrunner Bryan Fuller, who turned the series into an examination of good, evil, and the intimacy of friendships between two men. The show has only gotten more baroque and far weirder over the course of its run, but it's also perhaps the most beautiful series on television, frequently presenting images unlike anything out there. It's a dark and twisted journey into the darkness of humanity, but it always finds ways to keep from being too overbearing.
Watch it: The first two seasons are on Amazon Prime, while the third season airs Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern on NBC.
Penny Dreadful
Let's face it: The appeal of Thrones for many is the way that it gleefully flaunts the rules of TV propriety when it comes to sex and violence. And in those regards, there's not much else like it, unless you count this Showtime horror mashup, set in Victorian London and featuring some of the most famous monsters of all time. (There's Frankenstein's monster! And there's Dracula! And so on!) The show has a refreshingly egalitarian take on human sexuality, and it features more blood and gore than you could possibly prepare yourself for. All horror fans owe it to themselves to check this one out.
Watch it: The run of the show is available on Showtime's Showtime Anytime streaming app. Season two is just wrapping up on Showtime at 10 pm Eastern on Sundays.
Spartacus
Here's another pay cable show with ample amounts of sex and violence that somehow manages to keep either from feeling completely gratuitous. Lusty and bloody, Spartacus retells the famous story of a Roman slave revolt with pedal pressed firmly to the metal and an endless string of character and plot reversals. Plus, at just three seasons and a half-season miniseries, it's a show that most viewers can plow through in a couple of weeks, and its hyperstylized images will likely appeal to those who wish Thrones would give in, just a little bit, to its own inner weirdness.
Watch it: The complete run of the series is available on Netflix.