7 TV Shows To Watch If You Love Jumanji

If you love the Jumanji franchise of movies, then these seven shows might be up your alley. Jumanji is an extended, unofficial media franchise of movies based on Chris Van Allsburg’s 1981 fantasy picture book Jumanji. This wonderful, mysterious, artful book is less than 1800 words and yet has spawned four films.

Each film involves a group of people, usually young people, coming into contact with “Jumanji”, a game, either board or video, that involves jungle-themed events and tasks. In Jumanji, these trials are real and often dangerous. They are thrilling, sometimes frightening, occasionally moving films. These seven shows hit a similar register.

The Adventures Of Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-1996)

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The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, sometimes called The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, or more simply, Young Indy, was developed by George Lucas and premiered on ABC in 1992. The series ran for two seasons, though four made-for-TV movies soon followed.

The series follows Indiana Jones’ adventures across the globe, either between the ages of 8 and 10, played by Corey Carrier, or between the ages of 16 and 21, where he’s played by Sean Patrick Flanery. Like Harrison Ford’s version, Young Indy is a globe-trotting adventure seeker, though Young Indy definitely spent time with more historical figures.

The series is a rollicking, impressively shot TV show, with a lot of the filming done on location. It featured dozens of well-regarded actors, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Daniel Craig, Timothy Spall, and more. An adventure, often with jungle themes, it’s very much in the wheelhouse of Jumanji fans.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the same feeling of opening up a mystical portal and letting something sinister out that the Jumanji movies have, except that instead of a video game, there’s a gaping Hellmouth in the middle of the ironically named Sunnydale where the series takes place.

Buffy stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as the titular vampire Slayer, one in a long line of Slayers, women with supernatural strength who are the frontlines against the forces of evil. There are certainly a lot of vampires to face, but there are plenty of other horror-inspired creatures that raise their ugly heads throughout seven seasons of the show.

Like Jumanji, the stakes are surprisingly real despite the often overtly comic tone of the show. Buffy is much more like the 1995 film, where innocents are often dragged into the “game”, and the threat of a horrific death is around every corner. Even still, the cool, capable attitudes of everyone involved keep you watching.

Relic Hunter (1999-2000)

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The Canadian adventure series Relic Hunter is like if Tomb Raider met Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and it’s a fun, spirited entry in the genre that never gets enough attention. The series follows Professor Sydney Fox (Tia Carrere), an archaeologist who travels around the globe with her British assistant, Nigel Bailey (Christien Anholt).

Each episode begins with an artifact, shown in its own time, before something foul befalls it. The episode then zooms to the present where Sydney and Nigel are making plans to retrieve said object. Skilled in self-defense and knowledgeable of history, Sydney is able to overcome whatever opposition is trying to take the artifact for themselves.

The three-season series is filled with real-world historical facts, and Carrere’s exuberant performance actually makes you care about the fate of something like Anne Boleyn’s ring. It’s a TV show so completely filled with the feel of the ’90s, and bursting with campy fun that kept the energy up through 66 episodes.

Survivor (2000-Present)

You’re not going to get more of a real-life version of Jumanji than Survivor. It basically is Jumanji, sans animals. A group of people agree to play a game; they’re transported to a jungle; they compete in rigorous tasks in order to move forward in their quest. Add in a mustachioed Jonanthan Hyde or a hairy Rory McCann as a villain, and you almost have the films.

Survivor has been on the air since 2000 and is the gold standard for reality TV competitions. Hosted by Jeff Probst for CBS, Survivor takes a group of people to an isolated island where they are split into teams and have to find food and shelter for themselves. They compete in a variety of physical and mental challenges while they’re there, resulting in prizes and punishments.

Almost every episode ends in the “Tribal Council”, where that week’s losing team has to vote one of their members out. It’s not just the physically gifted, or the best riddle solvers who win Survivor, but those who understand the game best, able to tilt the dynamics and odds in their direction.

Hooten & The Lady (2016)

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The British adventure drama, Hooten & the Lady only ran for eight episodes, but if you can manage to find where to stream the series, absolutely give it a watch. It’s a refreshing throwback to the adventure movies of the ’50s and ’60s like The African Queen and King Solomon’s Mines.

Ulysses Hooten (Michael Landes) is an American globe-trotter, and Lady Alexandra Lindo-Parker (Ophelia Lovibond) is a curator at the British Museum. When the search for the lost camp of Percy Fawcett in the Amazon brings the unlikely pair together, they team up to travel the world collecting lost treasures.

Along the way, the two very unlike companions form a bond that, interestingly, never becomes romantic. It’s a rare thing for a show to forgo an easy relationship storyline between a female and male lead, and their honest friendship grounds the series, bringing humanity to the outsized plots.

Stranger Things (2016-2025)

If you’ve watched Jumanji, particularly the latest iterations, chances are you’ve watched Stranger Things too. In fact, if you own a television, chances are you watched Stranger Things. It was one of the most popular TV shows for nearly a decade, and the franchise doesn’t appear to be losing steam.

Like Jumanji, Stranger Things brings its characters into a tabletop game, though in Stranger Things, not literally so. The Dungeons & Dragons that the main heroes play each season is more like a motif, not a function of the world, with the kids translating the horrors they face into the language of their favorite game in order to better understand it.

Stranger Things ran for five seasons, finally coming to a close at the end of 2025. Steeped in the tropes and tone of ’80s Spielberg movies, Stranger Things is a throwback in the truest sense. It’s a compelling mystery series filled with great action and moving character arcs that people of any age can appreciate.

A Series Of Unfortunate Events (2017-2019)

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A Series of Unfortunate Events is the second adaptation of Daniel Handler’s (under his nom de plume Lemony Snicket) young adult series. Each book is divided up into two episodes, with the last book, The End, only taking up one episode. Like the books, the show is self-referential and frequently breaks the fourth wall.

It’s funny, strange, dream-like, and heroic, much like the books, and the complex adventure the Baudelaire children go on would be frighteningly intense if not for their competence and courage. It’s a wonder of production design, with the video game level-like locations of the book rendered in amazing detail.

Snicket’s story is filled with mysteries, morals, and strange characters, and the Netflix series includes just about every one of them. It’s one of the rare few completed TV adaptations that was given all the time and money to complete its vision, and any fan of Jumanji will be immensely satisfied by the show.