It has barely been a month since the release of Squid Game, yet the Netflix Korean series has garnered world-wide attention by contrasting innocent children’s games with violent bloodshed. Squid Game follows 456 people, all drowning in debt, as they gather and risk their lives to play a series of games for a 45.6 billion won prize. The series has recently outpaced Bridgerton as the most popular TV series on Netflix by reaching 132 million people across the globe in the mere span of 23 days, a whopping 50 million more than the Regency-era drama.

While the gore and thrill of deathly children’s games have no doubt added to the allure of Squid Game, its authentic and relatable characters are the ones who’ve turned the nine-episode Korean drama into an unlikely international sensation. For all their flaws and faults, many characters we have grown to love, such as Gi-hun, Sang-woo, Sae-byeok, and Ali, were all motivated by everyday socio-economic issues that placed their families at stake, making their decision to put their lives and those of others around them on the line all the more devastating to witness. Torn between friendship and self, they offer a disturbingly truthful depiction of human nature and lay bare the social pressure and hardships surrounding success in an unfair and unforgiving society, hitting home for many sitting in front of their screens.

Though millions are left on the edge of their seats by the last episode of Squid Game, film director Hwang Dong-hyuk has not announced any plans for Season 2. But despair not — we have rounded up a list of the best TV shows you can watch while you wait.

Alice in Borderland (2020)

If you’re among the 132 million that have sped through Squid Game, you would have definitely heard of Alice in Borderland. The Japanese Netflix TV series has been getting plenty of buzz recently for its violent game-centric plot which echoes that of the Korean drama’s. In Alice in Borderland, jobless video-gamer Arisu was hiding from the police with his two best friends when he suddenly finds himself in an eerie, abandoned Tokyo. He soon realises that he has to compete in a series of deathly games to survive, the nature and difficulty of which are determined by traditional playing cards. The rules are simple: every win grants the player a certain amount of time to live, and once your time runs out, you die. 

Extracurricular (2020)

While Extracurricular does not involve games with graphically violent consequences, the Korean TV series, like Squid Game, is also set in modern-day Korea and takes a deep dive into themes of socio-economic disparity. Extracurricular follows gifted high school student Oh Ji-soo (Dong-Hee Kim) as he runs an illegal business after school to support himself. But when wealthy classmate Bae Gyu-ri (Park Ju-hyun) finds out about his extracurricular activities, he is left with no choice but to let her in on his side hustle, even when the police catch on to his secret. 

Clickbait (2021)

As the name of the series suggests, Clickbait comprises eight logically-defying episodes filled with endless twists and turns, promising the same shock factor as Squid Game’s gory Red Light Green Light scene. Loving family man, brother and son Nick Brewer (Adrian Grenier) appears in a viral video in which he holds up a series of signs on which he confesses to abusing women, with another one reading  “At 5 million views I die.” As the video burns through the internet and news networks, Nick’s family members are left on their own to piece together the truth about the man they all love.