Marvel fans were left devastated earlier this year when Netflix decided to cancel The Punisher after just two seasons. After years of waiting, we finally had a screen version of Frank Castle who was as brutally violent as he is in the comics. Jon Bernthal had nailed the character’s gruff mentality and fans were excited to see his story continue on the streaming service for years to come. But then Netflix decided to gut all of its shows with ties to Disney in the wake of Disney’s challenge to them with the announcement of Disney+.
10. Daredevil
This one is an obvious choice, because Jon Bernthal’s Frank Castle is literally in it. He had a supporting role in the second season before getting his own show. But Daredevil as a whole has a lot in common with The Punisher. Both Daredevil and the Punisher are among the Marvel universe’s darker characters (they’re both vigilantes who have no superpowers and deal with street-level criminals). Daredevil was actually the first Marvel show on Netflix, so it’s sort of the Iron Man of the streaming platform’s own mini MCU. Daredevil made it to three seasons before Netflix’s Marvel show massacre.
9. Ozark
Although it’s set in the chilly Ozarks, far away from the big-city settings of The Punisher, Ozark is surprisingly similar to The Punisher. It’s like if The Punisher didn’t have a vigilante going through the corrupt organizations and killing anyone with unscrupulous morals.
There are gangsters trying to bilk other gangsters out of money and shady dealings with crooked politicians – plus, someone gets murdered in pretty much every episode – but all the characters are just as bad as each other. There’s no one to counterbalance the terrible behavior with heroism. It’s dark and gritty and perfect for fans of The Punisher.
8. Godless
If The Punisher was set in Old West and the characters were all infamous outlaws, then it might look something like Godless. It’s a western miniseries on Netflix with only seven episodes, so it’s a pretty easy binge to knock out in a day (or, at a stretch, a weekend), and the violence is just as shocking and brutal as it is in The Punisher. The miniseries has a spectacular cast featuring some of today’s finest rising stars, including Jack O’Connell, Michelle Dockery, and Scoot McNairy. Some publications, including Vanity Fair and the Washington Post, included Godless as one of the top ten TV shows of the year when it was released in 2017.
7. Mindhunter
The Punisher did a lot of digging into the mentality of murderers, as Frank Castle was an ex-soldier and vigilante who killed people as easily as he brushed his teeth and all the people he was killing were also killers. David Fincher and Charlize Theron’s Netflix series Mindhunter goes all in with the analysis of the killer psychology. It’s set in the ‘70s and tells the story of the first agents in the FBI to get stuck into criminal psychology and criminal profiling. There’s only one season so far, but this year’s upcoming second season will cover the Atlanta murders of 1979-81.
6. The Shield
FX’s premier crime drama The Shield is more of a police procedural than The Punisher, which is sort of a vigilante procedural, but they both feature a brooding, violent antihero as a lead protagonist. In The Shield, that antihero is Vic Mackey, a dirty cop played by Michael Chiklis who would do anything for his family (or for money). Mackey is surrounded by an interesting ensemble of characters, including cops who are far more corrupt than him and cops who are far less corrupt than him. Kurt Sutter, one of the writers who worked on The Shield, would go on to create Sons of Anarchy for the same network.
5. The Walking Dead
The zombie-infested premise of The Walking Dead might not seem in line with the grit and grime of The Punisher, but they’re actually very similar shows. They’re both as dark and violent and bloody as each other, they’re both adapted pretty faithfully from critically acclaimed comic books, and they both star Jon Bernthal. Bernthal was only in the first couple of seasons of The Walking Dead, but by then, you’ll be hooked and you’ll want to charge on with the show regardless. His TWD character is a little like Frank Castle in that he’s an antihero who’s made mistakes, except his TWD character is a version of that guy who couldn’t come back from his madness.
4. Altered Carbon
Also on Netflix, this sci-fi neo noir series is like The Punisher set in the distant future. The lead character Takeshi Kovacs, played by Joel Kinnaman (and played by Anthony Mackie in the second season, in which he’ll take on a new host body), is a highly skilled, very dangerous, and very cool ass-kicker in the mold of Frank Castle.
It’s the most beautifully rendered visual take on the cyberpunk genre to date, with crisp visual effects resulting from a season 1 production budget that was reportedly bigger than the budget for the first three seasons of Game of Thrones combined.
3. Peaky Blinders
Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy star in this gritty crime drama about a criminal organization in Birmingham, England, in the late 1910s and early 1920s in the aftermath of the First World War. That chapter of history screwed up the gang’s operations, since a lot of their guys were sent off to fight in the war, leaving the matriarch in charge. The title comes from the gangsters’ hats, which would contain blades that they’d use to slash the eyes of (or “blind”) their enemies, so it’s fair to say that Peaky Blinders is just as violent as The Punisher, if not more.
2. Preacher
AMC’s Preacher is based on Garth Ennis’ action-packed horror comics of the same name. Just like The Punisher, it took a dark, violent character from a comic book series that fans never thought they’d see translated to the screen and, well, translated his stories to the screen. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, the duo behind the scripts for Superbad and Pineapple Express, helped to shepherd the adaptation to the screen, and they’ve brought their hilarious comedic sensibility to the show, balancing out the darkness with some sick humor. It’s not a Marvel show, but it is a comic book show. It’ll end this year with its fourth and final season.
1. Luke Cage
Another show from Netflix’s unfortunately short-lived Marvel universe, Luke Cage has just as many awesome action sequences and just as much slick, stylized violence as The Punisher. It’s not quite as brutal, but its lead character does the same sort of thing. He’s a lone wolf who bursts into buildings full of criminals and tears his way through them until they’re all dead. In Frank Castle’s case, this is because he’s a very well-trained soldier who can withstand gunshots when he’s on a warpath. In Luke Cage’s case, it’s because he’s got superhuman strength that makes him impervious to bullets.
