Missing Cobra Kai? Watch These 6 Shows Based on 80s Movies
Cobra Kai is finally over. After six seasons and 65 episodes, the martial arts drama based on the Karate Kid movies of the 1980s ended with its characters achieving closure. That's quite rare in a world where TV shows so often get canceled before their stories reach a proper conclusion.
Cobra Kai wasn't the greatest TV show ever made, but it stayed true to its 80s origins, with a healthy dose of cheese, humor, and the good guys ultimately winning out. If you have a 1980s-shaped hole in your viewing schedule, there's some good news because Cobra Kai isn't the only TV show inspired by 80s movies. There are plenty more out there to watch if you can find them.
Willow
One of the joys of Cobra Kai was seeing old faces from the original Karate Kid movies making a return, with original cast members such as Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reprising their roles. The same is true of Willow , a fantasy series based on the 1988 movie of the same name. It stars Warwick Davis in the same title role that he played in the original Ron Howard movie.
The show had pretty good reviews, with a critic score of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes , and is essential viewing if you're a fan of the original movie. There's a major catch, however. The show was created for Disney+ , and in May 2023, it was pulled from the streaming service to cut costs, a move that many streaming services have made in recent years.
As a Disney+ exclusive, this means that it's not available on any streaming service, effectively removing any (legal) way to stream the show. You can find DVDs and Blu-rays of the series online, but these are not official Disney releases.
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
If you love the original Willow movie, then you're probably a fan of the 1982 fantasy movie The Dark Crystal , too. As you might expect from a film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz, the movie features a cast entirely made up of puppets, but these aren't the cute puppets you know from The Muppets or Sesame Street . There are some genuinely disturbing characters for a family movie.
TheDark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a series that stands as a prequel to the original movie and once again features a cast of puppets but with an impressive voice cast including Taron Egerton, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Helena Bonham Carter.
The show has mostly positive reviews, with a lot of praise for the use of physical puppets and practical effects rather than CGI, but some criticism of a lack of character depth. Sadly, the show was canceled after one series. However, if you were a fan of the original movie, it's worth a watch, and thankfully it's still available to stream on Netflix.
Lethal Weapon
While Cobra Kai was a continuation of the original Karate Kid story, the Lethal Weapon series is a reboot of the original 1980s Lethal Weapon movies starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. The show is based on the same concept as the movies, with the focus on two mismatched detectives who become partners. Damon Wayans plays Roger Murtaugh, an aging family man, with Clayne Crawford playing Martin Riggs, a young and volatile detective who is struggling to deal with the murder of his pregnant wife.
After two seasons, Clayne Crawford was fired from the show, and his character was killed off. In the third and final season, Murtaugh gains a new partner, played by Seann William Scott. The show had mixed reviews but got a lot of praise for the chemistry between its two leads. You can currently stream all three seasons of Lethal Weapon on Amazon Prime Video .
Ash vs Evil Dead
If you're a fan of 80s horror movies, then you'll almost certainly have watched the cult classic Evil Dead series. The first movie ( The Evil Dead , 1981) was intended as a serious horror film, with Evil Dead II (1987) adding more humor to the mix and Army of Darkness (1993) being an all-out horror-comedy.
Ash vs Evil Dead is set 30 years after the original movies and sees Bruce Campbell reprise his role as Ash Williams. He's settled back into reality after the exploits of the movies and hasn't made much of his life, but wouldn't you know it, the Deadites return, and Ash is forced to try to save the world all over again.
If you loved the Evil Dead movies, then Ash vs Evil Dead gives you three seasons that are on par with the original trilogy. The only downer is that the series was canceled with the plot still unresolved, and there's no sign of a fourth series as yet, despite rumors of an animated version .
You can watch all three seasons of Ash vs Evil Dead on Starz. You can also access it on platforms such as Hulu and Prime Video with a Starz add-on subscription.
RoboCop: The Series
The Dutch director Paul Verhoeven is seen by some as a genius and by others as a hack. I'm firmly in the first camp; I think he knows exactly what he's doing with movies such as Starship Troopers and Total Recall . RoboCop is arguably his best film, a perfect blend of sci-fi, political satire, and killer robots.
If you love RoboCop , you might want to check out the 1994 RoboCop series. It was aimed at a younger audience than the original movie, so it lacks the same violence and gore. Despite that, however, you may be surprised, as there's a lot to like about it.
The 22 episodes that are currently available on Amazon Prime Video should be enough to sate your RoboCop needs until the release of Amazon's RoboCop series that's reportedly in the works . If that's not enough, there's also an animated series and the Canadian TV miniseries RoboCop: Prime Directives (2011) to keep you going.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew
The first Star Wars movie may have been released in the 1970s, but the two subsequent sequels were firmly in the 80s. If you loved the original trilogy, there's an almost unending supply of movies and TV shows to keep you going, from the six other episodes of the Star Wars story to major shows such as The Mandalorian and Andor .
With so much content to get through, there may be plenty of series you've not yet seen. The newest addition is Star Wars: Skeleton Crew , which is set five years after the events of 1983's Return of the Jedi . If you loved that movie, then you're probably going to enjoy Skeleton Crew , which captures the same sense of wonder and adventure of the original movies and has a real 80s feel. It follows four kids who end up on an adventure throughout the Star Wars galaxy.
There's only one place to go for Skeleton Crew and all of your other Star Wars fixes, of course. It's streaming exclusively on Disney+. Let's just hope it doesn't get removed like Willow did.
The 1980s were packed with incredible movies, including classics such as Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., The Blues Brothers , and more. The Karate Kid was a fun movie, but it wouldn't even make most people's top 20, yet it still managed to produce an excellent spin-off TV show in Cobra Kai . If you're looking for a nostalgia hit or a new take on old classics, there are plenty of other 80s spin-off TV shows for you to enjoy, provided that you can find a way to watch them…
