25 Best Fantasy TV Series, Ranked Worst to First

17. Dark Shadows

There have been a lot of popular classic fantasy TV series, but many of them erred on the side of comedy. While shows like Addams Family and The Munsters were great fun, they were at heart more comedy than fantasy and failed to make this list as a result. However, at the same time, there were some fantasy shows that fell solidly in the genre of the fantastical, including Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which barely missed out on making this list, and the hugely popular Dark Shadows.

Younger movie fans might recognize the name from the Johnny Depp movie remake of the classic fantasy TV series but that movie failed in many ways to delve into what made Dark Shadows such a great show. For one thing, this wasn’t a mystery series or horror show and was instead a fantasy gothic soap opera.

Airing from 1966 until 1971, Dark Shadows told the stories of the Collins family in Maine and also centered on supernatural occurrences that occurred in that town. While some popular soap operas dealt with the supernatural, with Days of Our Lives as an obvious example, Dark Shadows entire premise was seeping with fantasy and gothic themes. While the series was not very popular in its first season, things picked up in the second year when Barnabas Collins showed up, a 175-year-old vampire looking for both some fresh blood, as well as his lost love.

Dark Shadows featured ghosts, vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, warlocks and more among its monsters. There was also time travel and a parallel dimension. The series lasted almost five years and aired 1,225 episodes.