Coldwater: 5 psychological thriller shows to hop on to next if you liked the ITV series

Andrew‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌ Lincoln's Coldwater initially looks like a serene restart kind of story, but it gradually changes to a much darker thing where trust disappears, fear becomes dominant, and the safety feeling vanishes.

The experience of the series is comparable to being in a quiet room and slowly realizing that you have company. That is the type of mental suspense it manipulates. It doesn't have loud moments. It is not glamorous. It goes into your brain and remains ‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌there.

At its heart, Coldwater is about a man running from himself, a family trying to stay together, and a community that hides its worst secrets behind smiles and church doors. The show proves that danger does not always come from strangers.

Sometimes it lives next door, waves at you every morning, and knows all your weak spots. If that slow poison style tension worked on you, you are probably craving more shows that mess with your mind instead of just scaring you for fun.

So what should you watch next after Coldwater? Well, you should watch stories where obsession grows quietly, where trauma shapes choices, and where the scariest thing is human behavior.

Below are five psychological thriller shows that hit that same nerve and keep the tension crawling instead of exploding.

Coldwater: 5 psychological thriller shows to hop on to next if you liked the ITV series

1) You - (Netflix, 2018 to 2025)

If Andrew‍‌‍‍‌‍‌‍‍‌ Lincoln's Coldwater made you uncomfortable because of how well evil can hide behind charm, You takes that idea and runs an entire relay race with it. This show lives inside the head of Joe Goldberg, and that alone makes it disturbing in a very personal way.

Just like Andrew Lincoln's show, the danger here does not announce itself. Joe seems polite, thoughtful, even romantic at first glance. That is exactly why watching You feels so tense.

What really connects You to Coldwater is the way obsession is framed. Joe convinces himself he is a good guy. He believes his actions come from love, protection, and destiny. That self-lying is terrifying because it feels real. In Andrew Lincoln's show, Tommy also hides behind belief systems and community roles. Both characters wrap their darkness in logic that almost sounds convincing until it is too late.

Each season of You shifts locations and relationships, but Joe stays the same at his core. He watches, studies, and controls the girls and people who serve him with a level of interest. Social media becomes his weapon, just like rumors and small-town whispers in Coldwater. The show constantly asks how far someone will go when they think they are right.

What makes You easy to binge is how it pulls you into complicity. You know Joe is wrong, yet you keep listening. That uneasy feeling mirrors how Coldwater makes you question your own judgment. If you liked watching Andrew Lincoln's show slowly peel back a charming monster, You will hit the same nerve and then push it further.

2) The Haunting of Hill House - (Netflix, 2018)

The Haunting of Hill House works on a different surface level, but emotionally, it sits very close to Coldwater. Instead of a village, the trap here is a house. Instead of one threat, it is memory, grief, and trauma that never left. This show proves that psychological thrillers do not need constant danger to feel heavy. Sometimes the weight comes from the past refusing to stay buried.

What connects The Haunting of Hill House to Andrew Lincoln's show is the very idea that the environment that flows around each one of us is what shapes us. To put it simply, in Coldwater, the village slowly turns hostile, almost alive in how it corners the family. In Hill House, the house itself feeds on fear and sadness. Both stories show how spaces can swallow people whole without them realizing it.

The Crain siblings in The Haunting of Hill House all carry scars from childhood, and the show jumps between timelines to show how trauma never really moves in a straight line. That mirrors John’s struggle in Andrew Lincoln's show. He is never just dealing with the present. His past failure keeps echoing in every choice he makes.

The Haunting of Hill House also plays with perception. You never know if something is truly supernatural or deeply psychological. That blurred line keeps you thinking long after episodes end. If Andrew Lincoln's show hooked you because it made you doubt what was real and who could be trusted, The Haunting of Hill House offers that same slow-burning unease, just wrapped in ghosts and grief.

3) Severance - (Apple TV, 2022 - Present)

Severance feels clean, quiet, and strange right from the start, which makes it perfect for fans of Coldwater. On the surface, it is about work-life balance taken to an extreme. Underneath, it is about identity being sliced apart. The show asks a brutal question. Who are you when parts of you are erased?

Like Coldwater, Severance builds tension through control and manipulation. Lumon Industries does not need chains or cages. It uses rules, routines, and rewards to keep people in line. The characters are trapped without fully understanding how deep the trap goes. That feeling is very similar to John slowly realizing he cannot escape Tommy’s influence in Coldwater.

What makes Severance feel so very unsettling is how calm everything looks. Bright hallways, polite conversations, and childlike rewards hide something rotten. Andrew Lincoln's show uses friendliness and faith in the same way. In both shows, kindness becomes a mask that covers cruelty.

The split between innies and outies also mirrors the emotional split seen in Andrew Lincoln's show. The characters on the show are forced to live with missing pieces of themselves. Trauma does not disappear just because memory does. It leaks through behavior, panic, and fear. If you liked Coldwater for how it explored identity and internal conflict, Severance will keep your brain busy long after the credits roll.

4) Mindhunter - (Netflix, 2017 to 2019)

Mindhunter strips away drama and replaces it with conversation, which somehow makes it even more disturbing. This show is all about understanding real-life serial killers by interviewing and listening to them. There are no flashy chases or big twists. The very psychological thrill lives in words, pauses, and eye contact.

Coldwater and Mindhunter share a deep interest in why people become monsters. Tommy’s childhood trauma in Andrew Lincoln's show is not used as an excuse, but it is shown as part of the puzzle. Mindhunter does the same thing on a larger scale. It looks at upbringing, abuse, and environment to explain behavior without forgiving it.

What makes Mindhunter connect strongly with Coldwater is how obsession spreads. In Andrew Lincoln's show, Tommy projects his darkness onto John. In Mindhunter, Holden Ford slowly absorbs the minds he studies. Understanding evil comes at a cost, and the show never lets you forget that.

The slow pacing might not be for everyone, but if you appreciated Andrew Lincoln's show for its quiet dread and psychological depth, Mindhunter feels like a natural next step. It trusts the audience to listen, think, and sit with discomfort. That patience is exactly what makes Coldwater work quite well.

5) Mare of Easttown - (HBO/HBO Max, 2021)

Mare of Easttown brings the small-town pressure cooker back into focus, which makes it a perfect follow-up to Coldwater. The murder mystery is important, but the real story is about a woman drowning in grief while being watched by everyone she knows. Privacy does not exist in places like this.

Just like Coldwater, the town itself becomes a character. Everyone is connected. Everyone knows everyone’s past. Secrets do not stay buried for long. That closeness creates paranoia, suspicion, and guilt that spread fast. Mare carries the weight of being both protector and suspect in her own community.

What really links Mare of Easttown to Andrew Lincoln's show is emotional damage as a leading factor. Mare is not chasing answers just for justice. She is trying to survive her own pain. Andrew Lincoln's show highlights a similar struggle through the characters of John and Fiona, whose marriage and sanity are constantly tested by fear and doubt.

The show also refuses easy villains. Every character feels human, messy, and broken in their own way. That realism makes the final reveals hit harder. If Coldwater grabbed your attention because it showed how tragedy twists people in their heads instead of turning them into mere cartoons, Mare of Easttown delivers that same grounded intensity.

Coldwater works because it understands that real fear does not scream. It whispers. It grows in silence, in friendly smiles, in places that are supposed to feel safe. That same idea runs through all the shows mentioned above.

Whether it is obsession dressed up as love, grief hiding behind routine, or control masked as care, these stories know how to mess with your head without trying too hard. They let tension build slowly, almost patiently, until you suddenly realize how deep you are in it.

If you connected with Andrew Lincoln's show, it is probably because it trusted you as a viewer. It did not rush answers or explain everything right away. These five shows listed above do the very same. They ask you to sit with the very thought of discomfort, question the people you thought you understood and knew, and also accept that the scariest villains often look quite ordinary.

Watching these five shows and living with their characters feels less like pure entertainment and more like slowly stepping into a quiet storm. They pull you into a psychological space where tension builds gently but relentlessly, and once you are inside, it is hard to find a way out.

That is the power these stories hold. They do not just tell you a story; they make you feel it, and leaving that world behind is never easy once you have dared to enter it.