5 College-Set Shows To Watch After ‘Off Campus’
In just the short amount of time since it debuted, Off Campus (2026) has become a cultural phenomenon. From its soundtrack to its romance, fans can’t get enough of this show. It’s also inspiring viewers to seek out more shows set in college. Off Campus handles that setting so well with a tight-knit group of characters that make up one of TV’s best new ensembles.
It’s truly such a delightful surprise. It’s rare for coming-of-age shows that last long enough to get to the college years to actually explore them well. Sometimes, it feels like they stumble through them or, like One Tree Hill (2003), skip over those years altogether. So, it’s even less likely that a show solely set in college takes off. Felicity (1998) and The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021) are two standouts because shows in college aren’t awlays given a fighting chance. For that reason, there are a lot of underrated college-set shows that Off Campus fans can watch while they wait for Season 2. Here are 5 you can check out on Hulu, Prime Video, and more!
If you grew up watching Disney Channel in the early 2000s, there’s a great chance that you’re like me and watched Hellcats because it starred Aly Michalka and Ashley Tisdale. If not, this show is still well worth a watch. Off Campus fans may appreciate Hellcats’ prioritization of sports. It takes competitive college cheerleading seriously, as well as cheerleaders as athletes.
In some ways, Hellcats is a product of its time. Mostly, it has so much potential that never gets to grow. Sadly, this show only has one, 22-episode season to its name. Hellcats may be the first college-set show that I remember watching as it aired and being disappointed that it ended too soon. It’s also unfortunate that Hellcats isn’t the last time a college-set show on The CW was canceled after one promising season. All American: Homecoming (2024) deserved more, too!
Growing up in the early 2000s, I’ve seen nearly every show on ABC Family and Freeform. Greek is one of those, but it’s certainly one of the more underrated shows. It’s not in as many conversations as Pretty Little Liars (2010) or The Fosters (2013), but it should be. I never participated in Greek life in college or cared that much about it beforehand, but this show makes it engaging in a way that I never really anticipated. It’s also such a smart way to bind all the characters together when college could pull them all apart.
Off Campus fans would appreciate Greek’s approach to an ensemble and romance. Casey (Spencer Grammer) and Cappie (Scott Michael Foster) have the best romance on the show, let alone in a college-set show. It’s also worth mentioning that Greek’s four-season run is satisfying, with the final episode providing the closure fans want. Most of these college-set shows are short-lived or have shortened seasons, but Greek thrives with longer seasons besides its final one. Even so, the final season has 10 episodes, which is more than what most streaming shows get now.
Other than Off Campus, Overcompensating is one of the newest additions to the college show subgenre. As a fan of Benito Skinner and Marty Beth Barone’s podcast, Ride, I was always going to watch Overcompensating. Skinner created and stars in Overcompensating as Benny, and Barone plays his sister, Grace, which is brilliant casting. Skinner and Barone’s real-life friendship makes their characters’ strained sibling dynamic so much fun to watch.
Set in the 2010s, the soundtrack certainly becomes a main character. It starts with a pivotal moment from Benny’s childhood, set to Britney Spears’ “Lucky,” and one of my favorite sequences of the first season is set to a karaoke performance of My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Beyond the music, at which Off Campus is also great, my favorite part of Overcompensating so far is the friendship between Benny and Carmen (Wally Baram). With the show renewed, you have time to catch up before the second season.
Grown-ish is technically the first spinoff of the comedy Black-ish (2014), with the second being Mixed-ish (2021). The first four seasons follow Zoey Johnson’s (Yara Shahidi) time in college, but the focus turns to her younger brother, Junior (Marcus Scribner), in the last two seasons. Shahidi does pop in and out of the show after she steps back from being a series regular.
Nevertheless, it is important to go into Grown-ish knowing that there is a lot of cast turnover in the show after Season 4. Before that, though, the ensemble is the show’s strength. Even when the fast-paced storytelling can grate on the characters and their relationships, it’s really great to watch the core group find their footing at college together. Also, impressively, Grown-ish is a six-season, college-set comedy. That longevity for a show in this subgenre is all too rare now.
A lot of people probably came to Jennifer Kaytin Robinson’s work through the romantic comedy, Someone Great (2019) or, most recently, the legacy horror sequel, I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025). But Kaytin Robinson made a lifelong fan out of me from the MTV show that she created, Sweet/Vicious. I remember being so completely enthralled by this show from the start. It’s also one of the last scripted shows that aired on MTV, which is wild to think about.
I haven’t stopped thinking about this dark dramedy in the decade since it aired. On its surface, it’s about two girls who become vigilantes and target abusers on their college campus. It’s so funny and heartwarming, and the friendship between Ophelia (Taylor Deardon) and Jules (Eliza Bennett) is just one of the amazing relationships on the show. Off Campus fans will appreciate how much Sweet/Vicious values friendship. It’s worth mentioning that Sweet/Vicious deals with heavy subject matter, so a search into its trigger warnings may be beneficial before watching.
