Forget Supernatural, This Is the Best Monster-Hunting Show Ever Made (& I Can Prove It)

If someone brings up the idea of “best monster hunter shows”, there’s one show that immediately comes to mind and it’s Supernatural. After all, with an incredible 15 season, 327 episode run, the Winchester brothers fought a lot of monsters and had a huge impact on popular culture. Supernatural’s status as one of the great monster hunting series is well-deserved and there are some moments that will forever reign supreme. But for as great as Supernatural is, there’s a show that actually did the format better. It may not have ran for as long or have been as massively popular in its time, but it’s a series that did monster hunting right.

Grimm debuted on NBC on October 28, 2011. The series, which ran for six seasons and 123 episodes, starred David Giuntoli as Portland homicide detective Nicholas Burkhardt who discovers he is a Grimm, someone who is the latest in a line of guardians with the sworn duty to confront monsters and mythological creatures (known as Wesen) and keep the balance between said creatures and humanity. The series also stars Russell Hornsby, Silas Weir Mitchell, Elizabeth Tulloch, Sasha Roiz, Reggie Lee, Bree Turner, and Claire Coffee. While the idea of Grimm is similar to that of Supernatural which debuted six years earlier, what sets Grimm apart is its formula, its mythology, and ultimately the more intimate character work that makes the story more personal and grounded in a way Supernatural isn’t.

Grimm Is a Police Procedural With a Twist And It Makes For a More Surprising Story

When you watch Grimm, one of the biggest takeaways is that, even though it’s definitely a monster of the week/monster hunting based show, there’s more to it. There’s mystery to it that isn’t just about hunting down the thing. Each individual episode has the monster and its own mystery, but those mysteries build on one another. Nick encounters Wesen that he hasn’t previously, which builds out the mythology and lore of the world we’re in, that mythology and lore ties into the actual policework that Nick is doing and the world within a world elements of it all grow even deeper and more intertwined. It’s a much more complex form of storytelling than what we get from Supernatural, at least in the earlier seasons.

That complexity also factors into the personal stories in the series as well. We get to see Nick having to deal with the fallout and consequences not only of what it means to be a Grimm, but also the details of the world that his role opens to him. There are ancient vendettas, conspiracies, bloodlines, and more that make the story something more than a police procedural with monsters. It’s also a human story about coming to terms with who you really are and what it means when you have to embrace that. One of the things about Grimm that stands out as making the monster hunting format of the show so good is that the consequences and complications are real and impacts everyone close to Nick in ways we don’t necessarily see in a show like Supernatural. Nick has to carry with him everything that happens. He can’t just get in the car and drive to the next town, something that is brought into sharp focus when his love interest Juliette (Tulloch) ends up turning into a Hexenbiest and gets shot.

Grimm Ended Too Soon, But Its Shorter Run Kept the Story Approachable

One of the biggest things that works in Grimm’s favor in terms of it being the superior monster hunter show might actually be the length of its run. Admittedly, Grimm is a series that ended too soon. The series was cancelled in 2017 and a spinoff that was supposed to happen never materialized ultimately leaving fans wanting more — and to be clear, fans still want more as reboot and continuation calls come up regularly. But while the series only got six seasons, that actually works. One of the issues with Supernatural as a monster hunting series is that it, frankly, went on too long. Now, do not get me wrong: Supernatural remained a good and entertaining show until it ended. But there did come a point where it became kind of a victim of its own mythology and was overwhelmed by the world it had created and the increasingly outlandish stories. Grimm never reached that point. All six seasons remained tight and character focused and even as the world around Nick expanded and deepened, the focus on neither good nor evil but shades of gray remained. It was smart and felt like something that could actually exit right alongside our own non-television show reality from start to finish. Simply put, Nick wasn’t fighting God to save the world. Nick was just trying to do his job. It’s extremely relatable.

With a deeply relatable story, a character trying to balance his job — both as a cop and as a Grimm — with simply having a life, and by existing in a world where monsters and supernatural creatures are, in some respects, much like anyone else and therefore not always good or bad but often somewhere in between, Grimm offered up a monster hunting format series that was less about the monsters and the hunting and more about the humanity. It’s a supernatural story that doesn’t feel supernatural — and even if you disagree with me and think the Winchester brothers are still the best monster-of-the week guys, if you give Grimm a watch I’m pretty sure you’ll be hooked on this show, too.

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