Lucifer Meets Santa Clarita Diet In The CW's 71-Episode Urban Fantasy Series

Published Nov 14, 2026, 3:00 AM EST

El is a Junior TV Features Editor for ScreenRant, with previous experience as The Mary Sue's UK and Weekend Editor. She holds a Bachelor's in International Media and Entertainment Management, as well as an MA and Ph.D. in Creative Writing. There is little she loves more than discussing her favorite TV shows with fellow fans. One day, she hopes to publish an original fantasy novel.

Lucifer's storytelling format meets the hilarious zombie shenanigans of Santa Clarita Diet in the CW's innovative 71-episode series. Though Timothy Olyphant and Drew Barrymore's Santa Clarita Diet was sadly canceled after three seasons, it offered a refreshing take on the zombie horror genre. Rather than a dark, post-apocalyptic nightmare, it followed a suburban married couple, Joel and Sheila, whose lives are changed forever when Sheila inexplicably becomes a cannibalistic zombie. Desperate for human flesh, Joel and Sheila try to find new, non-murderous ways to satisfy her needs — though they aren't always successful.

It was a subversive, comedic take on a well-worn genre, and it deserved more attention. However, before Santa Clarita Diet's 2017 premiere, another horror show introduced a similarly gory yet funny walking dead story: iZombie. The CW series, which ran for five seasons between 2015 and 2019, follows medical resident Olivia "Liv" Moore (Rose McIver), forced to make a major career change when she wakes up the night after a party craving one thing, and one thing only: people's brains.

The good news? Eating brains will keep her in control and prevent her from becoming a frenzied, homicidal nightmare. The bad news? Eating brains also temporarily forces Liv to absorb not only that person's memories but also their personality. Lucky for Liv, the police could really benefit from such an unusual, horrifying power. Taking a job in a Seattle morgue, Liv finds a way to feed without killing anyone and finds a new calling at the same time.

Of course, iZombie was far from the first police procedural to introduce a detective with a useful supernatural skill. A year after iZombie's premiere, Fox debuted Lucifer, which sees the actual devil become a consultant for the LAPD, using his compulsive powers to get suspects to reveal their deepest desires. Both Lucifer and iZombie are also loosely inspired by their DC Comics source material; the characters and lore were adapted for an episodic, case-of-the-week format.

While that choice undoubtedly made the shows more palatable to a wider audience — procedural dramas have been the backbone of network TV for decades — it didn't stop them from fully embracing their supernatural originals. iZombie, especially, remains one of the most innovative, rewatchable procedurals of all time.

iZombie Is One Of Network TV's Most Unique Procedural Series

Though procedural series can, hypothetically, last forever (cast changes aren't as much of an issue in this format), they're not always equally rewatchable. Once the killer's identity has been revealed, an episode's story often loses its power. The same isn't true for iZombie. Though Liv and her eventual co-conspirators, medical examiner Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli) and Seattle PD detective Clive Babineaux (Malcolm Goodwin), do solve weekly murder cases together, Liv's unusual role in the investigation keeps every episode feeling exciting and new.

After all, McIver doesn't just play Liv's character. She also portrays dozens of one-off murder victims. She's been a kleptomaniac, a compulsive liar, a pretentious artist, a grumpy old man, a social media addict, a frat bro, a trained sniper, and a dominatrix, just to name a few. This makes every episode unpredictable, not only the investigations but also Liv's individual experiences.

Though some of the personalities she adopts are harmless, others wreak havoc on her already fragile personal life, causing her to act irrationally towards the people she loves most. The show grounds its supernatural procedural storytelling with Liv's personal drama, giving every character, including her best friend Peyton (Aly Michalka) and her ex-fiancé, Major (Robert Buckley), a chance to evolve throughout the show, especially once they become aware of Liv's newly undead status.

iZombie also benefits from an overarching, serialized story, with the zombie conspiracy soon spreading throughout the city. Much like Lucifer (and earlier genre peers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer), that part of the show becomes more pronounced in later seasons. Still, it never loses the formulaic spark that made it different from other network TV procedurals.

Beneath all the zombie drug deals and homicide investigations, Liv's entire journey in iZombie is about reclaiming her humanity after an unimaginably traumatic incident. How can someone retain their sense of self and self-worth when they've essentially become a shape-shifter, a chameleon capable of digesting other people's memories and personalities? That's powerful, deeply character-driven storytelling, something that's missing from a lot of other procedural shows — supernatural or otherwise.

All seasons of iZombie are available to stream on Prime Video.