What’s worth watching over Halloween – scariest TV shows and movies

Halloween is here, and the chances are you may well be planning an evening watching scary movies or TV shows while snuggled up indoors – at least, if you're not heading out to a fancy dress party.

With that in mind, you might be wondering what new spooky options there are to enjoy on TV and streamers. In recent years, Netflix has been a place to go when it comes to new shows for spooky season, with Mike Flanagan often writing his own new adaptations in time for Halloween – including The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass.

But that's not the case this year, and the streamer's two most Halloween-y shows – Wednesday and Stranger Things – don't have new episodes timed to the day itself, with the former having dropped its most recent in early September and the latter gearing up for the first part of its final season next month.

That said, there is one major new Halloween show on a different streamer, with prequel series It: Welcome to Derry having recently released it's first episode on NOW (the episodes are also airing on Sky Atlantic).

And as ever, the major linear channels have come up trumps by scheduling some classic horror films this evening – and you can also check out our separate list of classic Halloween movies, some of which are available on streaming.

Read on for our picks of the best TV shows and films showing this Halloween.

It: Welcome to Derry – Sky Atlantic and NOW

It's hard to imagine a TV show much more Halloween-y than a prequel series to It, and this new show certainly has some scares – with our review remarking that some of them "are massively effective, and truly skin-crawling".

Taking place in 1962 – 27 years before the events of Andy Muschietti's 2017 film adaptation – it introduces several new characters while also seeing Bill Skarsgård reprise his role as Pennywise, the fearsome dancing clown.

The first episode arrived last week on Sky Atlantic and NOW, and the second instalment has been moved forward for US audiences to coincide with Halloween, although we're still awaiting confirmation as to whether the same is true for UK audiences. Either way this is ideal viewing for Halloween.

Dead of Night - 4:45pm, Film4

This 1954 portmanteau horror from Ealing Studios tells five different ghost stories – including ones penned by HG Wells and EF Benson – after an architect goes to the home of a new client and finds that each of the inhabitants has a different story to tell.

Our five star review reads: "Alberto Cavalcanti's The Ventriloquist's Dummy episode has lost none of its shocking power, thanks largely to Michael Redgrave's astonishing performance, which ranks among the best of his career.

"There's also much to raise the hair on the back of the neck in Robert Hamer's The Haunted Mirror, while the linking story involving architect Mervyn Johns brings the whole thing to a nightmarish conclusion."

Scream 3 – 10:10pm – BBC Three

The trailer for the upcoming seventh instalment of the long-running self-aware slasher series has just launched in time for spooky season, and BBC Three are giving one of the previous films an airing on Halloween night.

This third entry sees Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) come out of hiding after the cast and crew of a movie dramatising her past experiences become the latest victims of a killer behind a Ghostface mask.

In our review of the film, we wrote that while it "lacks the bite" of the first two films, this threequel "features an engagingly prescient mystery about the dark side of Hollywood, and builds to an enjoyably tense climax" with "some charm to be found in the campy high jinks".

Don't Look Now - 11:40pm, BBC Two

One of the finest British films of all time, Nicolas Roeg's supernatural thriller starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie is adapted from a Daphne du Maurier short story and features some of the most striking and iconic images in the history of horror cinema.

Sutherland and Christie play grieving parents who travel to Venice and meet two unusual sisters, one of whom claims to be able to communicate with their dead child, leading to some extremely bizarre events.

Our five-star review calls it a "masterpiece", stating that it "offers a time-distorted vision of terror set in wintertime Venice" and remarking that "the fear-drenched mood of alienation is sustained right up until the unforgettable climax".

The Woman in Black – 12:40am, BBC One

One more late night horror option on the terrestrial channels is this 2012 adaptation of Susan Hill's gothic horror novel of the same name, starring Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role.

He plays a young solicitor who is sent to examine the documentation left behind by a woman who recently passed away, only for him to discover that her home holds a very dark secret.

We gave it a three-star review on its release, calling it "classy if cliché-ridden" and writing that "director James Watkins does a fine job re-creating the Hammer mood, atmosphere and style while nimbly chasing shadowy scares via sudden loud noises and close-up shock cuts".

Is It Cake? Halloween – Netflix

OK, so this one doesn't seem likely to lead to too many frights, but the most Halloween-specific option that Netflix has offered up this October is this special batch of episodes for the streamer's hit game show Is It Cake?

The format is the same as ever, with a raft of starry guests tasked with identifying whether a given object is the real thing or just a recreation made from cake, with each of this run's options having a Halloween theme.

There are four episodes to enjoy in all, with guests across the series including Brooklyn Nine-Nines's Chelsea Peretti and What We Do In The Shadows star Harvey Guillén.

Disney Twisted Wonderland: The Animation – Disney Plus

A slightly more left-field choice, perhaps, this new anime is based on a popular mobile-game of the same name, which follows a character named Yuu who is unexpectedly transported to another world via a magic mirror and soon finds himself attending that world's school of magic Night Raven College.

The school has seven dormitories, each based on a different Disney villain, which Yuu soon finds himself navigating as he gets used to his new life.

The first episode has just launched, and more will be coming to Disney Plus in the coming weeks.

If you're looking for something to watch tonight, check out our TV Guide and Streaming Guide. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.