Mad Men

Series Similar to Mad Men

If you enjoyed Mad Men, these series share similar themes, tone, and quality. Each recommendation is scored on genre overlap, tonal match, and critical acclaim.

1. Halt and Catch Fire

   2014 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.1), also on AMC.

   Halt and Catch Fire is set roughly one year after IBM all but corners the market with the release of its first major product – the IBM PC. In this fictional drama, a former IBM executive, Joe MacMillan plans to reverse engineer the flagship product of his former employer and forces his current company, Cardiff Electric, into the personal computer race. MacMillan enlists the help of Gordon Clark, a great engineer whose unrealized dreams of creating a revolutionary product have created tension in his marriage to Donna, and Cameron Howe, a volatile prodigy who puts her future in jeopardy to join MacMillan's rogue PC project. Halt and Catch Fire thrives on the spirit of innovation and explores what it's like to stand at the forefront of something world-changing and work towards it, no matter the risk.

2. The Newsroom

   2012 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.4).

   The Newsroom follows the members of a cable news team on their quixotic mission to do the news well in the face of a fickle audience, corporate mandates and tangled personal relationships.

3. Manhattan

   2014 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

   Set in Los Alamos, N.M., at the Manhattan Project during the race to build the world's first atomic bomb, Manhattan explores the cost of secrets and the corrosive effect they have on individuals, families and their relationships.

4. Big Love

   2006 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, hidden gem.

   Bill Henrickson seems like a typical suburban husband and father, except for the fact that he has three wives, seven kids and three homes to maintain. The Salt Lake City polygamist has to juggle his families' needs while overseeing his growing chain of home-improvement stores and attempting to reconnect with his fundamentalist relatives.

5. Lessons in Chemistry

   2023 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

   Set in the early 1950s, Lessons in Chemistry follows Elizabeth Zott, whose dream of being a scientist is put on hold in a society deeming that women belong in the domestic sphere, not the professional one. When Elizabeth finds herself pregnant, alone and fired from her lab, she musters the ingenuity only a single mother has. She accepts a job as a host on a TV cooking show, and sets out to teach a nation of overlooked housewives - and the men who are suddenly listening - a lot more than recipes... all the while craving a return to her true love: science. 

6. Pachinko

   2022 · Drama · returning

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.1).

   Told in three different languages: Korean, Japanese and English, Pachinko chronicles the hopes and dreams of four generations of a Korean immigrant family.

7. The Last Tycoon

   2016 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile.

   The Last Tycoon is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's final unfinished novel and is inspired by the life of film mogul Irving Thalberg, on whom the book's protagonist Monroe Stahr was based. The Last Tycoon centers on Stahr, Hollywood's first wunderkind studio executive in the 1930's as he climbs to the height of power pitting him against his mentor and current head of the studio Pat Brady, a character based on Louis B. Mayer. With Stahr as a focal point, the series delves into the true violence, sex and towering ambition of Hollywood in the '30's.

8. Boardwalk Empire

   2010 · Drama, Crime · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.4).

   As the country struggles to cope with the Great Depression and the end of Prohibition looms, Nucky Thompson looks to legitimize himself through alliances with liquor producers, while rivals Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky seek to consolidate their power in the wake of Arnold Rothstein's death and eliminate all competition - by any means necessary on Boardwalk Empire.

9. Jack & Bobby

   2004 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

   If "greatness is thrust upon us," as Winston Churchill once said, then it stands to reason that those who are destined for greatness are rarely aware of it. Take Jack and Bobby McCallister for example: two bright young brothers growing up under the watchful eye of their eccentric single mother Grace McCallister. Grace's personality is a force of nature destined to shape both of these young men's lives and secure one a place in the history books - as President of the United States.

10. State of Play

    2003 · Drama · ended

    Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8).

    The serial begins with the murder of a young man, in what appears to be a drug-related killing, and the apparently coincidental death of Sonia Baker, the young researcher for MP Stephen Collins (Morrissey). As the deaths are investigated by journalist Cal McCaffrey of The Herald (Simm) and his colleagues (including Kelly Macdonald as Della Smith and Bill Nighy as editor Cameron Foster) it appears that not only were the deaths connected, but that a conspiracy links them with oil industry-backed corruption of high-ranking British government ministers.