The Colbys

Series Similar to The Colbys

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

1. Brideshead Revisited

   1981 · Drama · ended

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

   Based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh, two years in the making, and the equivalent of seven feature films back-to-back, this epic drama tells a story of romantic yearning and loss in the glittering but fading world of the British aristocracy between the wars.

2. Prisoner

   1979 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.3).

   Prisoner is an Australian soap opera, set in the Wentworth Detention Centre, a fictional women's prison. In the United States and United Kingdom it was billed as Prisoner: Cell Block H, and in Canada as Prisoner: Cell Block H and/or Caged Women. The series was produced by the Reg Grundy Organisation in Australia, and aired on Network Ten, running 692 episodes from 27 February 1979 to 11 December 1986, after originally only devised as a 16 part series.

3. The Queen's Gambit

   2020 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.5).

   Chronicling the life of an orphan chess prodigy, the story - set during the Cold War era - follows Beth Harmon from the age of eight to twenty-two, as she struggles with addiction in a quest to become the greatest chess player in the world.

4. Our Friends in the North

   1996 · Drama · ended

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

   A nine part series depicting the varying fortunes of four friends - Nicky, Geordie, Mary and Tosker - from the optimistic times of 1964 to the uncertainties of 1995. Taking nine pivotal years (1964, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1974, 1979, 1984, 1987, 1995) the personal lives of the characters become intertwined with the political struggles of their home town of Newcastle, and the capital, London. We also see the machinations behind the scenes that affect their lives, often for the worse: slum housing projects, police corruption, the rise of Thatcherism, political sleaze, and specific events like the 1984 Miners' Strike.

5. The West Wing

   1999 · Drama · ended

   Recommended for similar Drama profile, highly rated (8.6).

   The entire White House staff bristles with activity when it's learned that the President injured himself during a bicycle accident, and his absence becomes a factor as chief of staff Leo McGarry must juggle a host of impending crises, including a mass boatlift of Cuban refugees approaching the Florida coast and the reaction of conservative Christians to a controversial televised comment by deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. Dirty Business

   2026 · Drama · ended

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

   Based on a decade-long investigation into England's water companies, and telling the real stories of whistleblowers and victims who believe their lives have been destroyed after encountering sewage polluted water, Dirty Business is a major new factual drama investigating one of the biggest potential corporate scandals in British history.Dirty Business follows the story of two unlikely detectives, who notice that the fish in the river running through their idyllic Oxfordshire hamlet are dying. They contact their water company to find out why, and the company's strange and evasive reply sparks an investigation that remains ongoing to this day.

10. Olive Kitteridge

    2014 · Drama · ended

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

    Based on Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, Olive Kitteridge tells the poignantly sweet, acerbically funny and devastatingly tragic story of a seemingly placid New England town wrought with illicit affairs, crime and tragedy, told through the lens of a woman whose wicked wit and harsh demeanor mask a warm but troubled heart and a staunch moral center.