The X-Files

Series Similar to The X-Files

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

1. Fringe

   2008 · Drama, Action, Science-Fiction · ended97% match

   Recommended for similar Science-Fiction profile, highly rated (8.6), also on FOX.

   When an international flight lands at Boston's Logan Airport and the passengers and crew have all died grisly deaths, FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham is called in to investigate. After her partner is nearly killed during the investigation, a desperate Olivia searches frantically for someone to help, leading her to Dr. Walter Bishop, our generation's Einstein. There's only one catch: he's been institutionalized for the last twenty years, and the only way to question him requires pulling his estranged son Peter in to help. When Olivia's investigation leads her to a manipulative corporate executive, she and her team will discover that what happened on Flight 627 is only a small piece of a larger, more shocking truth and will explore the blurring line between the possible and the impossible.

2. John Doe

   2002 · Drama, Science-Fiction · ended91% match

   Recommended for similar Science-Fiction profile, highly rated (8), also on FOX.

   A man who knows literally everything---except his own identity---helps the Seattle police solve crimes as he tries to figure out who he is and where he came from.

3. Life on Mars

   2006 · Drama, Crime, Science-Fiction · ended90% match

   Recommended for similar Crime / Science-Fiction profile, highly rated (8).

   Drama about a present-day Manchester detective who, after suffering near-fatal injuries in a car-crash, awakes to find himself living in 1973.

4. Torchwood

   2006 · Drama, Science-Fiction · ended90% match

   Recommended for similar Science-Fiction profile, highly rated (8.1).

   Captain Jack Harkness is a man from the 51st century trapped in the past who leads the last remnants of the Torchwood Institute, a top secret British agency outside the government whose job it is to investigate alien goings on in the world, act in mankind's best interest, and, if needed, be the Earth's last line of defense.

5. Oz

   1997 · Drama, Crime · ended89% match

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.7).

   HBO's violent men-behind-bars drama is an addictive, testosterone-driven soap opera for guys. The eight episodes of the first season set the style for the show: a massive cast of a vivid characters on both sides of the bars, four or five stories unleashed at a breakneck pace and framed by angry, oddball introductions, and a soaring casualty rate. Created by Homicide producer Tom Fontana, this drama quickly earned its rightful reputation as the most brutal show on TV. It's simple chemistry: combine volatile ingredients in a confined space, shut tight, and shake.

6. Firefly

   2002 · Drama, Adventure, Science-Fiction · ended89% match

   Recommended for similar Science-Fiction profile, highly rated (8.9), also on FOX.

   Five hundred years in the future, a renegade crew aboard a small spacecraft tries to survive as they travel the unknown parts of the galaxy and evade warring factions as well as authority agents out to get them.

7. The Sopranos

   1999 · Drama, Crime · ended89% match

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.9).

   The Sopranos, writer-producer-director David Chase's extraordinary television series, is nominally an urban gangster drama, but its true impact strikes closer to home: Like 1999's other screen touchstone, American Beauty, the HBO series chronicles a dysfunctional, suburban American family in bold relief. And for protagonist Tony Soprano, there's the added complexity posed by heading twin families, his collegial mob clan and his own, nouveau riche brood.

8. The Wire

   2002 · Drama, Crime · ended89% match

   Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.9).

   The first season of The Wire (2002) concentrated on the often-futile efforts of police to infiltrate a West Baltimore drug ring headed by Avon Barksdale and his lieutenant, Stringer Bell. In Seasons Two and Three, as the Barksdale investigation escalated, new storylines involving pressures on the working class and the city's political leadership were introduced. Season Four focused on the stories of several young boys in the public school system, struggling with problems at home and the lure of the corner - set against the rise of a new drug empire in West Baltimore and a new Mayor in City Hall. The fifth and final season of The Wire centers on the media's role in addressing - or failing to address - the fundamental political, economic and social realities depicted over the course of the series, while also resolving storylines of the numerous characters woven throughout the narrative arc of the show.

9. Limitless

   2015 · Drama, Crime, Science-Fiction · ended88% match

   Recommended for similar Crime / Science-Fiction profile, highly rated (8).

   Limitless, based on Relativity's 2011 Bradley Cooper thriller, picks up where the movie left off and follows Brian Sinclair as he discovers the power of the mysterious drug NZT, and is coerced into using his newfound drug-enhanced abilities to solve weekly cases for the FBI.

10. Bones

    2005 · Drama, Crime, Medical · ended88% match

    Recommended for similar Crime profile, highly rated (8.1), also on FOX.

    F.B.I. Agent Seeley Booth is teamed up with forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan to solve some of the most baffling and bizarre crimes ever. Booth depends on clues from the living, witnesses and suspects, while Brennan gathers evidence from the dead, relying on her uncanny ability to read clues left behind in the bones of the victims.