In this piece · 10 sections+
If Succession broke you, here's what to watch next. Ranked by how close they actually come, not by what an algorithm coughed up.
The one show closest to Succession
The Righteous Gemstones. Danny McBride's HBO show about a televangelist family clawing each other for control of the ministry is functionally Succession with wigs and gospel choirs. Same Sunday-night HBO real estate. Same tight, cringe-forward pacing where every family dinner is a hostage negotiation. Same running joke about failsons who genuinely believe they should inherit the empire. Kendall Roy and Jesse Gemstone are the same broken creature in different zip codes. If you finished Succession season four and sat in the dark for an hour after the credits, Gemstones is the actual next thing. Read on for nine more, ranked honestly.
How I ranked these
TMDb's "similar shows" list for Succession is a crime scene. It suggested Law & Order, Two and a Half Men, and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Those are not shows like Succession. Those are shows that share five pixels of metadata with Succession. I threw them out. What's below is the actual list, ranked by how much of the Succession experience they replicate: a rich or powerful family, a slow-burn power struggle, dialogue that draws blood, and a camera that hovers uncomfortably close during humiliations.
Tier 1: The closest matches
1. The Righteous Gemstones (2019, 4 seasons, Max)
What it shares with Succession: HBO prestige money spent on watching adult children fail in front of their father. John Goodman plays Eli Gemstone, patriarch of a Southern megachurch, and his three grown kids (Danny McBride, Adam DeVine, Edi Patterson) spend four seasons cannibalizing each other for the crown. Same handheld cinematography. Same shot-in-one-take dining-table argument scenes. Same core question of whether nepotism can ever produce a functional adult. It's funnier than Succession on the surface and darker underneath.
Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. Zero setup needed.
What's different: Broader comedy, more slapstick, way more Christian rock. Less of Succession's finance-nerd vocabulary.
Time commitment: 36 episodes, 30 min each. Ended in 2025 with a proper landing. About a week if you're locked in.
🏆 DROP EVERYTHING
2. Club de Cuervos (2015, 4 seasons, Netflix)
What it shares with Succession: Literally the pitch. Patriarch dies, his idiot son and sharper daughter fight for control of the family soccer team in Mexico. Netflix's first Spanish-language original, and it plays like Succession's Latin American cousin who got there first (2015, three years before the Roys). Same dry humor about wealth, same weaponized incompetence from a male heir, same sister who should obviously be running the company.
Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. Subtitle it and go.
What's different: Less Shakespeare, more soccer. The stakes are a mid-tier fútbol club, not a global media empire, which is honestly a feature.
Time commitment: 44 episodes, 30 min each. Ended in 2019 with a movie and a spin-off. Complete.
✅ WORTH IT
3. Six Feet Under (2001, 5 seasons, Max)
What it shares with Succession: Alan Ball's HBO drama about the Fisher family, who inherit and run a Los Angeles funeral home after dad dies in the first episode. Family business, generational trauma, siblings who love and loathe each other in equal measure, and dialogue that treats every meal as a battleground. The DNA is right there. Where Succession is about the accumulation of power, Six Feet Under is about the accumulation of grief. Both end with one of the most devastating final episodes in television history.
Starter episode: Pilot. And when you get to the series finale, clear the room.
What's different: Slower. More interior. Nobody's plotting a boardroom coup, they're plotting how to survive Tuesday.
Time commitment: 63 episodes, 55 min each. Ended in 2005. This is a month of your life. Worth it.
🏆 DROP EVERYTHING
Tier 2: Strong matches, with caveats
4. Bloodline (2015, 3 seasons, Netflix)
What it shares with Succession: A wealthy Florida Keys family running a hotel, and the black sheep brother (Ben Mendelsohn, doing career-best work) coming home to detonate everything. Kyle Chandler and Sissy Spacek anchor it. The show operates on the same principle as Succession, that families with money and secrets rot from the inside, and someone always breaks first. Slow, dread-heavy, gorgeous to look at.
Starter episode: Pilot. Give it three episodes; the tempo is deliberate.
What's different: Thriller shell instead of satire. Almost no jokes. If Succession's humor was the sugar helping the poison go down, Bloodline is just the poison.
Time commitment: 33 episodes, 55 min each. Cancelled after season three, and you can feel Netflix pulling the plug on the finale. Ends, but not gracefully.
✅ WORTH IT
5. The Other Two (2019, 3 seasons, Max)
What it shares with Succession: A family reorganizing itself around one member's absurd wealth and fame, with the siblings quietly (and loudly) breaking. Chase, 13, becomes an internet star. His older siblings Brooke and Cary try to piggyback on his career while pretending they're above it. Written by former Late Night with Seth Meyers head writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, it's the sharpest comedy about show business since 30 Rock.
Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. If it grabs you, season 2 is one of the best comedy seasons of the decade.
What's different: Half-hour comedy, not hour drama. Less Roy-family menace, more anxiety spiral. Lighter but not softer.
Time commitment: 26 episodes, 30 min each. Ended in 2023. A long weekend.
✅ WORTH IT
6. Black Rabbit (2025, 1 season, Netflix)
What it shares with Succession: Two brothers, one running a successful New York restaurant, the other a chaos merchant with loan sharks on his tail, and the codependent grinding between them. Jude Law and Jason Bateman as the leads, both dialed in. The show cares about the same thing Succession cared about, which is what family loyalty actually costs when the person you're loyal to keeps setting the house on fire.
Starter episode: Pilot. Eight-episode limited run, so the whole thing is the entry point.
What's different: Crime thriller, not corporate satire. Compressed. Where Succession stretched sibling warfare over four seasons, Black Rabbit lights the fuse in the pilot.
Time commitment: 8 episodes, 55 min each. Limited series, complete. A weekend.
✅ WORTH IT
Tier 3: Same DNA, different genre
7. Shameless (2011, 11 seasons, Prime Video)
What it shares with Succession: Big dysfunctional family orbiting a broken patriarch (William H. Macy as Frank Gallagher), grown children forced to raise themselves and each other, and a running argument about who owes what to whom. Class-inverse Succession. Instead of billionaires clawing over a media empire, it's the Gallaghers of Chicago's South Side clawing over the last twenty in the coffee can. The rot is the same shape. (Start a Prime Video free trial if you don't have it.)
Starter episode: Season 1, episode 1. Bail if you're not with it by episode four; it has a specific rhythm.
What's different: Eleven seasons is a lot. It's very good for six of them, drifts, then finds its footing again. Comedy first, drama second.
Time commitment: 134 episodes, 45 min each. Ended in 2021. This is a commitment.
🛋️ BACKGROUND TV
8. Shameless UK (2004, 11 series, various)
What it shares with Succession: Paul Abbott's original British version, and the source that Succession creator Jesse Armstrong wrote on before HBO ever called. If you want to see the sensibility that eventually became Succession in its earlier, scrappier, working-class form, this is it. Anarchic family energy, brutal jokes, characters who are impossible to love and impossible to leave.
Starter episode: Series 1, episode 1. First three series are the ones.
What's different: British council estate, not corporate boardrooms. The version of Armstrong's worldview before he had prestige money.
Time commitment: 139 episodes, 45 min each. Ended 2013. Watch series 1-3 and call it done.
✅ WORTH IT
9. The Riches (2007, 2 seasons, Prime Video)
What it shares with Succession: A family performing an identity they didn't earn. Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver play Irish Traveller grifters who steal the lives of a dead upper-middle-class couple and try to pass. The Succession question of whether the next generation can pull off the role their name promises sits at the center of this show too. Just with more accents.
Starter episode: Pilot. Solid concept-episode.
What's different: Cancelled mid-story after season two thanks to the 2008 writers' strike. Never landed. Know that going in.
Time commitment: 20 episodes, 45 min each. Cancelled. Ends abruptly.
🛋️ BACKGROUND TV
Tier 4: The one everyone will yell at me for including
10. Two and a Half Men (2003, 12 seasons, Prime Video)
What it shares with Succession: Nothing. TMDb suggested this alongside actual Succession comparables and I want to formally note the insult. A hedonistic jingle writer and his brother is not Succession. Charlie Harper is not Logan Roy. If you clicked this guide and are considering Two and a Half Men as your next Succession, please close the laptop and go outside.
🐍 SLOP
What TMDb suggested that I threw out, and why
Law & Order (procedural, not serialized, no family), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (robots), Mad About You (a sitcom about a marriage in the 1990s), Third Watch (first responders drama), and the aforementioned Two and a Half Men. Whatever machine picked these should be unplugged and buried in a cornfield.
FAQ
What's the single show most like Succession?
The Righteous Gemstones. Same network, same rhythm, same fundamental concept of adult children failing publicly at inheriting an empire. It aired on HBO's Sunday nights alongside Succession for years, and it's the only show on this list where the answer isn't "close, but."
Is there anything actually as good as Succession?
Six Feet Under. If we're measuring by writing, performance, and how a series finale lands, it's the show on this list that stands next to Succession without apology. Different tone, same league.
Did the Succession creators make anything else?
Jesse Armstrong co-created Peep Show, a UK comedy that's a masterpiece and shares Succession's zero-empathy-for-anyone worldview. He also wrote on Shameless UK and The Thick of It. Peep Show isn't on this main list because it's not about a family, but it's the closest thing to reading Armstrong's mind.
Are any of these still going?
No. Black Rabbit is a completed limited series. The Righteous Gemstones ended in 2025 with a proper finale. Everything else here has ended or was cancelled. The only unresolved cliffhangers on the list are Bloodline and The Riches, and both got cut short.
Watch this weekend
Start with The Righteous Gemstones, season 1 episode 1 this weekend. If you've already seen it, put on Six Feet Under, pilot. Two hours in you'll know whether you're in for the month it takes to finish, and you'll be glad you started.