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10 Shows Like Succession to Watch if You Like Succession

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Allison Picurro
Sarah Snook, Succession

Sarah Snook, Succession

Claudette Barius/HBO

Look, it's going to take us a while to recover from Succession's emotional bloodbath of a series finale, too. The last episode of Season 4 gave us a definitive answer for who will take over Waystar Royco, but most importantly, it sealed the fates of its main trio of broken siblings, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Shiv (Sarah Snook). Ultimately, Succession had the most Succession of endings, and we wouldn't want it any other way. 

That said, you might already be looking for something to fill the void. While there are few other shows with Succession's precise mix of acidic comedy and ruthless drama, there are plenty of great series about rich people with issues, highly dysfunctional families, and intense power struggles.

Succession Watch on Max


The Staircase

Colin Firth, The Staircase

Colin Firth, The Staircase

HBO Max

The Staircase and Succession are about different things, but there's enough overlap between these two baroque dramas to earn The Staircase a place on this list. Adapted from the true crime docuseries of the same name, The Staircase reimagines the curious case of Michael Peterson (Colin Firth), a novelist and attempted politician, who in 2001 was accused of murdering his wife after she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase in their home. The series follows Peterson's trial, conviction, and eventual exoneration, but introduces a meta element by exploring the making of the documentary itself. It's both a deconstruction of a genre as much as it is a straight-up family drama, digging into the alternately loving and fraught relationships all five of Peterson's children have with their father. His trial has a ripple effect on them, forcing each childfg to grapple with their desire to remain loyal and their desire to learn the truth. Those family elements will make Succession fans feel right at home, from the inter-sibling arguing to the way all the kids, at different points, wear themselves thin trying to please their father. 


Yellowstone

Kevin Costner and Kelly Reilly, Yellowstone

Kevin Costner and Kelly Reilly, Yellowstone

Paramount Network

If you've ever found yourself watching Succession and thinking, "I like this, but I would like it more if everyone was wearing a cowboy hat," look no further than Yellowstone. Maybe the premise will sound familiar: A terrible, powerful father (this one is played by Kevin Costner) and his broken adult children fight off attacks on their empire, all while tearing each other down for daddy's approval in the process. The Dutton family's source of wealth is different than the Roy family's – they're in charge of America's largest ranch rather than America's largest media conglomerate – but it similarly looks at the damage exorbitant wealth does to a person's soul.


Billions

Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis, Billions

Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis, Billions

Jeff Neumann/SHOWTIME

Next up is Billions, or as it's known in some circles, "Succession, but with more Giamatti." I'm kidding, but these two shows do often get mistaken for each other, which kind of makes sense when you take them at face value. Both are New York-set dramas about people with high-powered jobs who are frighteningly obsessed with money, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. Following the personal and professional conflicts of U.S. district attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) and hedge fund manager Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis), Billions takes itself way less seriously than Succession, leaning into the absurdity of its characters and allowing them to ostentatiously flaunt their wealth. (This is the kind of series where Mark Cuban makes recurring cameos as himself.) It's pure, soapy wealth porn, in the best possible way. You might say that Billions walked so Succession could run (I would say it).


Industry

Harry Lawtey, Myha'la Herrold, Marisa Abela, David Jonsson, and Nabhaan Rizwan, Industry

Harry Lawtey, Myha'la Herrold, Marisa Abela, David Jonsson, and Nabhaan Rizwan, Industry

Amanda Searle/HBO

Much like Succession, Industry was a throughly unexpected and totally addictive delight when it premiered. It also features a cast of actors whose names you might not have been all that familiar with, and it deals with people trying to get ahead in the cutthroat business world. But Industry, which revolves around a group of young graduates trying to secure their dream jobs at a prestigious London investment bank, isn't as much about family dynasties as it is about all the things young professionals have to do in order to kickstart their careers. It stars an interesting, diverse group of characters, like well-connected rich girl Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and in-over-his-head Robert (Harry Lawtey), and there is, of course, a ton of interpersonal drama. It's compelling and dark and a whole lot of fun. 

More recommendations:


The Righteous Gemstones

Adam Devine, Edi Patterson, and Danny McBride, The Righteous Gemstones

Adam Devine, Edi Patterson, and Danny McBride, The Righteous Gemstones

Ryan Green/HBO

The three siblings at the center of The Righteous Gemstones, Jesse (Danny McBride), Kelvin (Adam DeVine), and Judy (Edi Patterson), are like even less competent versions of the Roy kids. They also belong to an internationally famous family (their thing is televangelism rather than cable news and theme parks), and their father is also a powerful media figure played by a beloved actor (John Goodman). Together, they're a maladjusted family unit, tightly knit out of necessity and entirely self-serving as they work to expand their network of megachurches and duke it out for the coveted spot of Daddy's Favorite. The show is a great satire of the sinister undercurrent of televangelism, and it's full of McBride's signature brand of big, broad comedy. 


Veep

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep

HBO

If your favorite thing about Succession is listening to the characters deliver verbose, colorful takedowns of each other, you're going to flip for Veep. The series was created by Armando Iannucci (who, fun fact, actually worked with Succession creator Jesse Armstrong on another great series, The Thick of It) and follows the often-incompetent Vice President of the United States Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her staff as they put out political fires and try to boost their own careers in the process. They're a prickly, opportunistic bunch, meaning that there's a constant stream of creatively profane insults that will consistently surprise you with just how funny it is to listen to awful people be mean to each other. For a while, Veep was the best comedy on TV, an obscenely funny look at the darkness of American politics. 


The Good Fight

The Good Fight

The Good Fight

Patrick Harbron/CBS

Remember when Succession first came out and no one could stop talking about the Trump family comparisons? Succession would've been an entirely different show if Trump had never become president, and so would The Good Fight. A spin-off ofThe Good Wife, the wondrously absurd series turns the focus on Christine Baranski's Diane Lockhart as she starts a new job at a Black-owned law firm in the Trump era. The show deals a lot with politics, and every season is set in the present day, which allows them to comment on real-world issues like police brutality and Me Too. Where Succession is obviously influenced by our world but never references it directly, The Good Fight leans right into the things we deal with every day. There are so many courtroom dramas out there, but none of them did it like this one, which ended after six seasons in 2022.


Arrested Development

Jason Bateman and David Cross, Arrested Development

Jason Bateman and David Cross, Arrested Development

Mike Yarish/Netflix

All of Logan Roy's (Brian Cox) children exist in a permanent state of arrested development, but that's not the only reason this classic sitcom has made the list. The Bluths are a formerly wealthy family who have their way of life thrown into turmoil after their real estate developer father (Jeffrey Tambor) goes to prison for white collar crime. Like Succession, the show shines brightest when it embraces how dysfunctional and eccentric its core family is. It gave us a full library of timelessly quotable lines like "I've made a huge mistake," and Jessica Walter's Lucille, the original meme queen. If your favorite thing about Succession is peeking into the inner lives of a group of rich people bound together by the unfortunate coincidence of being related by blood, Arrested Development will give you that in spades. I'm also going to go out on a limb here and say that without Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) and Tobias' (David Cross) curiously unhappy marriage, we never would've gotten whatever the hell is going on between Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Tom (Matthew Macfadyen).


Mad Men

Mad Men

Mad Men

Frank Ockenfels/AMC

In all the ways that Succession is very much about the times we live in right now, Mad Men is very much about the times we lived in back then. Matthew Weiner's stylish drama is set in the 1960s at a slick New York City advertising agency, pulling back the curtain on the inner workings of the industry and the personal lives of those who work in it. It's the kind of show where everything means something, the kind of show that can devastate you with a single shot as fast as it can make you burst into unexpected laughter. There are shades of Jon Hamm's Don Draper in Kendall (Jeremy Strong): their consummate professionalism, their performed masculinity, the way they both try to mask their insecurities under layers of charm and money. Mad Men lacks Succession's more bombastic tendencies, reveling in its status as a quieter, atmospheric reflection on careerism and American history, but if it's a sprawling, character-driven drama you're looking for, you really can't get much better than this one.


The Great

Elle Fanning, The Great

Elle Fanning, The Great

Ollie Upton/Hulu

If it's a power struggle you want, it's a power struggle you will absolutely get with The Great. The series is a fictionalized account of Catherine the Great's (Elle Fanning) marriage to Emperor Peter III (Nicholas Hoult) in 18th century Russia. Catherine begins the show as a young, naive woman eager to bond with her new husband, only to discover quickly enough that Peter is cruel, under-qualified, and depraved, so she devises a plan to overthrow him and take the throne for herself. Though The Great is a period piece, it has almost no interest in being historically accurate, preferring to frolic in the comedy that comes out of the show's darkest moments. Sound familiar?