11 Shows Like 'Succession' to Watch If You Miss the Roys

If you’ve been left in a gaping void by the end of Succession, don’t despair. The Hollywood Reporter has another 11 series to watch for those desperate for a dysfunctional family drama fix. The below titles (along with where you can stream them) include more epic siblings battles, snarky dinner table banter and unpredictable plot twists. Dive into these series for the thrill of family backstabbing, corporate double-dealing or simply for the maladjusted — and wealthy and/or powerful — bringing out the worst in one another, typically (except for a few aspirational exceptions).

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Giddy up and go west with Paramount Network’s Yellowstone (which streams on Peacock) because similar to the media power hungry Roys in Succession, the Dutton dynasty saga floats on its own land-grabbing soap suds. And it also can be perceived as ending too soon, with the megahit series wrapping up with the forthcoming return of season five (after reported off-screen negotiation drama). Swap New York for Montana where John Dutton, played by Kevin Costner, is the moody patriarch and baron of an unlikeable family running the Yellowstone cattle and horse ranch. They play in a corrupt world of greedy politicians, oil and lumber giants. Taylor Sheridan’s modern West-focused hit also has ambitious sons, Wes Bentley as Jamie and Luke Grimes as Kayce, and a lone daughter yearning for daddy’s approval with Kelly Reilly’s Beth.

Mad Men (AMC+, Amazon Freevee)

If you liked Succession for its alpha males wielding power in a faltering patriarchy, head over to AMC’s Mad Men. Set in in a 1960-era Madison Avenue ad agency, it’s more than your typical workplace drama. Led by Jon Hamm as Don Draper, Mad Men is filled with miscreant ad men too busy smoking, drinking and having affairs to enjoy what success, money and happiness they derive from their advertising campaigns. And they flounder amid incessant change in the air, from turbulent 1960s America that will have younger characters — especially career-driven women of Elisabeth Moss’s Peggy and Christina Hendricks as Joan — rise as older characters fall across the seven-season drama.

The cat-and-mouse finance drama, like Succession, is set in Manhattan and mostly centers on Paul Giamatti’s Chuck Rhoades and Damian Lewis’ hedge fund billionaire Bobby “Axe” Axelrod, as emotionally tortured antiheroes forever circling one another with bluster and machismo. Eventually the stakes go from Wall Street to personal insecurities, identity hangups and a mutual passion for revenge. Headed to a seventh season with Axe’s return (after Lewis left the series), the Showtime drama has enough shifting alliances and loyalties, and wounded and betrayed egos to captivate, as did the Roys with their dysfunctional family struggles.

Paramount+’s The Good Fight, a spinoff of CBS’ long-running and beloved The Good Wife series, has Christine Baranski as Chicago lawyer Diane Lockhart staring down the end of the world with one legal case after another. Trump-era immigration policy, the #MeToo movement, climate change and other issues ripped from the headlines are fodder for the six-season drama built around a prestigious Black law firm that reflects current times.

The White Lotus is resort country. And if you like the way Succession skewered the privilege of terrible rich people doing terrible things, turn to the HBO series that winds the satirical crank on the insufferable guests and staff of a swanky resort in golden-hued Hawaii in season one, and sun-splashed Sicily in the second cycle of the anthology. There’s endless soapy misadventures for iconic characters like Jennifer Coolidge playing the wild and wealthy Tanya, and Connie Britton as frazzled tech boss Nicole Mossbacher. The White Lotus is headed to a third season in Thailand.

With its cutthroat family of three sons (including the embattled Jussie Smollett) and an embittered wife battling to inherit a diamond-encrusted business built by terminally ill music mogul Lucious Lyon, played by Terrence Howard, you’ve got Succession set to a hip hop soundtrack. And to Lee Daniels’ Shakespearean tale of Cookie Lyon, played by Taraji P. Henson. As the six-season Fox drama gets underway, she’s released from prison and demanding her share of a lucrative pie after doing 17 years for a crime that allowed Lyon the financing to launch his company. What could go wrong as the Lyons battle for supremacy?

After Succession cuts to black, it’s time for The Sopranos, the Godfather of dysfunctional family dramas. Between panic attacks that send him to a shrink, troubled New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini, juggles his mob family and his own broken family. It’s that vulnerability from living a two-faced life as a sturdy family man and a ruthless mafia don that fuels most every twist and turn across six seasons as Tony clings to his throne in showrunner David Chase’s opus drama.

You thought Logan Roy played dirty: Enter Francis Underwood, the ruthless political boss scheming his way to the top and played by disgraced actor Kevin Spacey in the Washington D.C.-set thriller House of Cards. As he wheels and deals, his reptilian wife Claire Underwood (Robin Wright) is at first the ideal political backer as his dirty deeds pile up. There’s nothing inviting about these political operators as the Underwoods bulldoze rivals, except the engrossing soapy drama they star in (which wrapped after six seasons after Spacey’s exit).

Here’s another inside-a-fictional White House drama, only The West Wing has hopeful Oval Office staff making the U.S. leader, who is in this case Martin Sheen as hero-President Josiah Bartlet, look, well, presidential. Sure, it’s a fantasy of the nation’s capital on network TV, but the American lawmakers and White House staff are worth getting excited over in the watershed workplace drama that also stars Rob Lowe, Allison Janney, Bradley Whitford and John Spencer. Sportsnight producers Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme are behind the snappy dialogue (including the walk-and-talk camera shots) and rapid-fire action for the first four seasons, to be then replaced by ER’s John Wells for the final three.  

If you thought opening the Roy family closet wouldn’t end well, watch Netflix’s dark Bloodline drama about the Florida Keys’ Rayburn family forced to face its own lies and secrecy when Danny, the estranged black sheep son played by Ben Mendelsohn, returns home. “Bad things follow you around, don’t they?” his dad and family patriarch (Sam Shepard) tells Danny in season one. They certainly do. That leads his siblings — John (Kevin Chandler), Meg (Linda Cardellini) and Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz) — to confront their deceptions as the audience is left asking when will the backstabbers, double-dealers and worse in the Rayburn family inn will finally come clean with the truth across three seasons.

If you want more rich bratty kids struggling for control of the family business, HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones comedy from Danny McBride is our final destination. This time, tensions and struggles spawned by genes has a family of evangelical preachers battling over a mega-church, led by Patriarch Eli Gemstone (John Goodman). McBride plays Jesse, the eldest son in incessant rivalry with siblings Kelvin (Adam DeVine) and Judy (Edi Patterson), which is set to return for a forthcoming third season.

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