15 Shows You Should Watch if You Like The Sopranos

15. The Sopranos (1999-2007)

Before chasing any other show on this list, it's worth remembering that rewatching The Sopranos itself is still one of the best decisions you can make as a television viewer. The layers of foreshadowing and character detail reward a second or third watch in ways that most shows can't even manage on a first viewing. James Gandolfini's performance as Tony Soprano remains untouchable, and the whole series holds up so well that going back to it never feels like settling for less. | © HBO

14. The Shield (2002-2008)

The Shield follows a corrupt Los Angeles detective named Vic Mackey who operates in a moral gray zone so deep it makes Tony Soprano look restrained, and the show never flinches from showing exactly what that kind of unchecked power looks like. It's raw and intense in a way that gets under your skin, and like The Sopranos it has a way of making you root for someone you probably shouldn't. The ending is widely considered one of the best in television history, and after 100-plus hours with these characters it hits exactly as hard as it should. | © FX

13. Fargo (2014-2024)

Fargo is an anthology series where each season tells a completely different crime story set in the frigid American Midwest, and the blend of genuine menace and pitch-black comedy gives it a tone that sits surprisingly close to The Sopranos. The writing is smart and the show has a habit of producing at least one truly unforgettable villain per season, starting with Billy Bob Thornton's deeply unsettling Lorne Malvo in the first. It's a show that treats crime as both tragic and absurd simultaneously, which is exactly the kind of tonal tightrope that made The Sopranos so distinctive. | © FX

12. Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014)

Boardwalk Empire is set during Prohibition-era Atlantic City and follows Nucky Thompson, a politician who runs the city's illegal alcohol trade while rubbing shoulders with real historical figures like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. The production is lavish, the writing is tight, and Steve Buscemi carries the whole thing with a performance that makes Nucky feel as complicated and watchable as any crime protagonist on television. For Sopranos fans specifically, this one is about as close to a direct substitute as the genre has to offer. | © HBO

11. Barry (2018-2023)

Barry follows a burnt-out hitman who stumbles into an acting class in Los Angeles and desperately tries to leave his violent life behind, and the show somehow makes that premise work as both a genuinely funny comedy and a dark, uncomfortable character study. Bill Hader is extraordinary in the lead role, playing a man trying to reinvent himself while the past keeps pulling him back in ways that echo Tony Soprano's own failed attempts at change. The show gets progressively darker and stranger as it goes, and by the final season, it's doing things on television that very few shows have ever attempted. | © HBO

10. Atlanta (2016-2022)

Atlanta is nothing like The Sopranos on the surface. It follows a young man trying to manage his cousin's rap career in Georgia, but the two shows share a quality that's hard to define and even harder to find elsewhere on television. The writing is layered, the comedy is sharp, and the show has a habit of suddenly shifting into something deeply unsettling without any warning. It rewards the kind of close, attentive watching that Sopranos fans tend to bring to everything they watch, and that alone makes it worth your time. | © FX

9. Narcos (2015-2017)

Narcos charts the rise and fall of Pablo Escobar and the Colombian drug trade with the same kind of grimy, lived-in realism that made The Sopranos feel so authentic. Wagner Moura's portrayal of Escobar is one of the best performances in recent crime television: magnetic, terrifying, and surprisingly human all at once. The fact that it's based on real events gives everything an extra weight, and once it gets its hooks in you, it's very hard to stop watching. | © Netflix

8. The Americans (2013-2018)

The Americans follows two KGB spies living undercover as a normal suburban couple in 1980s Washington, and the central tension of maintaining a fake life while doing genuinely terrible things will feel very familiar to Sopranos fans. Like Tony Soprano, the Jennings are people who chose a violent world and then had to figure out how to live with that choice while still being parents and partners. The show is slow-burning and character-driven, and it builds to one of the most satisfying and emotionally gutting finales in television history. | © FX

7. Succession (2018-2023)

Succession trades the mob for a media empire, but the family dysfunction, the power struggles, and the dark humor running underneath all of it will feel immediately familiar to anyone who spent time with the Soprano household. Logan Roy is one of the most commanding and terrifying patriarchs television has ever produced, and watching his children tear each other apart trying to win his approval never gets old. The writing is razor sharp, and the show somehow makes you laugh and feel genuinely unsettled at the same time, which is a balance very few shows have ever managed. | © HBO

6. Deadwood (2004-2006)

Deadwood is set in a lawless South Dakota mining camp in the 1870s, but swap the horses for cars and the gold rush for the mob, and the parallels to The Sopranos become pretty clear pretty fast. The show is packed with morally compromised characters jockeying for power in a place with no rules, and the writing is sharp enough to make even the quietest conversations feel like they could turn dangerous at any moment. It's another HBO prestige drama that takes its characters seriously and never lets them off the hook, which is exactly what Sopranos fans tend to respond to. | © HBO

5. Ozark (2017-2022)

Ozark follows a financial advisor who gets pulled into cartel money laundering and is suddenly forced to move his family to rural Missouri to stay alive, and the show wastes no time making it clear that nobody in this story is going to come out clean. The Byrde family dynamic is what really drives it – watching a marriage hold together and fall apart simultaneously under impossible pressure gives the show the same domestic tension that made The Sopranos so compelling. It's not quite as deep as some others on this list, but as pure suspenseful entertainment, it's hard to beat. | © Netflix

4. Better Call Saul (2015-2022)

Better Call Saul starts as a prequel about a small-time con man lawyer and gradually becomes one of the most carefully crafted character studies on television, tracking Jimmy McGill's slow drift toward becoming the morally bankrupt Saul Goodman. The pacing is deliberate, and the show rewards patience in the same way The Sopranos did, letting character moments breathe instead of rushing toward the next plot point. It's a show about a man making a series of small compromises that add up to something irreversible, which should sound very familiar to any Sopranos fan. | © AMC

3. Mad Men (2007-2015)

Mad Men was created by Matthew Weiner, who wrote some of The Sopranos' best episodes, and that DNA shows, this is a show built almost entirely on character study rather than plot mechanics. Don Draper is cut from the same cloth as Tony Soprano, a charming, deeply troubled man hiding a carefully constructed version of himself from everyone around him. If what you loved most about The Sopranos was the slow, methodical dissection of a complicated man's interior life, Mad Men scratches exactly that itch. | © AMC

2. Breaking Bad (2008-2013)

Breaking Bad is probably the first show anyone recommends after The Sopranos, and for good reason. It's the same story of a man slowly consumed by his own ego and ambition, just transplanted from New Jersey mob life to the New Mexico meth trade. Walter White's transformation from desperate chemistry teacher to ruthless drug kingpin is one of the best character arcs ever written for television, and Bryan Cranston sells every step of it. If you want that same feeling of watching someone you root for become someone you fear, this is the next logical stop. | © AMC

1. The Wire (2002-2008)

The Wire takes the same unflinching look at American institutions that made The Sopranos so compelling, but spreads it across the drug trade, the police force, the school system, and the media over five seasons. Where The Sopranos buries its social commentary under dark humor and mob drama, The Wire puts it front and center without apology. If The Sopranos made you think as much as it entertained you, The Wire will do exactly the same thing, arguably even more so. | © HBO