Shows Like
Shows About Rich People Behaving Badly
By Jordan A. · · 4 min read
There is a specific pleasure in watching wealthy people ruin their own lives. Give a character a private jet and a total absence of consequences, and the drama practically writes itself. It is escapism and schadenfreude in the same glass of champagne, and television has never served it better than right now. If you love watching the one percent claw at each other over money they will never need, here are the shows that do it best.
Every pick below runs on the same engine: enormous privilege, zero self-awareness, and the slow, satisfying reveal that money cannot buy a single one of these people a functioning family.
Succession
You cannot start anywhere but the throne. Succession, the HBO landmark, follows the Roy family as they knife each other for control of a media empire while their aging patriarch dangles the crown. It is vicious, funny, and weirdly sad, because the richest people on screen are also the loneliest. Every dinner is a negotiation and every hug is a threat. If you want the gold standard of wealthy people behaving monstrously, this is the definitive text, and everything else on this list is in conversation with it.
The White Lotus
The White Lotus, also on HBO, takes the money out of the boardroom and drops it poolside at a luxury resort. Each season assembles a new set of rich guests and the staff who have to smile through their nonsense, then lets the tension simmer until something breaks. It is sharper about class than almost anything else on TV, and it never lets its wealthy characters off the hook. You come for the gorgeous scenery and stay for the quiet cruelty underneath it.
Your Friends & Neighbors
For a fresh spin, Your Friends & Neighbors on Apple TV Plus is the pick. Jon Hamm plays a financial titan who, after a sudden divorce and job loss, starts quietly robbing his wealthy neighbors to keep up appearances. It is a wickedly smart look at how thin the ice is under all that suburban money, and Hamm is perfect as a man too proud to admit he is drowning. Season 2 landed in April 2026, so there is already a healthy stretch to binge.
The Righteous Gemstones
If you want your rich people loud and ridiculous, The Righteous Gemstones on HBO is the antidote to all the quiet prestige sulking. It follows a family of wildly wealthy televangelists whose greed, ego, and incompetence constantly threaten to torch their megachurch empire. It is broad, filthy, and genuinely hilarious, but it still lands real punches about hypocrisy and inherited entitlement. Think of it as Succession with fart jokes and a much higher body count.
Beauty in Black
For something with soap-opera heat, Beauty in Black is having a moment. The Tyler Perry drama sits high on the Netflix Top 10 this week as its second season plays out, and it centers on the collision between a woman scraping to survive and a fabulously wealthy, deeply dysfunctional family. It is glossy, twisty, and unafraid of a cliffhanger, which makes it the most bingeable pick here. If you want the rich-people mess with the melodrama turned all the way up, start it now while it is hot.
Pick your poison
Match the show to the exact flavor of bad behavior you are craving. For cold corporate warfare, Succession has no equal. For class satire with a body count, The White Lotus is the sharpest blade. Your Friends & Neighbors is the pick for watching a rich life quietly implode, The Righteous Gemstones is pure comic excess, and Beauty in Black is your glossy, twisty binge for a weekend that needs some drama.
What makes all of them work is the same uncomfortable truth: we love watching wealth fail. These shows understand that the fantasy is not really the mansions and the jets, it is the permission to watch people who seem to have everything discover they have nothing that matters. That is a story as old as money itself, and it never gets old.
If one family in particular hooks you, our deeper guides can carry you further. Start with our roundup of shows like Succession for more corporate bloodsport, or our list of shows like The White Lotus when you want the vacation-from-hell energy.
There is also a strange comfort in these stories. Watching people with every advantage still manage to be miserable is oddly reassuring, a reminder that money solves fewer problems than the glossy fantasy suggests. The mansions and the private jets are the bait, but the real hook is the human wreckage underneath, the proof that no amount of wealth can buy a person out of their own worst instincts. That is the honest heart beating under all the champagne, and it is why these shows land as more than guilty pleasures. They are sharp little studies of everything money cannot fix, dressed up as pure, glorious fun that goes down like a cold glass of something expensive.
The best part of these shows is that you get all the drama of being rich with none of the tax bracket. Pour something nice, get comfortable, and enjoy watching people with everything lose it in the most entertaining ways possible.
Craving that specific rich-people-imploding vibe tonight? BingeNext matches your mood to the perfect messy watch across every service. Find your mood match and let the bad behavior begin.
Topics covered: wealthy family dramas, eat the rich tv, the righteous gemstones, your friends and neighbors, prestige satire
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.