Shows Like
Soapy Drama Shows Like Beauty in Black
By Jordan A. · · 4 min read
Tyler Perry's Beauty in Black spent the week of August 24 sitting at number two on the Netflix English TV chart, pulling 13 million views, and anyone who binged it knows why. It is a big, loud, unapologetic soap about a stripper named Kimmie who tangles with the wealthy and deeply rotten family behind a cosmetics empire, and it keeps stacking betrayals until you cannot look away. If you have burned through every available episode and need that same rush of money, secrets and revenge, here is where to go next.
Beauty in Black lives in a very particular lane. It is glossy but mean, full of characters who smile in boardrooms and scheme in bedrooms, and it moves fast enough that a single episode can flip three alliances. The shows below all deliver some version of that, whether the poison is family, money or both.
Good Girls turns nice people into criminals
If the Kimmie half of Beauty in Black grabbed you, the ordinary woman pushed into a dangerous world, Good Girls is the natural jump. Three suburban wives and mothers, broke and fed up, rob a grocery store and quickly find themselves in far deeper water with money laundering and a local crime boss. It ran for four seasons and lives on Netflix, so the whole thing is right there. It has more comedy than Perry's series, but the engine is the same, regular people learning they are better at crime than they ever expected.
All the Queen's Men rules its own empire
For viewers who come to Beauty in Black for the power plays and the sheer nerve of its villains, All the Queen's Men is a close match. Marilyn DeVille, better known as Madam, sits at the top of the Atlanta nightclub scene and rules it with an iron grip while enemies circle. It carries the same appetite for spectacle, the same larger-than-life characters, and the same willingness to let ambition curdle into cruelty. You can stream it on Prime Video, and it will feel instantly familiar to anyone who loves a heroine who refuses to lose.
Empire still sets the bar for a family at war
Beauty in Black owes a real debt to the family-empire soap, and Empire is the modern blueprint. A music mogul builds a hip-hop dynasty, then watches his three sons and his fierce ex-wife claw at each other for control of it. The betrayals are operatic, the fashion is enormous, and the family dinners double as war rooms. If the cosmetics dynasty in Beauty in Black is your favorite part, a show built entirely around a family knife fight over a company is exactly the follow-up you want.
Dynasty gives you the pure, camp version
Sometimes you want the soap with the volume turned all the way up and none of the apology, and Dynasty delivers. Its reboot follows two feuding clans, the Carringtons and the Colbys, trading slaps, lawsuits and boardroom coups across a pile of oil and old money. It is glossy, ridiculous and completely aware of it. When Beauty in Black leans into its wildest twists, this is the same pleasure, a rich family behaving terribly in beautiful clothes.
Power brings the ambition and the body count
If the ruthless, take-no-prisoners energy of Beauty in Black is what you crave, Power is the natural escalation. It follows a New York nightclub owner leading a double life as a major drug supplier, torn between the empire he built in the shadows and the legitimate world he wants to join. Like Beauty in Black, it runs on ambition, betrayal and characters who will burn down everyone around them to protect their status. It spawned an entire universe of spin-offs, so once you are hooked there is a long road ahead of you. The tone is harder and more violent than Perry's series, but the wiring is the same, glossy people making very ugly choices in pursuit of more. Watch it when you want the soap opera to grow teeth, and keep in mind that nearly every character is playing at least two games at once. It works as a bridge between a nighttime soap and a full crime saga, and it rewards the kind of viewer who loves rooting for people they probably should not.
Where the soapy drama fan should look next
The common thread here is a show that treats wealth as a weapon and family as the battlefield. If that is your comfort zone, our list of the best drama shows of 2026 pulls together more titles with that same bite, and fans of a sprawling family power struggle almost always take to our shows like Yellowstone guide, where the setting changes but the blood feud does not. There is a reason a good soap is the easiest thing in the world to binge after a long week, which is something we got into in what to watch when you are stressed.
Beauty in Black moves so fast that most people finish it and immediately want another one just like it. That is the hard part, since the next great soap is not always sitting in the same row on the same app. BingeNext looks across everything you subscribe to and points you at the show that matches the exact flavor you are chasing, whether that is the crime, the family war or the sheer glamour. Get TV recommendations and skip the endless scroll.
Topics covered: shows like beauty in black, tyler perry, soapy dramas, netflix shows, beauty in black
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and writes every guide on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu, and he still tests every pick the hard way: by watching it.