Shows Like
Shows Like Ozark: Crime as a Family Business
By Jordan A. · · Updated · 6 min read
Ozark ran four seasons on Netflix, from July 2017 to April 2022, forty four episodes, and the last one was split into two halves. Jason Bateman and Laura Linney play Marty and Wendy Byrde, a financial adviser and his wife who move the family to the Lake of the Ozarks to launder money for a cartel. What people actually stayed for was Julia Garner's Ruth Langmore and the slow discovery that Wendy is the dangerous one.
The reason most "shows like Ozark" lists disappoint is that they chase the crime and ignore the marriage. The engine here is a couple negotiating over other people's lives at the kitchen table. So this list is grouped by what actually carries over: the family running the business, the ordinary person who chose this, and the crime world seen from the ground.
The family is the business
The Sopranos (HBO, 1999 to 2007, six seasons, eighty six episodes) is the original version of this argument, and Ozark is unimaginable without it. James Gandolfini plays a New Jersey mob boss in therapy, and the show spends as much time on his mother and his daughter's college applications as on anything criminal. It's funnier than Ozark and much less plotted. If the Byrde marriage was the part you watched for, this is the deeper text on the same subject.
Bloodline (Netflix, 2015 to 2017, three seasons, thirty three episodes) is the closest match on this page, and Netflix made it three years before Ozark. Kyle Chandler leads a respectable Florida Keys family whose black sheep brother, played by Ben Mendelsohn, comes home. Mendelsohn is the reason to watch. It shares Ozark's exact shape: decent-looking people making one decision and then spending years covering it. The difference is that it's slower and sweatier, and the third season is a real drop from the first.
Animal Kingdom (TNT, 2016 to 2022, six seasons, seventy five episodes) adapts the 2010 Australian film, moving a family of Southern California thieves into a house with a pool and a matriarch, played in the early seasons by Ellen Barkin, who runs them all. It's pulpier than Ozark and much more physical, heavy on surf and heists. Choose it if you wanted Wendy Byrde with fewer boardrooms and more sunlight.
Peaky Blinders (BBC, 2013 to 2022, six seasons) follows the Shelby family turning a Birmingham street gang into a legitimate business empire across the 1920s and 1930s, with Cillian Murphy as Tommy. The going-legitimate arc is the same one the Byrdes attempt with the casino, and it costs the Shelbys the same things. It is far more stylised than Ozark, all anachronistic music and slow motion, which some people love and some find silly.
The ordinary person who chose this
Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008 to 2013, five seasons, sixty two episodes) is the obvious one and it earns the spot. A chemistry teacher starts cooking meth and the show is honest about the fact that he wanted to. Marty Byrde's central lie, that he's doing this for the family, is the lie Walter White finally drops in the last episode. Tighter and more suspenseful than Ozark, with a cleaner ending.
Better Call Saul (AMC, 2015 to 2022, six seasons, sixty three episodes) is the better show for Ozark fans specifically, because it's about lawyers and paperwork and the slow legal erosion of a person. Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn play a couple whose relationship works exactly the way the Byrdes' does, two clever people making each other worse. It starts slow on purpose. Give it four episodes.
Your Honor (Showtime, 2020 to 2023, two seasons, twenty episodes) puts Bryan Cranston in a New Orleans courtroom as a judge covering up his son's hit and run, which happens to involve a mob family. The first season is a very effective escalating disaster and it is genuinely hard to watch a decent man make each next bad choice. The second season is much weaker. Treat season one as a limited series and stop if you like.
The crime world from the ground
Gomorrah (Sky Atlantic Italy, 2014 to 2021, five seasons, fifty eight episodes) comes out of Roberto Saviano's reporting on the Camorra in Naples, and it is the least romantic crime series ever made. No heroes, no wisecracks, almost no music. Everyone is somebody's son. It's the show to reach for when you want the version of the Ozark world with the American self-justification stripped out. Subtitled, and bleak enough that it should be rationed.
ZeroZeroZero (Sky Atlantic, 2020, one season, eight episodes) also comes from Saviano and follows a single cocaine shipment from Mexico to Calabria, told from three sides at once: the producers, the American shipping family brokering it, and the buyers. Andrea Riseborough, Gabriel Byrne and Dane DeHaan are the brokers. It answers a question Ozark mostly waves at, which is what the money is physically attached to. Eight episodes and done.
Narcos (Netflix, 2015 to 2017, three seasons, thirty episodes) covers Pablo Escobar and then the Cali cartel, with Wagner Moura in the role that made him. It's much closer to a procedural than Ozark, with DEA narration and real archive footage cut in. Watch it for context on where the Byrdes' employers sit in a supply chain.
Snowfall (FX, 2017 to 2023, six seasons) tracks the crack epidemic in early 1980s Los Angeles through a nineteen year old dealer played by Damson Idris, in a series John Singleton co-created. Like Ozark it starts with a small operator and ends somewhere much darker, and unlike Ozark it keeps the community in frame the whole time. The last two seasons are its best.
The Serpent (BBC One, 2021, eight episodes) dramatises Charles Sobhraj, the French serial killer who preyed on young travellers along the Asian hippie trail in the 1970s, with Tahar Rahim in the role and Jenna Coleman as his partner. It is not a family business story, and it's here for one reason: it's the best portrait on this list of how a charming person gets other people to do the harm for him. That is Wendy's whole method.
How to choose tonight
If you want the closest thing to Ozark, Bloodline. If you want the best show, Better Call Saul. If you want to be genuinely disturbed, Gomorrah. If you have one weekend and no patience, ZeroZeroZero. Where each of these streams changes; the title page on BingeNext shows current US options.
If you'd rather have the shortlist built for you, our TV recommendation tool takes a few shows you already love and returns picks with a reason for each and where they stream.
Topics covered: crime, family-drama, thriller, morally-complex, dark, netflix
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.