Shows Like
Shows Like Ozark: Crime Family Dramas
By Jordan A. · · 7 min read
Ozark is a masterclass in tension building. Jason Bateman plays Marty Byrde, an accountant who gets pulled into money laundering for a Mexican drug cartel and ends up relocating his family to Missouri to launder money through a casino. The show spends five seasons watching Marty, his wife Wendy, and their children navigate increasingly desperate circumstances, escalating crimes, and the steady erosion of their moral boundaries. If you're looking for shows like Ozark, you want that same combination of escalating danger, morally complex characters you somehow still root for, and the sense that every decision is someone's last chance.
What Ozark does masterfully is show how crime isn't glamorous - it's exhausting and terrifying and it destroys everyone involved. The show doesn't romanticize its criminals. Instead, it shows how ordinary people make extraordinary choices, and how those choices cascade into consequences nobody planned for. The characters aren't brilliant masterminds - they're scared, desperate people trying to protect their families while digging deeper into a hole they can never escape.
Crime Family Dramas With Escalating Danger
Breaking Bad is the obvious comparison - another story about an ordinary man getting pulled into the drug trade and slowly becoming someone he doesn't recognize. Bryan Cranston as Walter White is incredible, and the show understands pacing and character development in ways that defined modern prestige television. Five seasons of perfection.
Justified follows Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, a U.S. Marshal in Kentucky dealing with criminals and moral ambiguity in rural Appalachia. It's lighter in tone than Ozark but shares that commitment to character development and understanding crime through personal relationships rather than heists. The dialogue is sharp and specific to place.
The Americans is about a married couple who are Soviet KGB operatives undercover in 1980s America. It's a different kind of crime story - spycraft rather than drug trade - but it shares Ozark's commitment to showing how living a lie destroys intimacy and trust. The tension is sustained across ten episodes relentlessly.
Sneaky Pete stars Giovanni Ribisi as a con man who gets into increasingly complicated situations with crime families and criminal enterprises. It's lighter and funnier than Ozark, but it shares that DNA of ordinary people making bad choices and getting trapped in escalating circumstances. Bryan Cranston directs several episodes.
Morally Compromised Characters In Over Their Heads
Bloodline follows a family of hotel owners in the Florida Keys dealing with dark secrets, murder, and the way institutional power protects criminals. Kyle Chandler plays a detective trying to maintain his moral authority while surrounded by corruption, and the show understands how thin the line is between justice and crime. The atmosphere is suffocating.
The Sopranos is the godfather of shows about criminals and their families. James Gandolfini plays Tony Soprano, a mob boss going to therapy while running an organized crime operation. It's longer and more episodic than Ozark, but it pioneered the idea that you could have viewers rooting for a bad person, understanding his psychology while not excusing his actions.
Hannibal is a psychological thriller about an FBI profiler bonding with a serial killer he's hunting. It's more character study than crime procedural, and it's visually stunning in ways Ozark isn't, but it shares that commitment to showing how proximity to darkness corrupts everyone involved. Mads Mikkelsen is extraordinary.
Banshee is a crime drama set in a small Pennsylvanian town where an ex-con takes over the identity of a dead police officer. It's smaller in scale than Ozark and doesn't reach the same dramatic heights, but it has that same energy of a protagonist trapped in circumstances they can't escape from and increasingly morally compromised.
Tension-Driven Narratives About Family and Crime
Peaky Blinders follows the Shelby family, a gang in post-World War I Birmingham, England, as they try to climb the criminal hierarchy while dealing with trauma, PTSD, and each other. Cillian Murphy brings quiet intensity to Tommy Shelby, and the show understands how violence creates cycles that families can't escape. The cinematography is stunning.
Gomorrah is an Italian crime drama about the Camorra (Neapolitan mafia) told through the perspectives of various characters - drug runners, boss's sons, women trying to survive in that world. It's brutal and morally uncompromising, and it doesn't soften its characters or their violence. This is crime without heroes.
Gomorra is the film that the series Gomorrah is based on, but I already recommended the series. Actually, for a similar vibe in film-form, Sicario is about an American lawyer pulled into the cartels and realizes she doesn't understand the game she's playing. The show Cartel Land (a documentary) covers similar ground about institutional corruption and criminal power.
The Outsider is a limited series from HBO about a detective investigating a crime with increasingly inexplicable elements. It's moody and paranoid, and while it's less about crime families than Ozark, it shares that sense of characters trapped in escalating circumstances they don't fully understand.
Shows About Institutional Corruption and Crime Networks
The Wire is the gold standard for shows about crime as a systemic problem. It follows Baltimore through multiple seasons, examining drugs, education, politics, and how crime intersects with institutional failure. It's more sprawling than Ozark and less focused on a single family, but it understands crime as a network rather than a story about individuals.
Serpent is a Netflix limited series about a British conman running a nightclub in Thailand and gradually becoming involved with serious criminals. It's beautifully shot, it has that sense of an ordinary person making bad choices and getting trapped, and Tahar Rahim is magnetic in the lead role. It's shorter but punchy.
Mindhunter season 1 is about FBI agents profiling serial killers, which is different from Ozark's approach, but it shares that commitment to showing how proximity to crime changes you. Jonathan Groff plays an agent increasingly obsessed with understanding criminal psychology at the expense of his personal life.
Godless is a western about a town run by women where a fugitive arrives and disrupts the fragile balance. It's smaller scale than Ozark and less focused on crime specifically, but it shares that understanding of how one person's arrival can destabilize everything.
Dramas About Consequences and Spiral
Fargo (especially seasons 1 and 3) tells self-contained stories about ordinary people getting into criminal situations they're unprepared for. Steve Buscemi and Frances McDormand deliver incredible performances, and the Coen Brothers' sensibility brings dark humor and moral complexity. It's shorter than Ozark but denser.
Penny Dreadful is a gothic horror show that, while not explicitly about crime, shares Ozark's commitment to character development and the slow unraveling of protagonists through trauma and difficult circumstances. It's visually stunning and psychologically complex.
Rectify is about a man exonerated from death row returning to his small town in Georgia and trying to reintegrate into a community that sees him as a killer. It's slower and more contemplative than Ozark, but it understands how crime ripples through families and communities in ways that can't be undone.
Dark is a German science fiction drama, so it's pretty different from Ozark, but it shares that commitment to long-term plotting, character complexity, and the idea that every choice has consequences that cascade forward. It's dense and requires attention, but it's rewarding.
The heart of Ozark is understanding that crime choices aren't actually choices - they're traps that look like options. Every character in the show thinks they're being strategic, but they're actually just trapped. The shows I'm recommending below understand that same exhausting spiral, where characters are intelligent but circumstances are smarter.
If you want to find more crime dramas about families, morally complex characters, and escalating danger, check out BingeNext's TV recommendations. Filter for crime dramas, family dynamics, and character-driven narratives. You'll find plenty of shows that understand the seductive trap of criminal enterprise and the cost of trying to escape it.
Ozark is exhausting to watch because it's genuinely tense, and the tension comes from character and consequence, not shock value. The best shows like Ozark understand that crime stories are ultimately about people, and people are complicated and frequently disappointing. Now go find something that will keep you up at night worrying about fictional characters.
If you want a shortlist tailored to your taste, try BingeNext's TV recommendation engine. Tell it a few shows you love and it does the rest in about thirty seconds.
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 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.