TV Shows Like Animal Kingdom
If you like Animal Kingdom, here are 11 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
TNT · Crime · Animal Kingdom is ended
Animal Kingdom works because it refuses to make its criminals glamorous in the usual way. The Codys are not suave or particularly sophisticated. They are a family held together by loyalty, fear, and the gravitational pull of Smurf, a matriarch who loves her boys in the most suffocating sense of the word. J's arrival gives the audience a way in, someone who is just as unsettled by the Codys as we are, but the show never lets him stay clean for long. That slow corruption is the engine of the whole series, and it runs alongside a constant reshuffling of who holds power inside the family.
The best shows like Animal Kingdom
1. Tulsa King
Tulsa King has a lighter touch than Animal Kingdom, but Dwight Manfredi's situation, realizing the family he gave everything to has discarded him and having to build something new from scratch, is the same fundamental betrayal that runs through the Cody story. It is a good pick if you want the crime-family dynamics with more dry humor and a fish-out-of-water energy added to the mix.
Stream on Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel , Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Likely Renewed95%
2. Sons of Anarchy
The family-run criminal organization at the center of Sons of Anarchy maps almost directly onto the Codys. Jax's tension with Clay mirrors J's gradual reckoning with Smurf: a younger generation trying to figure out how much of the old way they can stomach and how much they have to dismantle to survive. The California setting and the constant threat of violence erupting within the group will feel immediately familiar.
Stream on Hulu
Ended0%
3. The Penguin
Strip away the comic-book setting and The Penguin is a story about a son trying to win his mother's approval while clawing his way to the top of a criminal hierarchy, which is essentially the Cody family in a different costume. The mother-son dynamic here is as loaded and psychologically uncomfortable as anything between J and Smurf, and the show does not flinch from showing how toxic that bond can be.
Stream on HBO Max Amazon Channel, YouTube TV, Spectrum On Demand, HBO Max
Ended0%
4. Good Girls
Good Girls takes the Animal Kingdom premise of ordinary people crossing a line and finding they cannot uncross it, and filters it through three suburban women rather than a beach-town crime clan. The escalation is the point: each compromise leads to a deeper one, and the relationships between the women carry the same push-pull tension as the Cody brothers at their best.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Cancelled0%
5. Mayans M.C.
A direct spinoff of Sons of Anarchy, Mayans M.C. follows EZ Reyes as he tries to build an identity inside a motorcycle club on the California-Mexico border, which puts it geographically and thematically close to Animal Kingdom's territory. EZ's outsider status within a tight-knit criminal group, and the question of how long he can keep his old self alive, echoes J Cody's arc closely.
Stream on Hulu
Ended0%
More on shows like Animal Kingdom
Fans of Animal Kingdom tend to want a few specific things from their next show. They want crime that feels personal, not procedural. They want a group dynamic where the alliances shift and the people who are supposed to love each other are also the biggest threat to each other. Strong, morally complex authority figures help, especially when those figures have blind spots that eventually cost them everything. A sense of place matters too. Animal Kingdom's Southern California beach setting is not incidental; it gives the criminality a specific texture, sun-bleached and casual, which makes the violence hit harder when it arrives.
The shows recommended here cover that territory from different angles. Sons of Anarchy and its spinoff Mayans M.C. are the most direct matches, swapping a beach house for a motorcycle club but keeping the same structure of a found-or-born family running criminal operations while tearing itself apart from the inside. Tulsa King approaches the crime family from the perspective of a man on the outside looking for a new one, and it has more humor than the others without losing its teeth. Good Girls shifts the socioeconomic bracket considerably but puts ordinary women through the same machinery of escalating criminal commitment that J goes through in Animal Kingdom. The Penguin is the furthest from the source material on the surface, but its core is a mother-son relationship wrapped around a brutal power struggle, which will feel very familiar to anyone who spent time watching Smurf work.
None of these shows are perfect. Mayans M.C. takes a season to find its footing. Good Girls' suburban setting can occasionally make the stakes feel soft. Sons of Anarchy stretches in its later seasons in ways that test patience. But all of them understand that the most dangerous room in a crime story is the one where everyone supposedly has each other's backs.
More shows like Animal Kingdom
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Animal Kingdom?
- Tulsa King is the most popular show similar to Animal Kingdom in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Animal Kingdom still on the air?
- Of the 11 shows similar to Animal Kingdom listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Animal Kingdom?
- The recommendations come from TMDB's similar-titles data, and each is shown with its current AI renewal verdict so you know which are still going.