TV Shows Like Mad Men
If you like Mad Men, here are 10 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
AMC · Drama · Mad Men is ended
Mad Men earns its reputation not through plot twists but through atmosphere and character. The show is set in the advertising world of 1960s New York, and it uses that world to examine ambition, identity, and the gap between how people present themselves and who they actually are. Don Draper is a man who literally invented himself, and the show never lets you forget that the product he sells, the image of the good life, is something he can construct for clients but never quite hold onto for himself. The period detail is meticulous, the gender and racial politics of the era are handled without melodrama, and the writing trusts the audience to sit with discomfort rather than resolve it neatly.
The best shows like Mad Men
1. The Lincoln Lawyer
Mickey Haller is a defense attorney who works outside the usual structures and bends rules to win, which puts him in the same moral neighborhood as Don Draper. The show takes professional competence seriously, the way Mad Men does, and wraps it in enough wit to keep things from getting too heavy. Fans who liked watching Don navigate power and competition in a high-pressure workplace will find similar satisfactions here.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Renewed100%
2. Beauty in Black
A cosmetics dynasty run by a wealthy, dysfunctional family is the kind of setting Mad Men viewers recognize immediately, power concentrated at the top and chaos underneath. The show brings in a world of sex work and trafficking that pushes it into darker territory than Mad Men, but the business-world intrigue and the collision of ambition with exploitation are recognizable threads. It won't have Mad Men's restraint, but the core interests overlap.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Likely Renewed72%
3. The Deuce
If Mad Men used the advertising industry to examine what America was selling itself in the 1960s, The Deuce does something similar with the sex trade and the birth of the porn industry in 1970s and 80s New York. It treats Times Square as a real economic and social ecosystem, watching an underground world get absorbed by capitalism, and it doesn't flinch from the human cost of that process. For viewers who appreciated Mad Men's willingness to sit with moral ambiguity, this is the closest match on the list.
Stream on HBO Max
Ended0%
4. Red Shoe Diaries
The premise, a man placing a newspaper ad after his fiancée's suicide in order to collect women's secret diaries, has the kind of brooding, confessional quality that runs through Mad Men's treatment of desire and hidden lives. It leans into the erotic rather than the professional, so the workplace drama isn't there, but the interest in secrecy and the distance between public and private selves is. Think of it as one strand of Mad Men's DNA stretched into its own show.
Ended0%
5. Life on Top
A young woman arriving in a big city to find work and navigating what she finds there touches on some of Mad Men's territory around ambition and female identity, even if the register is quite different. The connection to Mad Men is thinner here than with the other recommendations, but viewers drawn to stories about women finding their footing in competitive, adult environments may find something to like. Expectations should be adjusted; this is lighter fare.
Ended0%
More on shows like Mad Men
Fans of Mad Men tend to want a few specific things when they go looking for something else to watch. They want adult drama that takes professional life seriously, whether that's law, business, or something murkier. They want shows that understand how power and desire operate together. And they're usually willing to follow morally complicated characters, even ones who are hard to root for, as long as the writing is honest about the cost of those characters' choices. A show that glamorizes without questioning doesn't tend to hold their interest for long.
The recommendations here span a wider tonal range than Mad Men itself, so it's worth being upfront about that. The Lincoln Lawyer shares the professional sharpness and the sense of a protagonist who operates in ethical grey zones to get results. The Deuce is probably the closest in spirit to Mad Men's willingness to look at an industry, in this case the sex trade and early porn business in 1970s New York, as a lens onto larger social and economic forces. Beauty in Black takes the cosmetics business and the world of sex work and puts them in collision, with a focus on the dysfunction that money and power generate inside a family. Red Shoe Diaries and Life on Top are lighter and more erotic in their framing, drawing on Mad Men's interest in desire and secrecy rather than its workplace drama, and fans should go in with adjusted expectations on both counts.
The strongest matches for a Mad Men viewer are The Deuce and The Lincoln Lawyer. Both treat their central worlds, Times Square's underground economy and the Los Angeles criminal justice system, as real environments with their own rules and pressures rather than backdrops for melodrama. Beauty in Black has genuine energy around its business-world power dynamics. Red Shoe Diaries and Life on Top sit further from Mad Men's register, but for viewers who enjoyed the show's frank treatment of sexuality and ambition, they offer something in that direction.
More shows like Mad Men
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Mad Men?
- The Lincoln Lawyer is the most popular show similar to Mad Men in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Mad Men still on the air?
- Of the 10 shows similar to Mad Men listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Mad Men?
- 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.