TV Shows Like Scandal
If you like Scandal, here are 12 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
ABC · Drama · Scandal is ended
Scandal works because it never lets you get comfortable. Olivia Pope is one of the sharpest characters broadcast television has produced, a woman who can dismantle a crisis with a phone call and a look, yet consistently fails to apply that same ruthless clarity to her own entanglements. The show runs on contradictions: the fixer who can't fix herself, the people devoted to protecting power who are slowly corrupted by it, the White House as both the most glamorous and most dangerous place in the story. Creator Shonda Rhimes keeps the plot moving at a pace that makes other dramas feel like they're standing still, and the Washington D.C. setting gives every personal betrayal a layer of national consequence.
The best shows like Scandal
1. The Night Agent
If the political conspiracy plots of Scandal are what kept you watching, The Night Agent delivers that in concentrated form. An FBI agent and a cybersecurity expert are pulled into a web of Washington secrets that keeps widening the deeper they dig, and like Scandal, the show understands that the most dangerous people are the ones who are supposed to be on your side. The pacing is urgent and the stakes feel genuinely high from early on.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Likely Cancelled35%
2. Ray Donovan
Ray Donovan is probably the closest thing on television to Scandal's basic premise: a fixer who handles the dirty problems of the powerful, set against a backdrop of wealth and corruption. The twist is that Ray's own family is as much a source of chaos as any client, which gives the show the same push-pull between professional competence and personal unraveling that defines Olivia Pope's story. It's darker in tone and more violent, but fans of Scandal's moral complexity will find plenty to grab onto.
Stream on fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel , Paramount+ Amazon Channel
Cancelled0%
3. Matlock
Matlock has a lighter touch than Scandal, but it shares a genuine interest in a brilliant, underestimated woman using her skills to expose the rot inside powerful institutions. Madeline Matlock's unassuming exterior hiding sharp tactical thinking is a recognizable pleasure for anyone who loved watching Olivia Pope outmaneuver people who thought they had the upper hand. The legal setting gives the corruption a different texture, but the satisfaction of watching someone smarter than the room dismantle a lie from the inside is very much the same.
Stream on fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential, Paramount Plus Apple TV Channel
Likely Renewed92%
4. The District
The District plants itself in Washington D.C. and deals directly with the intersection of politics, power, and law enforcement, which should feel familiar to Scandal fans attached to that specific setting. Following the chief of the D.C. police department means the show is constantly navigating the gap between what the city's institutions claim to be and what they actually are. It's a procedural at heart, but the political pressures on its central character give it some of the same tension between public image and private reality that runs through Scandal.
Ended0%
5. Good Girls
Good Girls operates at a lower altitude than Scandal, trading the White House for the suburbs, but it's built around the same core idea: women who are far more capable than their circumstances have allowed, deciding to stop shrinking. The show has genuine wit alongside its crime plotting, and it keeps raising the stakes in ways that feel earned rather than arbitrary. Fans of Scandal who connect most with Olivia Pope's refusal to accept the role assigned to her will recognize something similar in these three women figuring out just how far they're willing to go.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Cancelled0%
More on shows like Scandal
Fans of Scandal tend to want a few specific things when they look for something new. They want a protagonist who is genuinely good at their job, even when that job is morally complicated. They want power dynamics, secrets that compound rather than resolve, and plots where the personal and professional are impossible to separate. A little operatic emotion doesn't hurt either. The best Scandal-adjacent shows understand that the real tension is rarely about whether someone will get caught. It's about what catching them would actually cost.
The Night Agent and Ray Donovan both lean hard into that mix of political conspiracy and personal stakes. The Night Agent is tighter and more action-oriented, a thriller that builds its Washington intrigue from the ground up through characters who are outsiders trying to survive a system designed to protect itself. Ray Donovan is the closest structural equivalent to Scandal on this list: a fixer, a city full of powerful people with ugly secrets, and a family life that keeps pulling at everything he's built. Matlock takes a different approach, using the legal world and an unconventional protagonist to expose institutional corruption, and it has some of the same sharp tactical intelligence that makes Olivia Pope fun to watch. The District stays in Washington and deals directly with power and politics through the lens of law enforcement, so fans who like the D.C. backdrop will feel at home. Good Girls is the outlier in terms of tone, but it shares Scandal's core interest in people who are capable of much more than anyone around them expects, and what happens when ordinary life stops being enough.
None of these shows are Scandal, and they shouldn't be. But each one has at least one quality that Scandal fans tend to value most: characters who play the game better than anyone else, until the game starts playing them back.
More shows like Scandal
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like Scandal?
- The Night Agent is the most popular show similar to Scandal in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like Scandal still on the air?
- Of the 12 shows similar to Scandal listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like Scandal?
- 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.