TV Shows Like The Affair
If you like The Affair, 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.
Showtime · Drama · The Affair is ended
The Affair works because it refuses to let anyone off easy. Noah and Alison's relationship splinters their families, derails their lives, and leaves everyone involved—not just the two of them—excavating the wreckage for years. The show's genius is how it circles back to the same events repeatedly, shifting perspective until you realize that truth is slippery and pain is the only constant. Fans of the show are drawn to that unflinching portrait of how desire and selfishness corrode the people around you, and they want their next drama to examine consequences rather than excuse them.
The best shows like The Affair
1. Sex/Life
Sex/Life spirals around the same central tension as The Affair: a woman torn between the life she chose and the life she fantasizes about, and how that split consciousness destabilizes everyone around her. Like The Affair, it's willing to sit in desire and shame simultaneously, showing how fantasy doesn't stay private for long.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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2. Fatal Seduction
This show uses the affair as a gateway to something darker and more dangerous, much like how The Affair's infidelity becomes the match that lights fires no one can control. Both shows trace how a passionate moment between two people spirals into tragedy that reaches far beyond the bedroom.
Stream on Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
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3. The Undoing
The Undoing builds its entire structure around the same insight as The Affair: that you can live with someone for years and not know them at all, and that one event can strip away everything you believed about your life and your marriage. It also uses shifting perspectives to show how differently two people remember the same events.
Stream on HBO Max, HBO Max Amazon Channel
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4. Wilderness
This show transforms a marriage under stress into an emotional and physical landscape of danger, much the way The Affair shows how intimacy and rage can exist in the same moment. Both are about what happens when love collapses and there's nothing underneath it but resentment and hurt.
Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
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5. The Missing
Like The Affair, The Missing is structured around repeated returns to painful events, showing how the same facts look different depending on who's telling the story and what they have to lose. Both dramas understand that family trauma doesn't resolve cleanly—it just gets repacked and carried forward.
Stream on Starz Apple TV Channel, Starz Roku Premium Channel, Starz, Philo
Ended0%
More on shows like The Affair
The shows recommended here share that DNA. They all begin with someone making a choice—stepping outside their marriage, pursuing a fantasy, taking a risk—and then show what that choice actually costs. Unlike many dramas that treat infidelity as a plot device, these stories make it a crucible. The Undoing, Wilderness, Sex/Life, and Fatal Seduction all center on marriages that cannot survive contact with the truth. The Missing approaches it from a different angle, tracing how trauma and deception splinter families from within, but the emotional machinery is the same: watch how people destroy each other, whether through passion or through secrets.
These are not happy shows. They have moments of tenderness, but mostly they track the dissolution of the people and families you're watching. Some lean harder into the mystery or thriller elements than The Affair does. Others spend more time in the fantasy and the desire before showing the bill. But all of them understand that a really adult drama has to show the damage, not just the pleasure, and most importantly, it has to show it repeatedly from different angles until the viewer feels as confused and heartbroken as the characters do.
More shows like The Affair
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like The Affair?
- Sex/Life is the most popular show similar to The Affair in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like The Affair still on the air?
- Of the 10 shows similar to The Affair listed here, 0 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like The Affair?
- 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.