What shows are most like The Sopranos?

Breaking Bad (163), Better Call Saul (171), and Mad Men (171) are the direct lineage. All three share The Sopranos' structural commitment to making a flawed protagonist's interior life the actual subject — not the backdrop. Boardwalk Empire is the Sopranos-writers' room period extension.

Is there a show as good as The Sopranos?

On the TVI rubric, The Wire (178) outranks The Sopranos (176) by two points — both Masterclass tier, both among the highest-scoring scripted dramas in the database. Better Call Saul and Mad Men round out the four-show Masterclass tier of post-Sopranos prestige drama.

Shows Like · The Sopranos (176)

Best Shows Like The Sopranos, Ranked by IQ Score

The Sopranos taught modern prestige TV how to render an interior life. These are the shows that learned the lesson most successfully. Ranked by IQ Score.

The Sopranos (IQ 176, Masterclass) is the show that defined what modern prestige drama would be. David Chase's structural innovation — making a mob boss in therapy the subject of legitimate dramatic inquiry — opened the door every show below walked through.

Closest matches: Breaking Bad (163) and Better Call Saul (171) are the direct lineage. Mad Men (171) is the Matthew Weiner (ex-Sopranos writer) parallel-track masterwork. Boardwalk Empire is the Terence Winter (ex-Sopranos writer) period extension. The Wire (178) is the parallel HBO experiment — different subject, same period, complementary architecture.

12 titles · ranked by IQ Score