20 best shows like Nise: The Heart of Madness (2016)

Following the fact-based historical book of the same name, this drama follows the rise of Cromwell as he becomes Henry the VIII's closest advisor. England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the King dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The Pope and most of Europe oppose him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer, and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

In the 1960s, Israeli clerk-turned-secret agent Eli Cohen goes deep undercover inside Syria on a perilous, years-long mission to spy for Mossad.

John Adams is a 2008 American television miniseries chronicling most of U.S. President John Adams' political life and his role in the founding of the United States. Paul Giamatti portrays John Adams. The miniseries was directed by Tom Hooper. Kirk Ellis wrote the screenplay based on the book John Adams by David McCullough. The biopic of John Adams and the story of the first fifty years of the United States was broadcast in seven parts by HBO between March 16 and April 20, 2008. John Adams received widespread critical acclaim, and many prestigious awards. The show won four Golden Globe awards and thirteen Emmy awards, which is more than any other miniseries in history.

The true story of the movement to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, and the unexpected backlash led by a conservative woman named Phyllis Schlafly, aka “the sweetheart of the silent majority.”

Acclaimed blackly comic historical drama series. Set amidst a web of power, corruption and lies, it chronicles the reigns of the Roman emperors - Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula and finally Claudius.

This limited series chronicles the incredible true story of Madam C.J. Walker, who was the first African American self-made millionaire.

It's the late 1960s, homosexuality has only just been legalised and Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal party, has a secret he's desperate to hide.

The gripping, decades-spanning inside story of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the Prime Ministers who shaped Britain's post-war destiny. The Crown tells the inside story of two of the most famous addresses in the world – Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street – and the intrigues, love lives and machinations behind the great events that shaped the second half of the 20th century. Two houses, two courts, one Crown.

The rise and fall of Bernie Madoff, who's Ponzi scheme bilked $65 billion from unsuspecting victims.

The story of a young Louis XIV on his journey to become the most powerful monarch in Europe, from his battles with the fronde through his development into the Sun King. Historical and fictional characters guide us in a world of betrayal and political maneuvering, revealing Versailles in all its glory and brutality.

The extraordinary rise of Livia Drusilla, who overcame adversity to become the most powerful woman in the world. Follow Livia’s journey from a naïve young girl whose world crumbles in the wake of Julius Caesar’s assassination, to Rome’s most powerful and influential Empress.

A fresh look at the life and legacy of the iconic artist Leonardo da Vinci, positing that he was a gay outsider who used his work as a way of hiding his true self. Each episode will examine one of da Vinci’s artworks for hidden clues about a tortured artist struggling for perfection.

Invisible Heroes tells the heroic tale of young Finnish diplomats in Chile during 1973’s infamous military coup. Finnish diplomats Tapani Brotherus and Ilkka Jaamala along with Tapani’s wife Lysa Brotherus helped over 2000 left-wing Chileans escape the military junta’s persecution. The Finns acted without official authorization while Swedish ambassador Harald Edelstam was the most visible defendant of human rights with the backing of Sweden’s Prime Minister, Olof Palme.

This four-part historical drama follows the end of Catherine the Great's reign and her affair with Russian military leader Grigory Potemkin that helped shape the future of Russian politics.

The beautiful Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon, navigates the royal lineage of England with an eye on the throne.

The story of the Egyptian Pharaoh, one of the most renowned leaders in human history. This ambitious special-event series tells the story of Tut’s rise to power and his struggle to lead Egypt to glory, while his closest advisers, friends and lovers scheme for their own nefarious interests. “Tut” opens up a fascinating window into a world filled with heart-breaking romance, epic battles, political backstabbing, conspiracy, jealousy, and even murder — proving his world was not far removed from our own — and that his reign as the youngest Egyptian king played out as a real-life drama for the ages.

Pablo Escobar: El Patrón del Mal is a 2012 Colombian television series produced and broadcast on Caracol TV, about the life of Pablo Escobar. It is only available in Spanish. There is a version available with English subtitles.

Anthology series about famous geniuses with the first season charting how Albert Einstein unlocked the mysteries of the atom and the universe, and the second exploring the passionate nature and relentless creative drive of Pablo Picasso.

The series follows the "untold" story of Leonardo Da Vinci: the genius during his early years in Renaissance Florence. As a 25-year old artist, inventor, swordsman, lover, dreamer and idealist, he struggles to live within the confines of his own reality and time as he begins to not only see the future, but invent it.

The Hollow Crown is a series of British television films featuring William Shakespeare's History Plays. The first Season is an adaptation of Shakespeare's second historical tetralogy, the Henriad: Richard II, Henry IV, Part I and Henry IV, Part II (treated as one film in two parts in the series) and Henry V. The Second Season is subtitled "The Wars of the Roses" as a reference to its scope. It is based on Shakespeare's first tetralogy: Henry VI: Part I, Henry VI: Part II, Henry VI: Part III (treated as two films in the series) and Richard III.

Elizabeth I is a two-part 2005 British historical drama television miniseries directed by Tom Hooper, written by Nigel Williams, and starring Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I of England. The miniseries covers approximately the last 24 years of her nearly 45-year reign. Part 1 focuses on the final years of her relationship with the Earl of Leicester, played by Jeremy Irons. Part 2 focuses on her subsequent relationship with the Earl of Essex, played by Hugh Dancy. The series originally was broadcast in the United Kingdom in two two-hour segments on Channel 4. It later aired on HBO in the United States, CBC and TMN in Canada, ATV in Hong Kong, ABC in Australia, and TVNZ Television One in New Zealand. The series went on to win Emmy, Peabody, and Golden Globe Awards. The same year, Helen Mirren starred as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, with which she dominated the award season.

Omar or Farouk Omar is a historical Arab television drama series that was produced and broadcast by MBC1 and directed by Hatem Ali. Co-produced by Qatar TV, the series is based on the life of Omar, one of the Prophet Mohammad's best companions and the second Caliph of Islam. The series had to face large controversy due to its depiction of Omar, Abu Bakr, Osman and Ali, the four Rashidun Caliphs, along with other characters, who some Muslims believe should not be depicted much like the Prophet Mohammad. The series consisted of 30 episodes and was originally aired in the month of Ramadan since July 20, 2012. It was made at a cost of 200 million Saudi Riyals and filmed in Morocco, mostly in Marakesh, Tangiers, El Jadida, Casablanca and Mohammedia. After the series was broadcast on MBC, dubbed into several languages and subtitled in English on youtube, it received great support from many different scholarly bodies and people watching it. As the series depended solely on reliable historical established facts, the series did not face criticism in terms of its content, as past movies and films faced.

Based on events in 7th and 8th-century Tang dynasty and starring producer Fan Bingbing as the titular character Wu Zetian, The Empress of China is the story of the only woman in Chinese history to rule as an emperor.

Razia Sultan is the story of Razia, the daughter of Sultan Iltutmish and Qutub Begum. Razia, known for her nobility and distinct thoughts, was crowned as the first woman ruler of the Delhi state after her father's death. The drama reveals the journey of Razia from a princess to a Sultan, including her love affair and marriage with Malik Altunia.

The story of Romulus and his twin brother Remus, in eighth century B.C. as seen through the eyes of three people marked by death, loneliness and violence.

Miniseries based on the true story of Clyde Barrow, a charismatic convicted armed robber who sweeps Bonnie Parker, an impressionable, petite, small-town waitress, off her feet, and the two embark on one one of most infamous bank-robbing sprees in history.

After a devastating fire in 1897 Paris, three women find their lives upended by betrayals, deceptions and romantic turmoil. Inspired by real events.

The story of Dutch journalist Hans Knoop's 1970s struggle to uncover the truth about World War II war criminal Pieter Menten.

Relive a heroic fight for survival during the Iraq War, when the 1st Cavalry Division from Fort Hood was ferociously ambushed on April 4, 2004, in Sadr City, Baghdad — a day that came to be known in military annals as “Black Sunday.”

A radical group of young men band together in secrecy to change the course of history and make America a nation.

In the early 1990s in New York, during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic, a visionary musician named Bobby Diggs aka The RZA begins to form a super group of a dozen young, black men, who will eventually rise to become one of the unlikeliest success stories in American music history.