20 best shows like Selma (2014)

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.

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

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.”

The Tudors is a history-based drama series following the young, vibrant King Henry VIII, a competitive and lustful monarch who navigates the intrigues of the English court and the human heart with equal vigor and justifiable suspicion.

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

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 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.

Mayor Nick Wasicsko took office in 1987 during Yonkers' worst crisis when federal courts ordered public housing to be built in the white, middle class side of town, dividing the city in a bitter battle fueled by fear, racism, murder and politics.

The intimate world of Saddam Hussein and his closest inner circle is in this gripping four-part drama that charts the rise and fall of one of the most significant political figures in recent history.

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.

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

Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, 1832. Anne Lister attempts to revitalize her inherited home, Shibden Hall. Most notably for the time period, a part of her plan is to help the fate of her own family - by taking a wife.

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.

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.

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?

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 life of Napoleon Bonaparte.

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.”

Picking up where the Emmy-winning miniseries The Kennedys left off, The Kennedys – After Camelot provides a fascinating look into the modern era of America’s royal family. Based on the best-selling book of the same name by J. Randy Taraborrelli.

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.

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.

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.

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

Jodha Akbar is an epic drama about a sixteenth century story of the political marriage of convenience between a Mughal emperor Abu'l-Fath Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar and a Rajput princess Jodha Bai. The show focuses on how their political marriage brings love between them to an extent that it changed the fate of India. This period drama also portrays the wars of that time along with the relations between the Mughals and the Rajputs. The drama also focuses on the functioning of the queens, the courts, courtesans, the ministers and their influence on the love story of Jalal ud-din Muhammad Akbar and Jodha Bai. The show also highlights on how Mughal emperor Jalal ud-din Muhammad acquires the title of Akbar from the people.

The true story of one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history: the catastrophic nuclear accident at Chernobyl. A tale of the brave men and women who sacrificed to save Europe from unimaginable disaster.

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.

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.

Spartacus is an American television series inspired by the historical figure of Spartacus, a Thracian gladiator who from 73 to 71 BCE led a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic departing from Capua.

The rise and fall of Fox News founder Roger Ailes, focusing primarily on the past decade in which Ailes arguably became the Republican Party’s de facto leader, while flashing back to defining events in his life.

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.

It’s the true American story of a legendary family feud—one that spanned decades and nearly launched a war between Kentucky and West Virginia. The Hatfield-McCoy saga begins with Devil Anse Hatfield and Randall McCoy.. Close friends and comrades until near the end of the Civil War, they return to their neighboring homes—Hatfield in West Virginia, McCoy just across the Tug River border in Kentucky—to increasing tensions, misunderstandings and resentments that soon explode into all-out warfare between their families. As hostilities grow, friends, neighbors and outside forces join the fight, bringing the two states to the brink of another civil war.

A contemporary and culturally resonant drama about a young programmer, Elliot, who suffers from a debilitating anti-social disorder and decides that he can only connect to people by hacking them. He wields his skills as a weapon to protect the people that he cares about. Elliot will find himself in the intersection between a cybersecurity firm he works for and the underworld organizations that are recruiting him to bring down corporate America.

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.

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.

New Worlds is a gripping 4 part mini series dealing with love, loss and the human price paid for the freedoms and liberties we enjoy today. We follow the fortunes of four young people - Beth, Hope, Abe and Ned - from across both sides of the Atlantic, caught up in these turbulent times. We see them struggle as they are torn between love and ideals in the harsh reality of the changing world. In England, the restored monarchy of Charles II has betrayed its promises and reverted to tyranny. Behind the decadence of the Court, a terror machine is repressing the freedoms won for the people with so much blood during the Civil War of England when Charles I was executed. In America, the tentacles of state terror reach the English colonists of New England who are struggling to throw off the shackles of the English Crown. At the same time the colonists are ruthlessly staking their claim to the territories occupied by the Native American Indians, and shedding much of the American Indian's blood in the process - in a chilling echo of the tyrannical behaviour that they sought to escape from when they crossed the Atlantic

This drama series is a fictionalized retelling of the story of meth dealer-turned-ATF informant Charles Falco, who spent three years inside one of America's most dangerous motorcycle gangs, the Vagos. Although Falco originally took on the assignment to avoid spending 20 years in prison on drug charges, it eventually evolved into a quest for justice for him. “Gangland Undercover” documents the lives of outlaw bikers, who live in a world in which respect is earned through fear. The series is based on Falco's memoir, “Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws,” and documented historical research of gang rivalries.

France, 1815. Jean Valjean, a common thief, is released from prison after having lived a hell in life for 19 years, but a small mistake puts the law again on his trail. Ruthless Inspector Javert pursues him thorough years, driven by a twisted sense of justice, while Valjean reforms himself, thrives and dedicates his life to good deeds. In 1832, while the revolution ravages the streets of Paris, Valjean and Javert cross their paths for the last time.

Justice Robert H. Jackson leads Allied prosecutors in trying 21 Germans for Nazi war crimes after World War II.

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

A English navigator becomes both a player and pawn in the complex political games in feudal Japan.

Five-part adaptation of Anne Frank's famous wartime diaries in which a young teenager and her family go into hiding from the Nazis in wartime Amsterdam.

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire is a 2006 BBC One docudrama series, with each episode looking at a different key turning point in the history of the Roman Empire.

The trials and triumphs of one of America’s wealthiest and unhappiest families, the Gettys. Told over multiple seasons and spanning the twentieth century, the series begins in 1973 with the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, an heir to the Getty oil fortune, by the Italian mafia in Rome.