20 best shows like The Current War (2019)

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

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.

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.

In a parallel present where the latest must-have gadget for any busy family is a 'Synth' - a highly-developed robotic servant that's so similar to a real human it's transforming the way we live.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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 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.

Two 19th-century footballers on opposite sides of a class divide navigate professional and personal turmoil to change the game — and England — forever.

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 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.

An intense and fictionalized account of actual events and people surrounding Lizzie’s life after her controversial acquittal of the horrific double murder of her father and stepmother in 1892.

A gritty, action-packed crime drama set during the brutal Tong Wars of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the second half of the 19th century. The series follows Ah Sahm, a martial arts prodigy who immigrates from China to San Francisco under mysterious circumstances, and becomes a hatchet man for one of Chinatown’s most powerful tongs.

The life of Napoleon Bonaparte.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a Kentucky orphanage in the 1950s, a young girl discovers an astonishing talent for chess while struggling with addiction.

Based on a true story, "Harley and the Davidsons" charts the birth of this iconic bike during a time of great social and technological change beginning at the turn of the 20th century.

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 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.

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.

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.

The true story of Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Endurance expedition to the the South Pole and his epic struggle to lead his crew to safety after his ship was crushed in the pack ice.

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.

Young computer engineer Lily Chan investigates the secretive development division of her employer, a cutting-edge tech company based in San Francisco, which she believes is behind the murder of her boyfriend.

Casanova is a 2005 British television comedy drama serial, written by television scriptwriter Russell T Davies and directed by Sheree Folkson. Produced by Red Production Company for BBC Wales in association with Granada Television, the 3-episode series was first screened on digital television station BBC Three from 13 March, with a repeat on mainstream analogue network BBC One commencing 4 April.

Influential builders, dreamers and believers whose feats transformed the United States, a nation decaying from the inside after the Civil War, into the greatest economic and technological superpower the world had ever seen. The Men Who Built America is the story of a nation at the crossroads and of the people who catapulted it to prosperity.

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.