Best movies & TV Shows like Boys from the Blackstuff

A Liverpool juvenile liaison officer struggles with a young and dangerous pyromaniac.

A hard-living dockworker finds religion until his brother is murdered.

It's New Year's Eve in Thatcher's de-industrialising Britain. The scene is set at a seedy bar in Liverpool where a group of Irish Protestant and Irish Catholic pensioners will gather to clash and bash the new year in.

In this coming-of-age comedy, Tim Dunphy is leading a go-nowhere existence, spending his days smoking pot and hanging out with his best friend, Drugs Delaney. But Tim's lazy days of getting high are jettisoned after a brush with the law convinces his blue-collar dad to send him to a Connecticut prep school. The one saving grace of the new school is Jane, a fellow student Tim falls for immediately.

After seeing her husband fail in fighting a battle to keep his factory open, a manageress loses her job in a disagreement with the manager over sexual harassment of her staff. She accepts the advice of her father and joins his son, a left-wing organizer, and takes her plight to the union.

Garvey is a San Francisco pawnshop operator. His unemployed and criminal friends Dillard, Turtle and Weslake, team up with Boardwalk, a local pimp, to burgle Garvey's shop while the owner is out of town. During the elaborate planning process, Dillard falls for a Hispanic woman, the sister of a friend. Boardwalk is assigned to case a local apartment, where he meets and falls for the maid. Amidst all these romantic hijinks, Weslake puts together a burglary plan, which is executed by the makeshift gang.

A single mother living in inner city Chicago, Brenda has been struggling for years to make ends meet and keep her three kids off the street. When she's laid off with no warning, she starts losing hope for the first time - until a letter arrives announcing the death of a father she's never met. Desperate for any kind of help, Brenda takes her family to Georgia for the funeral, but nothing could have prepared her for the Browns, her father's fun-loving, crass Southern clan. In a small-town world full of long afternoons and country fairs, Brenda struggles to get to know the family she never knew existed...and finds a brand new romance that just might change her life.

Monty is a mechanic struggling to make ends meet as he raises his three young daughters. When the court awards custody of his daughters to his shady ex-wife, Monty desperately tries to win them back with the help of Julia, a beautiful, Ivy League-educated attorney. Monty and Julia couldn't be less alike, but a flame is ignited...touching off a firestorm of love and conflict.

The second film in Terence Davies's autobiographical series (along with "Trilogy" and "The Long Day Closes") is an impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, based on Davies's own family. Through a series of exquisite tableaux Davies creates a deeply affecting photo album of a troubled family wrestling with the complexity of love.

Sheffield, England. Gaz, a jobless steelworker in need of quick cash persuades his mates to bare it all in a one-night-only strip show.

A story about a troubled boy growing up in England, set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends, even like family. Based on experiences of director Shane Meadows.

The factories, pubs, clubs, hotels and streets of 1980s Liverpool form the backdrop for this tale of love, friendship, sex and a letter to the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Two Liverpool lasses, Teresa and Elaine meet two Russian sailors, Sergei and Peter and hook up for a night of fun and frolics. Teresa is looking for sex and a smile, Elaine wants love, romance and the dream of a life far away from the grime of the Liverpool docklands. A classic British romantic comedy filled with new wave tunes, 80s fashion, a little politics and a lot of heart.

The feature film directing debut of Spike Lee protege Lee Davis takes the viewer into the world of taxi drivers. Developed in the Sundance Laboratory, this film offers dove-tailing stories centering on the lives of individual taxi drivers as they reflect on and experience romance, politics, sociology, and spirituality.

Amidst a backdrop of growing violence and intimidation, independent cab drivers struggling against a consolidated juggernaut rally around hot-tempered Matt Nolan. Nolan is determined to keep competition alive on the streets, even if it means losing the woman he loves.

Ricky and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash. An opportunity to wrestle back some independence appears with a shiny new van and the chance to run a franchise as a self-employed delivery driver. It's hard work, and his wife's job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point.

Proud, though poor, Bob wants his little girl to have a beautiful (and costly) brand-new dress for her First Communion. His stubbornness and determination get him into trouble as he turns to more and more questionable measures, in his desperation to raise the needed money. This tragic flaw leads him to risk all that he loves and values, his beloved family, indeed even his immortal soul and salvation, in blind pursuit of that goal.

A woman attempts to escape her domestic problems by fleeing to New York in search of her father. She finds him, and also new problems, some friendship, a romance, and an unexpected career as pro-boxer, to make ends meet.

An inventor and his bride get testy in the city as they try to make ends meet.

Nicole is an introverted Liverpudlian teenager, all but deserted by her parents, with a mother distractedly working nights and a father who has settled with a new family elsewhere. She spends time hanging around the gates of Anfield and the Melwood training ground, desperate for a glimpse of her idol, the star midfielder Lee Cassidy. She Meets aspirant WAG Jasmine, who is from an affluent family, more glamorous and streetwise, yet the girls' shared adoration to Cassidy lead them to bond instantly. They trawl the city and its nightspots, fantasizing about a time when they might have Lee for themselves, yet when the news breaks that the footballer is a transfer target for Real Madrid, they take drastic action to prevent him leaving.

A recently-widowed science fiction writer considers whether to adopt a hyper-imaginative 6-year-old abandoned and socially-rejected boy who says he's really from Mars.

Former police psychologist Rob helps to save young Chrissy when she is about to commit suicide by jumping of 21st-story balcony with her 4-year-old son Jake. When he persuades her to go on a date, they are trapped with Jake in an elevator after a drunken gang crashes into the elevator's engine room and creates havoc.

The early days of the Fab Four are traced from their bleakest hours as unknowns on Penny Lane in Liverpool to their triumph on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Alan Bleasdale's comic crime caper for Channel 4 about a former getaway driver desperate to leave his life of crime behind. Featuring Alfred Molina, David Ross, Amanda Mealing, Andrew Schofield and Julie Walters. Raymond Murtagh's Requim Apache tells the story of Hamish, who was once one of the criminal underworld's best getaway drivers. Now a new father and retired to the Suffolk countryside, he has to watch the baby at home alone. However, Hamish's peaceful and idyllic new life is shattered when his past rears its ugly head once again, and the old gang comes over for a visit. They make him an offer he dare not refuse to take on one last bank job. However, with no babysitter available, he is forced to take the baby with him.

Story of a man whose pride in being the head of his family won't let him accept help from his sick daughters doctor. He has to prove to his kids that even with the death of his wife and the loss of his job that they can and will survive. After hitting brick wall after brick wall comes a glimmer of hope.

Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.

A Liverpool tarmac gang set off for a contract in Middlesborough. After a day of work, the group are approached by two gypsies who offer them a lucrative side job.

Jimmy McGovern's depiction of the mid 90s Liverpool dockers strike. Featuring script contributions from Irvine Welsh and the real dockers themselves

Following the chronicles of the East End working-class Garnett family, headed by patriarch Alf Garnett, a reactionary working-class man who holds racist and anti-socialist views.

A British Cabinet Minister is gunned down outside his home in London by a member of the Provisional IRA. Security protocols are activated, but the assassin evades them and successfully escapes to Belfast. In the aftermath of the incident, rash decisions are made by politicians seeking revenge, and the Ministry of Defence responds by sending Captain Harry Brown (Ray Lonnen) - a special forces soldier who has done deep cover work in hostile territory - into the Falls Road area of Belfast, notorious for civil unrest and Republican activity. Harry's mission is to infiltrate the local nationalist population, uncover the identity of the assassin, and kill him in his own neighborhood - proving to the IRA that they are not safe, even in their "own back yard".

Comedy series set in Liverpool about an half-protestant/half-catholic family.

Three-part biopic of the Liverpudlian songbird who would later find fame and fortune. It tells of her rocky road to fame and captures the essence of 1960s Liverpool.

A group of working-class friends finding unconventional ways to win at life in northern suburbia. These lads have dealt, scammed, bribed and conned their way through adolescence, but now, on the brink of adulthood, their dealing and stealing is catching up with them and a whole load of trouble is heading their way.

Twelve-year-old Gordon Weaver is killed on waste-ground in Liverpool. His grandfather, Doyle, sends for the boy's father, who returns from Spain to search for the killers. He goes to an old friend to obtain finance for his stay, and gets involved in a raid on a city club owner.

Four strangers — a flight attendant escaping a suburban cult, an Afghan refugee fleeing persecution, a young Australian father escaping a dead-end job, and a bureaucrat caught up in a national scandal — are stuck in an immigration detention center in the Australian desert. Inspired by true events.

Comedy about working class Liverpudlian teenagers, tackling big issues like grief, sex, diversity and class differences.