Best movies & TV Shows like The Wonder Years

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A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Wonder Years Starring Elisha Williams, Dulé Hill, Saycon Sengbloh, Laura Kariuki, and more. If you liked The Wonder Years then you may also like: What's Love Got to Do with It, Almost Christmas, Cooley High, Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, Let Me In and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.

A coming of age story set in the late 1960s that takes a nostalgic look at a black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama through the point-of-view of imaginative 12 year-old Dean. With the wisdom of his adult years, Dean’s hopeful and humorous recollections show how his family found their “wonder years” in a turbulent time. Inspired by the classic series of the same name.

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What's Love Got to Do with It

Singer Tina Turner rises to stardom while mustering the courage to break free from her abusive husband Ike.

Almost Christmas

Walter Meyer is a retired mechanic who lost the love of his life one year earlier. Now that the holiday season is here, he invites daughters Rachel and Cheryl and sons Christian and Evan to his house for a traditional celebration. Poor Walter soon realizes that if his bickering children and the rest of the family can spend five days together under the same roof, it will truly be a Christmas miracle.

Cooley High

In the mid-1960s, a group of high school friends who live on the Near North Side of Chicago enjoy life to the fullest...parties, hanging out, meeting new friends. Then life changes for two of the guys when they are falsely arrested in connection with stealing a Cadillac. We follow their lives through to the dramatic end of high school.

Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment

During a two-day period before and after the University of Alabama integration crisis, the film uses five camera crews to follow President John F. Kennedy, attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, Alabama governor George Wallace, deputy attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach and the students Vivian Malone and James Hood. As Wallace has promised to personally block the two black students from enrolling in the university, the JFK administration discusses the best way to react to it, without rousing the crowd or making Wallace a martyr for the segregationist cause.

Let Me In

A bullied young boy befriends a young female vampire who lives in secrecy with her guardian. A remake of the movie “Let The Right One In” which was an adaptation of a book.

Children on Their Birthdays

Havoc is created in a small Southern community when a 12-year-old shows up, causing a couple 13-year-old friends to fall in love with her, thus possibly jeopardizing their friendship.

Free Willy

When maladjusted orphan Jesse vandalizes a theme park, he is placed with foster parents and must work at the park to make amends. There he meets Willy, a young Orca whale who has been separated from his family. Sensing kinship, they form a bond and, with the help of kindly whale trainer Rae Lindley, develop a routine of tricks. However, greedy park owner Dial soon catches wind of the duo and makes plans to profit from them.

The Inkwell

The Inkwell is about a 16-year-old boy coming of age on Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 1976.

Selma

"Selma," as in Alabama, the place where segregation in the South was at its worst, leading to a march that ended in violence, forcing a famous statement by President Lyndon B. Johnson that ultimately led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act.

The Rosa Parks Story

A seamstress recalls events leading to her act of peaceful defiance that prompted the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.

Selma, Lord, Selma

In 1965 Alabama, an 11 year old girl is touched by a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. and becomes a devout follower. But her resolution is tested when she joins others in the famed march from Selma to Montgomery.

The Vernon Johns Story

In 1948, Johns served as the outspoken spiritual leader of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Incensed at the racial injustice that pervaded the South, he was determined to fight for equality for all African Americans.

The Long Walk Home

Two women, black and white, in 1955 Montgomery Alabama, must decide what they are going to do in response to the famous bus boycott led by Martin Luther King.

The Wedding

Shelby Coles (Halle Berry) is engaged to marry talented white jazz musician Meade Howell, but the pair face opposition from both Meade's family, who object to an inter-racial marriage, and Shelby's parents, who want her to marry a professional. As Shelby is afflicted by pre-marital doubts, handsome Lute McNeil arrives on the scene, determined to make Shelby his at any cost.

Hide and Seek

Mixes documentary interviews of memories of lesbian adolescence with the story of the 12-year-old girl Lou discovering her sexuality in 1960s America.

The Secret Path

A young girl stuck in a horrific cycle of familial violence finds the power to build her own future from the place she least suspected in an inspiring tale of friendship and devotion starring Ossie Davis and Della Reese, and directed by Bruce Pittman. For years Jo Ann Foley (Madeline Zima) has suffered under the cruel hand of her ruthless grandfather. A chance meeting with kindly neighbors Honey (Reese) and her husband Too Tall (Davis) finds things looking up, however, as the nurturing couple provides Jo Ann with the support needed to break free of her grandfather's tyrannical grip. As the future lies before her ready to be molded however she sees fit, Jo Ann must now find the courage to let go of the past and seek the redemption needed to start life anew.

Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia

The true story of Mahalia Jackson, who began singing at an early age and went on to become one of the most revered gospel figures in U.S. history, melding her music with the civil rights movement.

Christmas in Canaan

Set in the 1960s, Christmas in Canaan is a drama about a black family and a white family that learn to love each other out of their Christian beliefs.

Any Day Now

Any Day Now is an American drama series that aired on the Lifetime network from 1998 to 2002. The show stars Annie Potts and Lorraine Toussaint as best friends of different races who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960s during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. In every episode, contemporary storylines are interwoven with a storyline from their shared past.

Cousin Skeeter

With the help of his strange cousin Skeeter, Bobby learns life lessons and tackles the ups and downs of growing up.

F is for Family

Follow the Murphy family back to the 1970s, when kids roamed wild, beer flowed freely and nothing came between a man and his TV.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Will, a street-smart teenager, moves from the tough streets of West Philly to posh Bel-Air to live with his Uncle Philip, Aunt Vivian, his cousins — spoiled Hilary, preppy Carlton and young Ashley — and their sophisticated British butler, Geoffrey. Though Will’s antics and upbringing contrast greatly with the upper-class lifestyle of his extended relatives, he soon finds himself right at home as a loved part of the family.

Hey Arnold!

The daily life of Arnold--a fourth-grader with a wild imagination, street smarts and a head shaped like a football.

Diff'rent Strokes

The series stars Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson, two African American boys from Harlem who are taken in by a rich white Park Avenue businessman named Phillip Drummond and his daughter Kimberly, for whom their deceased mother previously worked. During the first season and first half of the second season, Charlotte Rae also starred as the Drummonds' housekeeper, Mrs. Garrett.

Soul Food

Soul Food: The Series is a television drama that aired Wednesday nights on Showtime from June 28, 2000 to May 26, 2004. Created by filmmaker George Tillman, Jr. and developed for television by Felicia D. Henderson, Soul Food is based upon Tillman's childhood experiences growing up in Wisconsin, and is a continuation of his successful 1997 film of the same name. Having aired for 74 episodes, it is the longest running drama with a predominantly black cast in the history of North American prime-time television.

The Wonder Years

The story of Kevin Arnold facing the trials and tribulations of youth while growing up during the 1960s and 70s. Told through narration from an adult Kevin, Kevin faces the difficulties of maintaining relationships and friendships on his enthralling journey into adulthood.

black-ish

A family man struggles to gain a sense of cultural identity while raising his kids in a predominantly white, upper-middle-class neighborhood.

Crisis in Six Scenes

A comedy that takes place in the 1960s during turbulent times in the United States when a middle class suburban family is visited by a guest who turns their household completely upside down.

Lost in Space

After crash-landing on an alien planet, the Robinson family fights against all odds to survive and escape. But they're surrounded by hidden dangers.

Motown Magic

Imaginative boy Ben transforms his city by bringing colorful street art to life, armed with a magic paintbrush -- and the classic sounds of Motown.

mixed-ish

Rainbow Johnson recounts her experience growing up in a mixed-race family in the ‘80s and the constant dilemmas they had to face over whether to assimilate or stay true to themselves.

Small Axe

An anthology series of five stories looking at the lives of a group of friends and their families in London’s West Indian community from the late 1960s to the early 80s.

A Friend of the Family

The harrowing true story of the Broberg family, whose daughter Jan was kidnapped multiple times over a period of years by a charismatic, obsessed family "friend." The Brobergs — devoted to their faith, family, and community — were utterly unprepared for the sophisticated tactics their neighbor used to exploit their vulnerabilities, drive them apart, and turn their daughter against them. This is the story of how their lives were permanently altered — and how they survived.

Good Times

In this edgy, irreverent reimagining of the TV classic, a new generation of the Evans family keeps their heads above water in a Chicago housing project.

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