Top 250 Tv Shows Like If Things Were Different
For Janet, having an affair is the only way to hold a marriage together.
A list of the best tv shows similar to If Things Were Different. If you liked If Things Were Different then you may also like: Absolutely Fabulous, The Affair, Blackpool, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Bold Type and many more great tv shows featured on this list.
A woman tries to cope with her husband's emotional instability while also juggling a career as a local TV show director, her motherly duties, and an extramarital affair.
The Affair
The Affair explores the emotional effects of an extramarital relationship between Noah Solloway and Alison Lockhart after the two meet in the resort town of Montauk in Long Island. Noah is a New York City schoolteacher with one novel published (book entitled A Person who Visits a Place) and he is struggling to write a second book. He is happily married with four children, but resents his dependence on his wealthy father-in-law. Alison is a young waitress trying to piece her life and marriage back together in the wake of the tragic death of her child. The story of the affair is told separately, complete with distinct memory biases, from the male and female perspectives.
Blackpool
Ripley Holden is a small-time entrepreneur desperate to make it big with his new state-of-the-art amusement arcade. The opening extravaganza is overshadowed by the find of a dead body on the premises. DI Carlisle is called in and quickly finds he has more on his mind than murder, when he falls in love with Ripley's long-suffering wife.
The Bold and the Beautiful
Continuing drama combining romance and intrigue set against the glittering backdrop of Beverly Hills and the American fashion industry.
The Bold Type
A glimpse into the outrageous lives of Jane, Kat and Sutton, who are working at the nation's top women's magazine, Scarlet, while navigating their careers, identities and individual voices.
Broadchurch
The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart.
Cedar Cove
Judge Olivia Lockhart is considered the community's guiding light in the picturesque, coastal town of Cedar Cove, Washington. But like everyone else, Olivia fights the uphill battle of balancing career with family and finding love, all the while doing her best to care for the township she calls home. Based on best-selling author Debbie Macomber’s beloved book series.
Days of Our Lives
The Horton and Brady broods endure the romantic trials of life in Salem, a Midwestern hamlet filled with evil geniuses, star-crossed lovers and a rich family history.
Designing Women
Julia Sugarbaker, Mary Jo Shively, Charlene Frazier-Stillfield and Suzanne Sugarbaker are associates at their design firm, Sugarbaker and Associates. Julia is the owner and is very outspoken and strong-willed. Mary Jo is a divorced single-parent whom is just as strong-willed as Julia, but isn't as self-confident. Charlene is the naive and trusting farm girl from Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Suzanne is the self-centered ex-beauty queen whom has a number of wealthy ex-husbands.
Dynasty
The saga of a wealthy Denver family in the oil business: Blake Carrington, the patriarch; Krystle, his former secretary and wife; his children: Adam, lost in childhood after a kidnapping; Fallon, pampered and spoiled; Steven, openly gay; and Amanda, hidden from him by his ex-wife, the conniving Alexis. Most of the show features the conflict between 2 large corporations, Blake's Denver Carrington and Alexis' ColbyCo.
Fosse/Verdon
The story of the romantic and creative partnership between Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon. He was a filmmaker and one of theater's most influential choreographers and directors; she was the greatest Broadway dancer of all time. Together, they changed the face of American entertainment — at a perilous cost.
The Glades
This Crime series follows Matt Passmore as Jim, a Chicago cop who gets kicked off the force after being shot and wrongfully accused by his ex-captain of having an affair with his wife. After receiving his payout, Jim decides to moves to a small Florida town to join the state police.
Home and Away
Home and Away is set in the fictional town of Summer Bay, a coastal town in New South Wales, and follows the personal and professional lives of the people living in the area. The show initially focused on the Fletcher family, Pippa and Tom Fletcher and their five foster children Frank Morgan, Carly Morris, Steven Matheson, Lynn Davenport and Sally Keating, who would go on to become one of the show's longest-running characters. The show also originally and currently focuses on the Stewart family. During the early 2000s, the central storylines focused on the Sutherlands and later, the Hunters. Home and Away had proved popular when it premiered in 1988 and had risen to become a hit in Australia, and after only a few weeks, the show tackled its first major and disturbing storyline, the rape of Carly Morris; it was one of the first shows to feature such storylines during the early timeslot. H&A has tackled many adult-themed and controversial storylines; something rarely found in its restricted timeslot.
Lipstick Jungle
Lipstick Jungle is an American comedy-drama television series created by DeAnn Heline and Eileen Heisler for NBC Universal Television Studio. The hour-long series was based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Candace Bushnell, who also served as executive producer alongside showrunner/head writer Oliver Goldstick. The pilot was directed by Gary Winick.
Masters of Sex
William Masters and Virginia Johnson are real-life pioneers of the science of human sexuality. Their research touched off the sexual revolution and took them from a midwestern teaching hospital to the cover of Time magazine and multiple appearances on Johnny Carson's couch. He is a brilliant scientist out of touch with his own feelings, and she is a single working mother ahead of her time. The series chronicles their unusual lives, romance, and unlikely pop culture trajectory.
A Million Little Things
A group of friends from Boston who feel stuck in life experience an unexpected wake-up call after one of their friends dies unexpectedly.
Mistresses
Follows the lives of four female friends and their involvement in an array of marital and extramarital relationships.
Mistresses
Meet Savi, a successful career woman working toward the next phase in her life—both professional and personal—simultaneously bucking for partner at her law firm while she and her husband, Harry, try to start a family of their own. Savi's free-spirited and capricious baby sister, Josselyn, couldn't be more different—living single, serial dating and partying, and regularly leaning on her big sister along the way. Their common best friend, April, a recent widow and mother of two, is rebuilding her life after tragedy and learning to move forward, with the support and guidance of her closest girlfriends. And friend Karen, a successful therapist with her own practice, reconnects with the girls after her involvement in a complicated relationship with a patient goes far too deep.
Nurse Jackie
Every day is a matter of life and death in a hectic New York City hospital, but for Nurse Jackie that's the easiest part. Between chronic back pain that won't quit, and a personal life on the constant edge of collapse, it's going to take a white lie here, a bent rule there, and a handful of secret strategies to relieve the pain, and stay one step ahead of total disaster.
The Tudors
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.
Vanderpump Rules
Follow the passionate, volatile and hot-and-bothered-staff at Lisa Vanderpump’s West Hollywood mainstay SUR. Lisa balances her motherly instincts and shrewd business sense to keep control over this wild group of employees as they pursue their dreams and each other while working at her “Sexy, Unique Restaurant.”
Veronica's Closet
Veronica 'Ronnie' Chase is the 'Queen of Romance.' Founder of a successful lingerie empire, and best-selling author of self-help romance books, Ronnie has it all ... money, success, sex appeal and a philandering husband. How she will find true happiness without jeopardizing her business will be her biggest challenge yet.
A Bit of a Do
A Bit of a Do is a British comedy drama series based on the books by David Nobbs. The show starred David Jason and was aired on ITV in 1989. It was made for the ITV network by Yorkshire Television. The show was set in a fictional Yorkshire town. Each episode took place at a different social function and followed the changing lives of two families, the working-class Simcocks and the middle-class Rodenhursts, together with their respective friends, Rodney and Betty Sillitoe, and Neville Badger. The series begins with the wedding of Ted and Rita Simcock's son Paul to Laurence and Liz Rodenhurst's daughter Jenny; an event at which Ted and Liz begin an affair. The subsequent fallout from this affair forms the basis for most of the first series.
Goodnight Sweetheart
Gary Sparrow is an ordinary bloke in 1990s Britain, married to the ambitious Yvonne and working as a TV repairman. Then his whole world changes when he stumbles upon a portal to WWII-era London and begins a dual life as an accidental time traveler.
The Line
The Line is a Canadian television drama series, which debuted on Movie Central and The Movie Network on March 16, 2009. Created by George F. Walker and Dani Romain, the series is being produced by The Nightingale Company, and shot by Richmond Street Films. The program was originally announced under the working title The Weight.
The Kennedys
The Kennedys is an Emmy-winning Canadian-American television miniseries chronicling the lives of the Kennedy family, including key triumphs and tragedies it has experienced. It stars Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes, Barry Pepper and Tom Wilkinson among others, and is directed by Jon Cassar. The series premiered in the United States in April 2011 on ReelzChannel and on History Television in Canada.
Erotic Confessions
Anthology series wherein each episode, Jacqueline Stone reads a letter sent in from women recounting their erotic experiences.
Mistral's Daughter
Beautiful and naïve Maggy Lunel arrives in Paris completely broke. She becomes an artist's model and the toast of Paris, attracting the attention of Picasso-like painter Julien Mistral, an arrogant and selfish man who places his work above everything. Their paths diverge as Mistral's art catches the eye of a rich American woman who becomes his patroness and eventually his wife. During the war years in France, Mistral collaborates with the Nazis in order to continue with his work, a decision that will come back to haunt him years later. In the meantime, Maggy has a daughter named Teddy who grows up and falls in love with Mistral with whom she has a child named Fauve. As Mistral ages, he comes to terms with his selfish past and wartime betrayal through his art, leaving a beautiful legacy for his daughter, Fauve.
Femme Fatales
This provocative hit series tells the stories of dangerous women who find extraordinary ways of coping with their problems, channeling their survival instincts and bringing out their inner guile.
Parade's End
The story of a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat, his mean socialite wife and a young suffragette in the midst of World War I and a Europe on the brink of profound change.
The Winds of War
Set against the backdrop of world events that led to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Victor "Pug" Henry is a career naval officer who, along with his family, learns to navigate the waters of his dangerous times in the late 1930s.
Political Animals
Former first lady and current Secretary of State Elaine Barrish Hammond try to keep her family together while simultaneously dealing with crises of the State Department and fending off the hungry DC journalist who is bent on destroying her career.
Small Island
Follow three intricately connected stories of Jamaicans and Londoners involved in World War Two. Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots. Hope and humanity meet stubborn reality as we trace the tangled history of Jamaica and the UK.
Rogue
Grace, a morally and emotionally-conflicted undercover detective, is tormented by the possibility that her own actions contributed to her son’s death. Grace’s search for the truth is further complicated by her forbidden relationship with Jimmy, the crime boss who may have played a hand in the crime.
Room at the Top
Joe leaves working-class, industrial Dufton behind him and takes a job as senior audit clerk at the town hall in affluent Warley. He takes lodgings at the poshest part of the town and starts to make his mark on local society.
The Politician's Husband
A drama about the shifting power in a marriage when the personal and political collide.
Full Circle
The series from Neil LaBute aims to examine "the human condition and relationships through a series of conversations between 11 people", whose lives are intertwined, unbeknownst to them. Each episode takes place in a restaurant and is a conversation between two characters. One of the character's storylines then will carry over into the next episode through a conversation with a new character. That character will then be featured in the following episode. The process will continue until the final episode.
Fleming
Set at the outbreak of WWII – mischievous playboy Ian Fleming is untroubled by the specter of impending war – chasing women, collecting rare books and living off his family fortune. Forever in the shadow of his brother Peter, and an eternal disappointment to his formidable mother Eve, Fleming dreams of becoming the ‘ultimate’ man – a hero, a lover, a brute and the one who always gets the girl. He is finally given some direction in his life when he’s recruited by the Director of Naval Intelligence to help in the effort against the Nazis. Suddenly, Fleming finds his chance to shine and prove his worth.
The 7.39
Carl Matthews commutes by train to London where he works in a property management office under a boss who is pressuring him to dismiss an employee. He has a kind and supportive wife Maggie and two teenage children who he feels do not appreciate him. One morning he complains to a woman called Sally that she has taken his seat on the train. He later apologises to her and they start chatting, a relationship develops and she reveals that she is divorced but about to marry again, although scenes with her fiancée suggest she is going cold on the idea. She works at a health club and Carl joins it so that he can see more of her. They fall in love and one evening when the train is not running they spend the night together at a hotel. The second part of the drama deals with the repercussions of their affair.
19-2
The day-to-day life of two unwilling partners of the Montreal Police Department, Officers Nick Barron and Ben Chartier. These two beat cops patrol the urban sprawl of downtown's 19th district, in cruiser No. 2. 19-2 is about the tensions and bonds that develop between two incompatible men of very different temperaments and life experiences. Over time, Nick and Ben's mistrust and antagonism for each other give way to moments of mutual respect and a wavering chance at a true partnership.
Nouvelle adresse
Nathalie Lapointe is in her early forties, a single mother of three with a successful career as columnist at a major newspaper. Just as she’s starting to think she might be able to pay more attention to her own needs, she gets terrible news: the cancer from which she recovered two years previously is back. How can she break the news to her kids? How can the family plan for the future with this sword of Damocles hanging over them? Despite the shock, life goes on. Nathalie must cope with evolving circumstances at the paper as well as at home. She wonders if she can allow herself to fall in love with her daughters’ school principal. As for her children, they must deal with their own teenage life challenges, all the while knowing that their mother may soon be gone. Nathalie’s best friend and neighbor is particularly hard-hit by the news: she’s already suffering from her husband’s infidelity and from the absence of her son, who is overseas. Nathalie’s misfortune also has a powerful effect on her three siblings. They must re-think their priorities at a time when all three are facing crucial choices in their emotional and professional lives. For Nathalie’s parents Janine and Gérard, her illness makes no sense. How do you face the very real possibility that your child will die before you?
A Sense of Guilt
A middle-aged writer returns to London after years abroad. Soon, his headlong pursuit of pleasure upsets the lives of all those around him.
Flesh and Blood
Three adult siblings find their family thrown into disarray when their recently widowed mother, Vivien, declares she is in love with a new man. The tension his presence creates threatens to drag the whole family towards tragedy, and perhaps crime.
Hollywood Wives
Hollywood Wives tells the stories of several women in Hollywood, from powerful talent agents and screenwriters to vivacious screen vixens and young, innocent newcomers.
Village Hall
Village Hall is a drama anthology series made by Granada between 1974 and 1975. It is entirely set in a village hall, with each episode highlighting a different use to which the space is put by local people. Writers include Jack Rosenthal and the actor Kenneth Cope.
Doctor Foster
A woman suspects her husband of having an affair. After following several lines of enquiries far more unravels including a streak of violence below the surface.
Versailles
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.
Out on a Limb
An intense, clandestine love affair with a prominent politician sparks Shirley MacLaine's quest of self-discovery. From Stockholm to Hawaii, to the mountainous vastness of Peru, from disbelief to radiant affirmation, she discovers the roots of her very existence... and the infinite possibilities of life.
The Secret
The true story of a Sunday school teacher and respectable dentist and pillar of the community, who formed a murderous partnership.
Act of Will
Act of Will is a 1989 mini-series directed by Don Sharp. It the third mini series based on a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel he had directed and was an early lead role for Elizabeth Hurley.
Dead Silent
A snap of a twig. A rustling leaf. In the woods, myth, urban legend, and horror collide with real-life killers. Transporting viewers into a vortex of dark mystery and psychological terror, each episode tells the true story of a crime set in a desolate location.
Hold the Dream
The follow-up to A Woman of Substance with Emma Harte at age eighty in the last winter of her life and dealing with her granddaughter Paula, as well as her respected advisor Henry Rossiter and Blackie O'Neill.
The Price of Duty
Delve into the most haunting cases of homicide detectives' careers. Each episode takes viewers on an emotional rollercoaster ride to the front lines of the investigation, retracing their first steps on the crime scene to the final bust and the emotional aftermath that they still carry today.
Women on the Verge
The lives of three women in their 30s, as they navigate the challenges of life, love and relationships. Whilst everyone else is settling down, married with kids, and increasingly in control of their lives, Laura, Katie and Alison seem to be moving in the opposite direction.
Deep Water
Follow three women as they each make life-changing mistakes regarding their children and husbands, which lead to unpredictable criminal consequences. Based on Paula Daly's best selling novel, Windermere.
The Morning Show
A behind-the-scenes look at the lives of the people who help America wake up in the morning, exploring the unique challenges faced by the men and women who carry out this daily televised ritual.
Search: WWW
The stories of ambitious career women working at the top of the best portal sites in the IT industry. Paved with wins and losses, their road to success takes a new turn when love comes along the way.
Why Women Kill
Three women living in three different decades: a housewife in the '60s, a socialite in the '80s and a lawyer in 2018, deal with infidelity in their marriages.
Lauren Lake's Paternity Court
Judge Lauren Lake hears cases involving not only questions of paternity, but also many types of stories involving DNA.
The Third Day
A unique story told over two distinct halves, "Summer" follows Sam, a man drawn to a mysterious island off the British coast where he encounters a group of islanders set on preserving their traditions at any cost. "Winter" follows Helen, a strong-willed outsider who comes to the island seeking answers, but whose arrival precipitates a fractious battle to decide its fate.
The Undoing
Grace and Jonathan Fraser are living the only lives they ever wanted. Overnight a chasm opens in their lives: a violent death and a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and her family.
The Trial of Christine Keeler
The minister, his mistress, and her lover the spy. The story of the woman at the centre of one of the 20th century's biggest scandals – which changed Britain forever.
Gold Digger
Gold Digger tells the story of wealthy 60 year old Julia as she falls in love with Benjamin, a man 25 years her junior. As this six part series progresses the impact their unconventional relationship has on her family is explored and the secrets of their past are revealed. Has Julia finally found the happiness she's always deserved? Or is Benjamin really the gold digger they think he is?
Happily Married
In 1974, in the quiet suburb of Sainte-Foy, two discontented couples bring their kids to summer camp. Once home, they must face the pitiful state their marriages are in. Unable to deal with their problems, they become the most infamous criminals in the history of organized crime in Quebec City.
The Scarlet Letter
The Scarlet Letter is a 1979 miniseries based on the novel of the same name that aired on WGBH from March 3, 1979 to March 24, 1979. The series is four episodes long, 60 minutes each. Part 2 won the 1979 Emmy Award for Outstanding Video Tape Editing for a Limited Series or Special for film editors Ken Denisoff, Janet McFadden, and Tucker Wiard. In 1979, when most literary programs were being produced in the United Kingdom, Boston public television station WGBH decided to produce a homegrown literary classic of its own. The result is this epic version of Nathaniel Hawthorne's enduring novel of Puritan America in search of its soul. Hester Prynne overcomes the stigma of adultery to emerge as the first great heroine in American literature. Hawthorne's themes, the nature of sin, social hypocrisy, and community repression, still reverberate through American society. Meg Foster brings a quiet strength to the role of Hester, the adulteress condemned to wear a scarlet "A" for the rest of her life. As her partner in crime, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, John Heard writhes in private torment most convincingly. Kevin Conway completes this grim triangle as the mysterious, maleficent Roger Chillingworth. The costumes and scenery are simple, so as not to detract from the dialogue as each character grapples with the meaning of sin, forgiveness, and redemption.
White Lines
Zoe Walker leaves her quiet life behind to investigate her brother's disappearance in Ibiza, where she quickly heads down a decadent and dangerous path.
The Deceived
English student Ophelia falls in love with her married lecturer, seeing in him all the answers to her needs. When their affair is interrupted by a shocking and tragic death, Ophelia finds herself trapped in a world where she can no longer trust her own mind.
Fatal Attraction
An affair threatens the lives of Dan Gallagher and his wife, Beth, in this deep-dive reimagining of the classic psychosexual thriller which explores fatal attraction and the timeless themes of marriage and infidelity through the lens of modern attitudes toward strong women, personality disorders and coercive control.
Long Slow Exhale
Set in the competitive world of women's college basketball, this series follows the successful head coach of a championship team who finds herself embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal that threatens to destroy everything she's built. As she tries to find the truth among the many secrets she uncovers, she is forced to make hard decisions that will affect her, her family and the team of female athletes who all rely on her.
Anne Boleyn
The final months of Boleyn's life, her struggle with Tudor England's patriarchal society, her desire to secure a future for her daughter, Elizabeth, and the brutal reality of her failure to provide Henry with a male heir.
The Holiday
The story follows Kate, a woman who discovers that her husband is having an affair during a luxurious holiday somewhere in the Mediterranean. The troubled couple are sharing a villa with four of Kate’s closest friends, one of which is the adulterous partner, but she doesn’t realise that the guilty party could be prepared to kill in order to keep their secret safe.
The Museum
Trace the self-destructive fall of Della Howells, Museum Director in her 40s who begins a dangerous relationship with a young man, and descends from a respectable middle-class woman into the criminal underworld of the art world.
Love & Death
Candy and Pat Montgomery and Betty and Allan Gore — two churchgoing couples — enjoy their small town Texas life… until an extramarital affair leads somebody to pick up an axe.
Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins
Faith Jenkins investigates burgeoning romances from their sweet beginnings, and follows what happened all the way through to their bitter endings. With her background as a criminal prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, and her expertise in matters of the heart, Faith gives her professional POV of the nightmarish cases. With firsthand accounts from victims' family, friends and law enforcement, each episode reveals the inner workings of intimate attachments that seemed fated to last forever and ended in murder.
Sins of Our Mother
When Lori Vallow's kids vanished, the search for them unearthed a trail of suspicious deaths, a new husband who shared her doomsday views — and murder.
The Couple Next Door
Evie and Pete move into an upscale neighborhood and find themselves in a world of curtain twitching and status anxiety. They find friendship in the shape of the couple next door, alpha traffic cop Danny and his wife, glamorous yoga instructor Becka, but after Danny and Evie share a passionate night together there is trouble ahead.
A Nearly Normal Family
The world of a seemingly perfect family shatters when a shocking murder proves that they're willing to make desperate moves to protect one another.
Mourning Becomes Electra
In a Greek tragedy updated to the 1860s, young New Englanders exact vengeance after the murder of their father.
Absolutely Fabulous
Set in the world of fashion and PR, immature fun-loving mother Edina Monsoon and her best friend Patsy drive Eddie's sensible daughter, Saffron, up the wall with their constant drug abuse and outrageous selfishness. Numerous in-jokes and heavy doses of cruel humour have made this series a cult hit in the UK and abroad.