Top 250 Tv Shows Like The Long Absence
A list of the best tv shows similar to The Long Absence. If you liked The Long Absence then you may also like: This Is Us, Severance, You, Quantum Leap, The Affair and many more great tv shows featured on this list.
Therese, a café owner, mourns the mysterious disappearance of her husband sixteen years earlier. A tramp arrives in the town and she believes him to be her husband. But he is suffering from amnesia and she tries to bring back his memory of earlier times.
Quantum Leap
It's been nearly 30 years since Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished. Now, a new team, led by physicist Ben Song, has been assembled to restart the project in hope of understanding the mysteries behind the machine and the man who created it. Everything changes, however, when Ben makes an unauthorized leap into the past, leaving the team behind to solve the mystery of why he did it.
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.
'Allo 'Allo!
The misadventures of hapless cafe owner René Artois and his escapades with the Resistance in occupied France.
Bates Motel
A "contemporary prequel" to the 1960 film Psycho, depicting the life of Norman Bates and his mother Norma prior to the events portrayed in Hitchcock's film, albeit in a different fictional town and in a modern setting. The series begins after the death of Norma's husband, when she purchases a motel located in a coastal Oregon town so she and Norman can start a new life.
Big Little Lies
The tale of three mothers of first graders whose apparently perfect lives unravel to the point of murder.
Blindspot
A vast international plot explodes when a beautiful Jane Doe is discovered naked in Times Square, completely covered in mysterious, intricate tattoos with no memory of who she is or how she got there. But there's one tattoo that is impossible to miss: the name of FBI agent Kurt Weller, emblazoned across her back. "Jane," Agent Weller and the rest of the FBI quickly realize that each mark on her body is a crime to solve, leading them closer to the truth about her identity and the mysteries to be revealed.
Bored to Death
Jonathan Ames, a young Brooklyn writer, is feeling lost. He's just gone through a painful break-up, thanks in part to his drinking, can't write his second novel, and carouses too much with his magazine editor. Rather than face reality, Jonathan turns instead to his fantasies — moonlighting as a private detective — because he wants to be a hero and a man of action.
Call Me Kat
Kat is a woman who struggles every day against society and her mother to prove that she can still live a happy and fulfilling life despite still being single at 39. Which is why she recently spent her entire savings to open a cat café in Louisville, Kentucky.
Call the Midwife
Drama following the lives of a group of midwives working in the poverty-stricken East End of London during the 1950s, based on the best-selling memoirs of Jennifer Worth.
Centennial
The economic and cultural growth of town of Centennial, Colorado, through the intertwining lives of the brave men and women inhabiting it. Spanning two centuries from the settling of the area in the 1700s, to the late 1970s.
The Client List
Riley Parks delicately balances two starkly different lives -- one as a single mom in a conservative town struggling to provide for her family and the other as a savvy and ambitious businesswoman working with a rowdy, sexy and unpredictable group of women.
Continuum
The series centers on the conflict between a group of rebels from the year 2077 who time-travel to Vancouver, BC, in 2012, and a police officer who accidentally accompanies them. In spite of being many years early, the rebel group decides to continue its violent campaign to stop corporations of the future from replacing governments, while the police officer endeavours to stop them without revealing to anyone that she and the rebels are from the future.
Dark Matter
The six-person crew of a derelict spaceship awakens from stasis in the farthest reaches of space. Their memories wiped clean, they have no recollection of who they are or how they got on board. The only clue to their identities is a cargo bay full of weaponry and a destination: a remote mining colony that is about to become a war zone. With no idea whose side they are on, they face a deadly decision. Will these amnesiacs turn their backs on history, or will their pasts catch up with them?
Deep State
What happens when a man who believes he has retired from MI6 is called back to do one more job to regain his life, only to discover that this job may mean he has no life to go back to.
Dennis the Menace
This 1959-1963 television situation comedy series follows the lives of the Mitchell family, Henry, Alice, and their only child Dennis, an energetic, trouble-prone, mischievous, but well-meaning boy, who often tangles with his peace-and-quiet-loving neighbor George Wilson, a retired salesman, or, later, with George's brother John, a writer. Dennis is basically a good, well-intentioned boy who always tries to help people, but who winds up making situations worse – often at Mr. Wilson's expense.
Early Edition
Gary Hobson thinks he may even be losing his mind when tomorrow's newspaper mysteriously arrives today giving him a disconcerting look into the future. What will he do with tomorrow's news?
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 Jeffersons
Sitcom following a successful African-American couple, George and Louise “Weezyö Jefferson as they “move on up” from working-class Queens to a ritzy Manhattan apartment. A spin-off of All in the Family.
Last of the Summer Wine
Unencumbered by wives, jobs or any other responsibilities, three senior citizens who've never really grown up explore their world in the Yorkshire Dales. They spend their days speculating about their fellow townsfolk and thinking up adventures not usually favored by the elderly. Last of the Summer Wine premiered as an episode of Comedy Playhouse in 1973. The show ran for 295 episodes until 2010. It is the longest running comedy Britain has produced and the longest running sitcom in the world.
Legion
David Haller, AKA Legion, is a troubled young man who may be more than human. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he’s confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.
Life on Mars
A detective chief inspector from 2006 is investigating a serial killer when he is knocked over by a speeding car. Waking up, he finds himself mysteriously transported back in time to 1973. Initially struggling to come to terms with his situation, he has to come to terms with the old-fashioned technology and attitude of the day, while figuring out how he came to be trapped in the past.
Manifest
After landing from a turbulent but routine flight, the crew and passengers of Montego Air Flight 828 discover five years have passed in what seemed like a few hours. As their new realities become clear, a deeper mystery unfolds and some of the returned passengers soon realize they may be meant for something greater than they ever thought possible.
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.
Mr. Benn
Popular British children's animation series. Mr Benn is the ordinary, bowler-hatted office worker who lives in the ordinary suburban street of Festive Road. However, when he tries on a costume in a mysterious shop, he steps out of the changing room into a different time and place, appropriate to his apparel. His adventures include him being a spaceman, a pirate and a cowboy.
The Mysterious Benedict Society
Four gifted orphans are recruited by an eccentric benefactor to go on a secret mission. Placed undercover at a boarding school known as The Institute, they must foil a nefarious plot with global ramifications, while creating a new sort of family along the way.
Salem's Lot
Ben Mears has returned to his hometown to write a book about the supposedly haunted Marsten House. When people around the Marsten House start dying mysteriously, Mears discovers that the owner of the mansion is actually a vampire who is turning them into an army of undead slaves.
Samantha Who?
Samantha Newly has been a bad, bad girl. But thanks to an 8-day coma, she can't remember a thing. Fortunately her best friend Andrea is by her side with a cocktail and the 4-1-1 on every dirty deed. But the more Sam pieces together her past, the less she likes her old self. Maybe this is a chance to start over and do it all again.
Sharp Objects
Reporter Camille Preaker confronts the psychological demons from her past when she returns to her hometown to investigate the murders of two young girls.
The Sinner
In a small New York town, a haunted detective hunts for answers about perplexing crimes while wrestling with his own demons.
That Girl
That Girl is an American sitcom that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It stars Marlo Thomas as the title character Ann Marie, an aspiring actress, who moves from her hometown of Brewster, New York to try to make it big in New York City. Ann has to take a number of offbeat "temp" jobs to support herself in between her various auditions and bit parts. Ted Bessell played her boyfriend Donald Hollinger, a writer for Newsview Magazine; Lew Parker and Rosemary DeCamp played Lew Marie and Helen Marie, her concerned parents. Bernie Kopell, Ruth Buzzi and Reva Rose played Ann and Donald's friends. That Girl was developed by writers Bill Persky and Sam Denoff, who had served as head writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show earlier in the 1960s.
Time After Time
A young H.G. Wells time travels to modern day New York City in pursuit of the charismatic—yet secretly psychopathic—Dr. John Stevenson, better known as "Jack the Ripper," following the doctor's brazen escape from the Victorian London authorities.
Timeless
A mysterious criminal steals a secret state-of-the-art time machine, intent on destroying America as we know it by changing the past. Our only hope is an unexpected team: a scientist, a soldier and a history professor, who must use the machine's prototype to travel back in time to critical events. While they must make every effort not to affect the past themselves, they must also stay one step ahead of this dangerous fugitive. But can this handpicked team uncover the mystery behind it all and end his destruction before it's too late?
Unbelievable
A teenager is charged with lying about her rape allegation, but two determined investigative female detectives discover a far more sinister truth.
The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
Disillusioned after a long career at Sunshine Desserts, Perrin goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own death. Returning in disguise after various attempts at finding a 'new life', he gets his old job back and finds nothing has changed. He is eventually found out, and in the second series has success with a chain of shops selling useless junk. That becomes so successful that he feels he has created a monster and decides to destroy it. In the third and final series he has a dream of forming a commune which his long suffering colleagues help bring to reality. Unfortunately that also fails and he finds himself back in a job not unlike the one he originally had at Sunshine Desserts.
October Road
When Nick Garrett was 18, he packed up his truck and said goodbye for a summer road trip that turned into 10 years of being away. He has since become a literary celebrity in New York, living off the fame and fortune of his best-selling novel and movie, based on his hometown friends. To the literary world, Nick defined a generation, but to his hometown, he betrayed them by sharing secrets. Now, without inspiration for a new book, Nick returns to his hometown to find that feelings toward him have changed.
Sliders
In his basement in San Francisco, boy-genius Quinn Mallory unlocks the doorway to an infinite number of Earths. During a test run, Quinn invites co-worker Wade Welles and his teacher Professor Maximillian Arturo to see his new invention. But an increase in power and an early departure leave all three, plus a washed-up soul singer named Rembrandt "Crying Man" Brown, lost in a parallel world. Now they must "slide" from world to world, not only adapting to their changing surroundings, but also trying to get back to their world. Will they ever make it home?
Quantum Leap
Theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime, Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap accelerator and vanished... He woke to find himself trapped in the past, facing mirror images that were not his own and driven by an unknown force to change history for the better. His only guide on this journey is Al, an observer from his own time, who appears in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and hear. And so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home.
Bewitched
Samantha Stephens is a seemingly normal suburban housewife who also happens to be a genuine witch, with all the requisite magical powers. Her husband Darrin insists that Samantha keep her witchcraft under wraps, but situations invariably require her to indulge her powers while keeping her bothersome mother Endora at bay.
Glory Days
Wunderkind author Mike Dolan achieved literary fame at age 21 with a steamy expose on his seemingly idyllic Maine town. Four years later, he hasn't written another word and reluctantly returns home in search of an antidote ... where he is welcomed back with all the warmth of a lynch mob.
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.
The Visitors
It's the year 2484 and the Earth is threatened by a rogue comet which could fatally change its orbit. The solution is surprising - Adam Bernau, the greatest genius of 20th century developed 500 years ago an ingenious formula for easy transporting of continents and even worlds. Unfortunately, he made this discovery at the age of 11 and the exercise book containing it was destroyed in the fire. But this is not a challenge to Academic Filip who decides to send an expedition back in time to retrieve the precious exercise book from the fire. But everything is not so simple as it seems...
Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em
Meet Frank Spencer, an eager young man trying to find his way in the world. He's enthusiastic, well-meaning... and disaster-prone.
The Prisoner
The Prisoner is a 2009 television miniseries based on the 1960s TV series The Prisoner about a man who awakens in a mysterious, picturesque village from which there is no escape and wonders who made the village and why.
XIII: The Series
After a plot to kill the president of the USA an agent with lost memories tries to recover his life and memories. Others use him to cover up some dirty business involving high ranking officials from the CIA and the White House.
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.
Inspector Montalbano
Inspector Montalbano is an Italian television series produced and broadcast by RAI since 1999, based on the detective novels of Andrea Camilleri. The protagonist is Commissario Salvo Montalbano, and the stories are set in the imaginary town of Vigata, Sicily. In 2012 the series generated a prequel, Il giovane Montalbano.
Marchlands
The gripping story of three different families living in the same house in the 1960’s, 1980’s and present day. The families are linked by the spirit of a young girl – the 1960’s family’s daughter who died in mysterious circumstances.
Bag of Bones
Bestselling novelist Mike Noonan, unable to cope after his wife's sudden death, returns to the couple's lakeside retreat in Maine, where he becomes involved in a custody battle between a young widow and her child's enormously wealthy grandfather. Mike inexplicably receives mysterious ghostly visitations, escalating nightmares and the realization that his late wife still has something to tell him.
Mussolini: The Untold Story
The rise and fall of Italy's fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Recounting his life with his wife, children and mistress, this biography (based on the recollections of Mussolini's eldest son, Vittorio) chronicles Il Duce's tyranny as he plunges Italy into the dark days of World War II.
666 Park Avenue
What would you do to have everything you desire? Step inside 666 Park Avenue, New York's most seductive address. We all have some burning needs, desires and ambitions. For the residents of The Drake, the premier apartment building on Manhattan's Upper East Side, these will all be met – for a price – courtesy of the building's mysterious owner, Gavin Doran. But be careful what you wish for, because the price you have to pay is your soul.
American Gods
An ex-con becomes the traveling partner of a conman who turns out to be one of the older gods trying to recruit troops to battle the upstart deities. Based on Neil Gaiman's fantasy novel.
Outlander
The story of Claire Randall, a married combat nurse from 1945 who is mysteriously swept back in time to 1743, where she is immediately thrown into an unknown world where her life is threatened. When she is forced to marry Jamie, a chivalrous and romantic young Scottish warrior, a passionate affair is ignited that tears Claire's heart between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
Jamaica Inn
Set in 1820 against the forbidding backdrop of windswept Cornish moors, the story follows the journey of young and spirited Mary who is forced to live with her Aunt Patience after the death of her mother. Mary arrives at the isolated Jamaica Inn to discover her Aunt is a shell of the carefree woman she remembers from her childhood, and instead finds a drudge who is firmly under the spell of her domineering husband Joss. The Inn has no guests - the rooms are locked and kept for storage - but it soon becomes clear that it’s a cover, as Joss is the leader of a smuggling ring, and Jamaica Inn the hub of his ‘free’ trade.
Without You
Ellie's beloved husband is killed in a car accident. A woman was in the car with him and killed too. Who was she? Was he having an affair? Was it an accident?
Lightfields
The story follows three families that each lived in Lightfields farmhouse at different time periods (1944, 1975 and 2012) but who are linked by a spine-chilling presence: the ghost of a teenage girl who died in mysterious and tragic circumstances.
Pain, Pus and Poison: The Search for Modern Medicines
In this "entertaining medical series" (The Sunday Times, U.K.), Dr. Michael Mosley shows how drugs have revolutionized medicine and changed the course of human history. Unfolding over a period of 200 years, it's an extraordinary tale of daring, self-experimentation, revelation, genius, and outright luck.
Lucan
Belgravia, London, November 7th, 1974. Sandra Rivett, nanny of the aristocratic Lucan family, is found beaten to death. Shortly thereafter, the prime suspect, John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, mysteriously disappears. When the manhunt begins, the subsequent scandal shakes the foundations of the British ruling class like never before.
Schitt's Creek
Formerly filthy rich video store magnate Johnny Rose, his soap star wife Moira, and their two kids, über-hipster son David and socialite daughter Alexis, suddenly find themselves broke and forced to live in Schitt's Creek, a small depressing town they once bought as a joke.
The Dark Room
In hospital, photographer Jinx Kingsley wakes from a coma after a car crash - a failed suicide attempt, prompted by her fiance Leo jilting her to elope with Jinx's lifelong best friend, Meg. The discovery of Leo and Meg's bodies - brutally murdered in the same manner as Jinx's first husband - makes Jinx the prime suspect. Then, with the help of eminent neuroscientist Dr.Alan Protheroe, some memories begin to surface. Memories of desperation and paralysing terror.
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.
Future Man
Josh Futturman, a janitor by day/world-ranked gamer by night, is tasked with preventing the extinction of humanity after mysterious visitors from the future proclaim him the key to defeating the imminent super-race invasion.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Valentine's Day, 1900. Three schoolgirls and their governess mysteriously disappear in Hanging Rock, Australia, without a trace.
Homecoming
Heidi Bergman is a caseworker at Homecoming, a Geist Group facility helping soldiers transition to civilian life. Years later she has started a new life, living with her mother and working as a waitress, when a Department of Defense auditor questions why she left the Homecoming facility. Heidi quickly realizes that there's a whole other story behind the story she's been telling herself.
Let the Right One In
Mark and his 12-year-old daughter’s lives were changed forever 10 years earlier when she was turned into a vampire. Locked in at age 12, perhaps forever, Eleanor lives a closed-in life, able to go out only at night, while her father does his best to provide her with the minimal amount of human blood she needs to stay alive.
Modern Love
An unlikely friendship. A lost love resurfaced. A marriage at its turning point. A date that might not have been a date. An unconventional new family. These are unique stories about the joys and tribulations of love, each inspired by true events.
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 Pale Horse
After a list of names is found in the shoe of a dead woman, one of the named people begins investigating and is drawn to the The Pale Horse, the home of a trio of rumored witches living in a small village. Word has it that the witches can do away with wealthy relatives using dark arts.
The Stranger
A web of secrets sends family man Adam Price on a desperate quest to uncover the truth about the people closest to him.
Kate & Koji
Kate runs an old-fashioned café in a seaside town, and develops a strong, if sometimes volatile, friendship with asylum-seeking African doctor Koji. Although from different worlds, Kate and Koji are similar in ways they do not see for themselves.
Little Birds
We arrive with New York heiress Lucy Savage fresh off the transatlantic steamer and ready for love and marriage in exotic climes. But when her husband Hugo does not receive her in the way she expected, she spins off into the surprising, diverse and degenerate world of Tangier in 1955.
Relative Strangers
Maureen is an Irishwoman, happily married and living in Germany. Or so she thinks. When her husband dies, she finds that not only had he debts, but was also a bigamist, having had a second wife and family in Ireland. Shocked and angry, she travels there to meet the other family. And she learns that they have troubles of their own, the worst of them being that the other woman's young son is suffering from leukemia and a suitable bone marrow donor is urgently needed.
Penance
Following the loss of their son, Rosalie and Luke find their marriage under immense strain. Maddie and Rosalie find themselves in the caring hands of Jed, a charming and charismatic young man that they encounter at bereavement counselling who is also suffering under the weight of his own grief. Jed rekindles a hope for the future within the Douglas household. But underneath, a deadly and morally corrupt triangle is taking shape.
Behind Her Eyes
A single mother enters a world of twisted mind games when she begins an affair with her psychiatrist boss while secretly befriending his mysterious wife.
Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults
What started in 1975 with the disappearance of 20 people from a small town in Oregon, ended in 1997 with the largest suicide on US soil and changed the face of modern New Age religion forever. This four-part docuseries uses never-before-seen footage and first-person accounts to explore the infamous UFO cult that shocked the nation with their out-of-this-world beliefs.
Tell Me Lies
When Lucy Albright arrives on the campus of her small college, away from her mother whom she's never forgiven for an act of betrayal in her early teen years, Lucy embraces college life and all it has to offer. But everything changes when she meets Stephen DeMarco, who has a mysterious past of his own. Their addicting entanglement will have consequences they never could have imagined.
Citadel
What if you lost your memory? What if a spy didn’t know they were a spy? Years ago, the top agents of Citadel, Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh, had their minds wiped. But, they’re called back to action as sinister forces emerge from the past. With the help of spymaster Bernard Orlick, these former lovers must remember the past to save the future.
The Time Traveler's Wife
The intricate and magical love story of Clare and Henry, and a marriage with a problem… time travel.
Women at War
France, 1914. The destinies of four women intersect : Marguerite, a mysterious Parisian prostitute, Caroline, propelled to the head of the family factory, Agnes, Mother Superior of a requisitioned convent and Suzanne, a feminist nurse.
Tales of the City
Mary Ann Singleton, a naïve young secretary from the mid-west, tumbles head first into the colorful world of San Francisco, where carefree chaos revolves around the funky old apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane.
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 Way Home
When three generations of women reunite after being estranged for more than two decades, they embark on an enlightening – and surprising – journey toward healing none of them could have imagined as they learn how to find their way back to each other.
Over Easy Courthouse Café
A web-series sitcom about three women who have endured harsh times through marriages, family and societal issues bonding through a love of cooking to seize the opportunity of owning a small café. Because of their own personal circumstances and those of the people they find themselves interacting with, the Over Easy Courthouse Café becomes a center for comedic and sometimes disastrous situations.
Alphonse
Alphonse, a quadragenarian going through a professional and marital crisis, reconnects with a father he barely knew and discovers a surprising new calling. Along the way, he meets a galaxy of women, each more exciting and quirkier than the last, plunging him into a journey that is both perilous and transgressive, yet filled with kindness.
This Is Us
Follows the lives and families of three adults living and growing up in the United States of America in present and past times. As their paths cross and their life stories intertwine in curious ways, we find that several of them share the same birthday - and so much more than anyone would expect.