Anime Like Prisoner
If you loved Prisoner's Soap and Drama storytelling, these anime deliver a similar experience — selected for art style, narrative depth, and emotional impact. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Orange Is the New Black
A crime she committed in her youthful past sends Piper Chapman to a women's prison, where she trades her comfortable New York life for one of unexpected camaraderie and conflict in an eccentric group of fellow inmates.
The Young and the Restless
The rivalries, romances, hopes and fears of the residents of the fictional Midwestern metropolis, Genoa City. The lives and loves of a wide variety of characters mingle through the generations, dominated by the Newman, Abbott, Baldwin and Winters families.
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.
Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots
Follow the complicated dynamic between the rich and powerful Cryer family and the hired help who work in their opulent Savannah, Georgia, mansion.
Escape at Dannemora
The stranger-than-fiction account of a prison break in upstate New York in the summer of 2015, which spawned a massive manhunt for two convicted murderers who were aided in their escape by a married female prison employee with whom they both became sexually entangled.
Bad Girls
Bad Girls is a British television drama series that was broadcast on ITV from 1 June 1999 to 20 December 2006 and starred Simone Lahbib, Mandana Jones, Debra Stephenson, Linda Henry, Jack Ellis and many more throughout the eight-year run. The series was broadcast in 17 countries and was produced by Shed Productions, the company which later produced Footballers' Wives and Waterloo Road. It is set in the fictional women's prison of Larkhall, and features a mixture of serious and light storylines focusing on the prisoners and staff of G Wing. From 2010, the UK broadcast rights were bought by CBS Drama, and is repeated regularly – as of September 2012, the channel is re-running the series again in a late-night time slot.
Queens
Estranged and out-of-touch, four women in their 40s reunite for a chance to recapture their fame and regain the swagger they had as the Nasty Bitches—their ‘90s group that made them legends in the hip-hop world.
Goliath
Once a powerful lawyer, Billy McBride is now burned out and washed up, spending more time in a bar than a courtroom. When he reluctantly agrees to pursue a wrongful death lawsuit against the biggest client of Cooperman & McBride, the massive law firm he helped create, Billy and his ragtag team uncover a vast and deadly conspiracy, pitting them all in a life or death trial against the ultimate Goliath.
More Anime Like Prisoner
Hill Street Blues
A realistic glimpse into the daily lives of the officers and detectives at an urban police station.
Oz
The daily lives of prisoners in Emerald City, an experimental unit of the Oswald Maximum Security Prison where ingroups - Muslims, Latinos, Italians, Aryans - stick close to their mutual friends and terrorize their mutual enemies.
Neighbours
Neighbours is an Australian television soap opera. The show's storylines concern the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in Erinsborough, a fictional suburb of Melbourne, Victoria. The series primarily centres around the residents of Ramsay Street, a short cul-de-sac, and its neighbouring areas, the Lassiters complex, which includes a bar, hotel, cafe, news office and park. Neighbours began with three families created by Watson – the Ramsays, the Robinsons and the Clarkes. Watson said that he wanted to show three families who are friends living in a small street. The Robinsons and the Ramsays had a long history and were involved in an ongoing rivalry.
Vigil
The mysterious disappearance of a Scottish fishing trawler and a death on-board the submarine HMS Vigil bring the police into conflict with the Navy and British security services. DCI Amy Silva and DS Kirsten Longacre lead an investigation on land and at sea into a conspiracy that goes to the very heart of Britain’s national security.
Inside Man
A prisoner on death row in the US, a vicar in a quiet English town, and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar cross paths in the most unexpected way.
Tyler Perry's The Oval
A seemingly perfect interracial first family becomes the White House's newest residents. But behind closed doors they unleash a torrent of lies, cheating and corruption.
Acapulco
In 1984, Maximo Gallardo's dream comes true when he gets the job of a lifetime at Acapulco's hottest resort, Las Colinas. But he soon realizes that working there will be far more complicated than he ever imagined.
For Life
A prisoner becomes a lawyer, litigating cases for other inmates while fighting to overturn his own life sentence for a crime he didn’t commit.
Elsbeth
After her successful career in Chicago, Elsbeth Tascioni, an astute but unconventional attorney, utilizes her singular point of view to make unique observations and corner brilliant criminals alongside the NYPD.
Jett
Fresh out of prison, world-class thief Daisy ”Jett” Kowalski is forced back into doing what she does best by dangerous and eccentric criminals determined to exploit her skills for their own ends.
Knots Landing
The domestic adventures, misdeeds and everyday interactions of five families living on a cul-de-sac in a small California community.
The Hitchhiker
A young hitchhiker introduces characters who are about to experience a frightening and sometimes supernatural incident of some kind in this moody anthology series.
Why These Anime Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Prisoner (1979): Soap and Drama themes, comparable animation style, and similar narrative pacing. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface anime most likely to resonate with fans of Prisoner.
See full details for Prisoner (1979)