Shows Like Roots
If you loved Roots's Drama and Action & Adventure storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Roots
The epic tale of celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors as portrayed in the acclaimed twelve hour mini-series Roots, was first told in his 1976 bestseller Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the most watched miniseries in U.S. history.
Shōgun
An English navigator becomes both a player and pawn in complex political games in feudal Japan.
Black Sails
The pirate adventures of Captain Flint and his men twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic “Treasure Island.” Flint, the most brilliant and most feared pirate captain of his day, takes on a fast-talking young addition to his crew who goes by the name John Silver. Threatened with extinction on all sides, they fight for the survival of New Providence Island, the most notorious criminal haven of its day – a debauched paradise teeming with pirates, prostitutes, thieves and fortune seekers, a place defined by both its enlightened ideals and its stunning brutality.
Shōgun
In Japan in the year 1600, at the dawn of a century-defining civil war, Lord Yoshii Toranaga is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him, when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village.
Washington Black
11-year-old George Washington "Wash" Black embarks on a globe-trotting journey of identity after fleeing a Barbados sugar plantation aboard a flying machine in the company of his master’s eccentric inventor brother.
The Book of Negroes
Kidnapped in Africa and subsequently enslaved in South Carolina, Aminata must navigate a revolution in New York, isolation in Nova Scotia and treacherous jungles of Sierra Leone, in an attempt to secure her freedom in the 19th century.
Most Dangerous Game
Desperate to take care of his pregnant wife before a terminal illness can take his life, Dodge Maynard accepts an offer to participate in a deadly game where he soon discovers that he’s not the hunter but the prey.
Underground
A group of slaves plan a daring 600-mile escape from a Georgia plantation. Along the way, they are aided by a secret abolitionist couple running a station on the Underground Railroad as they attempt to evade the people charged with bringing them back, dead or alive.
More Shows Like Roots
The Day of the Jackal
An unrivalled and highly elusive lone assassin, the Jackal, makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee. But following his latest kill, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer who starts to track down the Jackal in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, leaving destruction in its wake.
Sanditon
The spirited and impulsive Charlotte Heywood moves from her rural home to Sanditon, a fishing village attempting to reinvent itself as a seaside resort.
The Slap
Hector and his wife Aisha plan a party for family and friends, but the day doesn't turn out as they expected when Hector's hot-headed cousin Harry slaps a misbehaving child. The party ends abruptly with the child's parents threatening legal action, and a chain of events is ignited that will uncover secrets, challenge core values, and leave the party guests and hosts forever changed.
The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox
Amanda Knox arrives in Italy for her study abroad only to be wrongfully imprisoned for murder weeks later. Follow Knox's relentless fight to prove her innocence and reclaim her freedom and examines why authorities and the world stood so firmly in judgment.
Alex Haley's Queen
Queen is the story about Easter, the illegitimate daughter of James Jackson, III and her lifelong affair with plantation owner Tim Daly, which would result in the birth of Queen. Queen's story revolves around her early years as a slave who yearns to know who her father is, and her condition as a fair skin mixed race woman who spends her life trying to figure out where exactly she fits in.
Banshee: Origins
Banshee: Origins is a series of webisodes based on the American drama television series produced by Cinemax called Banshee. The series offers flashbacks in-between the time where Lucas Hood was arrested and when Sheriff Lucas Hood first arrived in Banshee.
Sons of Liberty
A radical group of young men band together in secrecy to change the course of history and make America a nation.
Poldark
Britain is in the grip of a chilling recession... falling wages, rising prices, civil unrest - only the bankers are smiling. It's 1783 and Ross Poldark returns from the American War of Independence to his beloved Cornwall to find his world in ruins: his father dead, the family mine long since closed, his house wrecked and his sweetheart pledged to marry his cousin. But Ross finds that hope and love can be found when you are least expecting it in the wild but beautiful Cornish landscape.
New Worlds
New Worlds is a four-part 2014 British television drama serial created by Peter Flannery and Martine Brant, a follow-up to their 2008 series The Devil's Whore, produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4. During the turbulent Restoration period of the 1600s, young, idealistic renegade Abe Goffe is determined to fight for England to become a true republic. A romantic at heart, he falls for privileged Beth—daughter of Countess of Abingdon Angelica Fanshawe—and brings her into his quest for a new future, transforming her from the innocent young woman she starts out as.
The New Avengers
The New Avengers is a British secret agent fantasy adventure television series broadcast during 1976 and 1977. It is a sequel to the 1960s series The Avengers and was developed by Albert Fennell and Brian Clemens. A joint United Kingdom-France-Canada production, the show picks up the adventures of John Steed and his team of Avengers fighting evil plots and world domination. Whereas in the original series Steed had almost always been partnered with a woman, in the new series he had two partners: Mike Gambit, a top agent, crack marksman and trained martial artist, and Purdey, a former trainee with The Royal Ballet who was an amalgam of many of the best talents from Steed's previous female partners.
Robotech
Robotech is an 85-episode adaptation of three different anime television series made between 1982-1984 in Japan; the adaptation was aired in 1985. Within the combined and edited story, Robotechnology refers to the scientific advances discovered in an alien starship that crashed on a South Pacific island. With this technology, Earth developed giant robotic machines or mecha to fight three successive extraterrestrial invasions.
The Madness
After a media pundit stumbles upon a dead body deep in the Poconos woods, he finds himself framed for the murder of a notorious white supremacist.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Roots (2016): Drama and Action & Adventure themes, similar pacing, and comparable production quality. NoBadPicks uses TMDB collaborative filtering, genre matching, and AI analysis to surface series most likely to resonate with fans of Roots.
See full details for Roots (2016)