Shows Like El Chema
If you loved El Chema's Crime and Drama storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Power Book IV: Force
Tommy Egan leaves New York behind and plans to take on Chicago, using his outsider status to break all the local rules and rewrite them on his quest to become the biggest drug dealer in the city.
Pablo Escobar: The Drug Lord
Pablo is a man with a natural ability for business. Early in his life, Pablo is introduced to the business of cocaine and the power it yields. A young life of crime lands Pablo in and out of jail as he builds his criminal empire. Pablo expands his power through politics but it is not long before his conflicts as a Congressman and a drug lord collide. Pablo has his enemies executed, but not before the United States activates its own war on the Medellin cartel.
Queen of the South
Teresa flees Mexico after her drug-runner boyfriend is murdered. Settling in Dallas, she looks to become the country's reigning drug smuggler and to avenge her lover's murder.
The Endgame
A high-stakes thriller about Elena Federova, a very recently captured international arms dealer and brilliant criminal mastermind who even in captivity orchestrates a number of coordinated bank heists, and Val Turner, the principled, relentless and socially outcast FBI agent who will stop at nothing to foil her ambitious plan.
El Chapo
A look at the life of notorious drug kingpin, El Chapo, from his early days in the 1980s working for the Guadalajara Cartel, to his rise to power of during the '90s and his ultimate downfall in 2016.
El Mochaorejas
The story of Daniel Arizmendi's rise, the corruption and fear that allowed his gang to terrorize Mexico in the 1990s, where he became known as "el mochaorejas" for his shady crimes
L.A.'s Finest
Syd Burnett has left her complicated past behind to become an LAPD detective. Paired with a new partner, Nancy McKenna, a working mom with an equally complex past, Syd is pushed to examine whether her unapologetic lifestyle might be masking a greater personal secret. These two women don't agree on much, but they find common ground when it comes to taking on the most dangerous criminals in Los Angeles.
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 Shows Like El Chema
La piloto
Yolanda dreamed her entire life of being a pilot. She found a stewardess job, and an unexpected role in drug smuggling.
The Snitch Cartel: Origins
Over four decades, two brothers in Cali juggle family duties, multiple romances and illicit businesses, transforming from poor kids to cocaine kingpins.
Iron Reign
Joaquín Manchado rules his drug empire from Barcelona's seaport with an iron fist — until a new shipment sends business and family spiraling.
Wanted
Two complete strangers, Lola and Chelsea, intervene in a fatal carjacking while waiting at a suburban bus stop, and are subsequently thrust into a chase from authorities across Australia with a vehicle filled with cash. The strangers must rely solely on each other while on the run.
Carl Weber's The Family Business
Meet the Duncans, a prominent family from Jamaica, Queens. By day, they’re an upstanding family; by night, they live a dangerous secret life.
McMafia
Alex Godman, the English-raised son of Russian mafia exiles, has spent his life trying to escape the shadow of their past, building his own legitimate business and forging a life with his girlfriend Rebecca. But when a murder forces his family's past to return to threaten them, Alex is drawn into the criminal underworld and must confront his values to protect those he loves.
This City Is Ours
Notorious gang boss Ronnie (Sean Bean) steps back from his criminal empire, triggering a violent power struggle between his volatile son Jamie (Jack McMullen) and trusted lieutenant Michael (James Nelson Joyce), who sees his chance to seize control. As rivalries ignite and loyalties fracture, the family behind the city’s cocaine trade descends into open war.
Sneaky Pete
A con man on the run from a vicious gangster takes cover from his past by assuming the identity of his prison cellmate, Pete, “reuniting” with Pete’s estranged family, a colorful, dysfunctional group that threatens to drag him into a world just as dangerous as the one he’s trying to escape - and, just maybe, give him a taste of the loving family he’s never had.
Hidden Assets
A routine raid led by Emer Berry, a detective in the Irish Criminal Assets Bureau, reveals that a small-time drug dealer has been receiving substantial funding from a seemingly untraceable source – not in cash, but in rough diamonds. When these diamonds are linked to a series of bombings in Belgium, Emer is forced to work with Police Commissioner Christian De Jong.
La Querida del Centauro
Yolanda Acosta is a woman capable of altering law and order out of love for her daughter. She serves as a hook to catch the Centauro, one of the most dangerous drug traffickers in Mexico.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with El Chema (2016): Crime and Drama 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 El Chema.
See full details for El Chema (2016)