Shows Like Life on Mars
If you loved Life on Mars's Comedy and Crime storytelling, these series deliver a similar experience — chosen for tone, narrative quality, and viewer satisfaction. Each includes where to stream it now.
★ Top Picks
Abyss
After meeting an untimely demise in separate incidents, Cha Min and Go Se-yeon discover they’ve come back to life in new bodies they don’t recognize.
CSI: Vegas
Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve and serve justice in Sin City.
The Manipulated
Taejoong's life is torn apart when he's framed for a heinous crime and imprisoned. Discovering it was all orchestrated by someone on the outside, he embarks on a rage-fueled quest for revenge.
Baretta
Baretta is an American detective television series which ran on ABC from 1975 to 1978. The show was a milder version of a successful 1973–74 ABC series, Toma, starring Tony Musante as chameleon-like, real-life New Jersey police officer David Toma. While popular, Toma received intense criticism at the time for its realistic and frequent depiction of police and criminal violence. When Musante left the series after a single season, the concept was retooled as Baretta, with Robert Blake in the title role.
Inside No. 9
An anthology of darkly comic twisted tales, each one taking place behind a door marked 'number 9'.
Wild Cards
A spirited con woman and a demoted by-the-book detective are given the chance to redeem themselves. The catch? They have to find a way to work together each using their unique skills to solve crimes.
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew makes plans to leave her hometown for college, but finds herself drawn into a supernatural murder mystery instead.
More Shows Like Life on Mars
The Good Detective
A drama about the race between people who want to get closer to the truth and those who want to cover it up. Jang Seung Jo will take on the role of Oh Ji Hyuk, an elite detective of nine years who does not share his feelings with others due to pain he experienced when he was young. He is not swayed by money and power, even with the huge wealth he inherited from his uncle.
A Korean Odyssey
A self-serving mythical creature's bid for invincibility backfires when he finds himself at the mercy of a woman who can see otherworldly beings.
Wilfred
Everyone else sees Wilfred as just a dog, but Ryan sees a crude and somewhat surly, yet irrepressibly brave and honest Australian bloke in a cheap dog suit. While leading him through a series of comedic and existential adventures, Wilfred the dog shows Ryan the man how to overcome his fears and joyfully embrace the unpredictability and insanity of the world around him.
Rooftop Prince
Crown Prince Yi Gak finds that he has been transported from the Chosun Dynasty to modern-day Seoul. He meets Hong Se Na, who bears a striking resemblance to his dead wife, and is determined to solve the 300-year-old mystery of her death. With his own resemblance to the CEO’s grandson at the company where Se Na works, Gak assumes the identity of the young man to stay close to her. Can the Crown Prince navigate a modern corporation to find clues to his own time period?
The Afterparty
Nothing is as it seems in this hilarious murder mystery where each suspect's story is told through a different film genre.
Gotham
Everyone knows the name Commissioner Gordon. He is one of the crime world's greatest foes, a man whose reputation is synonymous with law and order. But what is known of Gordon's story and his rise from rookie detective to Police Commissioner? What did it take to navigate the multiple layers of corruption that secretly ruled Gotham City, the spawning ground of the world's most iconic villains? And what circumstances created them – the larger-than-life personas who would become Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler, Two-Face and The Joker?
The Girl Who Sees Smells
With help from a young woman with synesthesia, a cop who lost his sense of pain tracks down the serial killer who brought tragedy to both their lives.
The Purge
Set in a dystopian America ruled by a totalitarian political party, the series follows several seemingly unrelated characters living in a small city. Tying them all together is a mysterious savior who’s impeccably equipped for everything the night throws at them. As the clock winds down with their fates hanging in the balance, each character is forced to reckon with their pasts as they discover how far they will go to survive the night.
Grimm
After Portland homicide detective Nick Burkhardt discovers he's descended from an elite line of criminal profilers known as "Grimms," he increasingly finds his responsibilities as a detective at odds with his new responsibilities as a Grimm.
Marry My Husband
Kang Ji-won, a terminally ill cancer patient, is killed by her husband and best friend after she witnesses them having an affair. She wakes up 10 years before the incident and decides to seek revenge with the help of Yu Ji-hyuk, a director at the company where she works. Now, she must reclaim her fate and eliminate the trash from her life.
56 Days
When an unidentified body is found in a luxury apartment linked to Oliver Kennedy and his girlfriend Ciara Wyse, Detectives Lee Reardon and Karl Connolly reconstruct the couple's deadly romance across the past 56 days.
21 Jump Street
21 Jump Street revolves around a group of young cops who would use their youthful appearance to go undercover and solve crimes involving teenagers and young adults.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Life on Mars (2018): Comedy and Crime 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 Life on Mars.
See full details for Life on Mars (2018)