Shows Like Explained
If you loved Explained's 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
History 101
Infographics and archival footage deliver bite-size history lessons on scientific breakthroughs, social movements and world-changing discoveries.
Mind Field
Explore the surprising things we know (and don’t know) about why people are the way they are through expert interviews, rare footage from historical experiments, and brand-new, ground-breaking demonstrations of human nature at work.
12 Monkeys
The provocative story of Cole, a time traveler from a decimated future in a high-stakes race against the clock. Utilizing a dangerous and untested method of time travel, he journeys from 2043 to the present day on a mission to locate and eradicate the source of a deadly plague that will all but annihilate the human race.
Expedition X
Whether trekking through the remote jungles of Cambodia in search of a legendary ape-man or exploring the secrets of the world’s largest cave system right here in the United States, the Expedition X team is taking viewers to the stranger side of the unknown.
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.
The Jim Jefferies Show
Each week, Jefferies tackles the week’s top stories from behind his desk and travels the globe to far-off locations to provide an eye opening look at hypocrisy around the world. Featuring interviews, international field pieces, and man on the ground investigations, Jim tackles the news of the day with no-bulls**t candor, piercing insight and a uniquely Aussie viewpoint.
Utopia
The Utopia Experiments is a legendary graphic novel shrouded in mystery. When a group of strangers find themselves in possession of an original manuscript, their lives suddenly and brutally implode.
Fringe
FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham, brilliant but formerly institutionalized scientist Walter Bishop and his scheming, reluctant son Peter uncover a deadly mystery involving a series of unbelievable events and realize they may be a part of a larger, more disturbing pattern that blurs the line between science fiction and technology.
More Shows Like Explained
Adam Ruins Everything
Host Adam Conover employs a combination of comedy, history and science to dispel widespread misconceptions about everything we take for granted.
Sex, Explained
From the biology of attraction to the history of birth control, explore the ins and outs of sex in this entertaining and enlightening series.
20/20
20/20 is an American television newsmagazine that has been broadcast on ABC since June 6, 1978. Created by ABC News executive Roone Arledge, the show was designed similarly to CBS's 60 Minutes but focuses more on human interest stories than international and political subjects. The program's name derives from the "20/20" measurement of visual acuity. The hour-long program has been a staple on Friday evenings for much of the time since it moved to that timeslot from Thursdays in September 1987, though special editions of the program occasionally air on other nights.
Surface
A marine biologist, an insurance salesman and a teenage boy find their lives changed when a new and often dangerous sea life species emerges, while the government tries to keep the affair under wraps.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
A half-hour satirical look at the week in news, politics and current events.
Travelers
Hundreds of years from now, the last surviving humans discover the means of sending consciousness back through time, directly into people in the 21st century. These "travelers" assume the lives of seemingly random people, while secretly working as teams to perform missions in order to save humanity from a terrible future.
VICE News Tonight
VICE News' half-hour nightly newscast. We now interrupt your regularly scheduled worldview.
The Triangle
A shipping magnate hires four experts from various fields to investigate what happened to his ships that went missing in the Bermuda Triangle. The team discovers a threat that might unravel time itself and cause the world to end.
Scandal
Everyone has secrets and Olivia Pope has dedicated her life to protecting and defending the public images of the elite by keeping those secrets under wraps. Pope and her team are at the top of their game when it comes to getting the job done for their clients, but it becomes apparent that these "gladiators in suits," who specialize in fixing the lives of other people, have trouble fixing those closest at hand -- their own.
History's Greatest Mysteries
Investigates a wide range of historically compelling topics and the mysteries surrounding each including the Titanic, D.B. Cooper, Roswell, John Wilkes Booth, and more. Fresh, new evidence and perspectives will be showcased, such as never-before-released documents, personal diaries and DNA evidence.
VICE
A documentary news series with a taboo-breaking team who deliver incredible news stories from around the world.
Sanctuary
The adventures of the beautiful, enigmatic and always surprising Dr. Helen Magnus, a brilliant scientist who holds the secrets of a clandestine population called Abnormals—a group of strange and sometimes terrifying beings that hide among humans. Magnus seeks to protect this threatened phenomena as well as unlock the mysteries behind their existence.
Why These Shows Are Similar
These recommendations share core qualities with Explained (2018): 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 Explained.
See full details for Explained (2018)