After seven high-stakes seasons, the Showtime drama Billions officially came to an end on August 13, 2023, wrapping up the saga of Chuck Rhoades Jr. (Paul Giamatti), the cutthroat U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis), the crooked hedge-fund king that he’s been after.
All seven seasons of Billions are streaming on Paramount Plus.
That cat-and-mouse chase is complicated even further by the fact that Chuck’s wife, Wendy (Maggie Siff), has been working at Axelrod’s Axe Capital for more than 15 years.
Over 84 episodes, the series delved into the world of high finance and showed the ways in which immense wealth and power can be corrupted to make the rich even richer and the ruthless even more ruthless. And if it’s more “rich people behaving badly” shows you’re after, add these five shows like Billions to your next watch list.
Succession
If the mega-wealthy media family at the center of this HBO critical darling seems familiar, it should: billionaire CEO Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his nepo-baby adult children (Alan Ruck, Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin and Sarah Snook) were reportedly modeled after News Corp. magnate Rupert Murdoch and his famous brood by the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong.
However, despite the fact that the business in this Emmy-winning drama is of the family sort, that doesn’t make the dealings any less dirty, with the siblings regularly participating in boardroom backstabbing in their pursuit to take over their father’s seat as the powerful head of Waystar Royco. And despite the King Lear-esque tragedy of that premise, the razor-sharp writing and equally cutting performances make for a deliciously dark and funny watch.
Watch on Max
Mad Men
At the center of this seven-season AMC favorite is Jon Hamm’s Don Draper, the magnetic but mysterious advertising executive at the fictional Sterling Cooper agency on Manhattan’s Madison Avenue.
Stretching from March 1960 to November 1970, the period drama not only niftily takes you through some of the most famous advertising campaigns of the 20th century (remember “I’d like to buy the world a Coke”?) but also examines the consumerism, addictions, racial and religious prejudices, and overt misogyny — especially seen in the livelihoods of the agency’s female employees like Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) and Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) — that ran rampant during the era.
Watch on AMC Plus
Ray Donovan
Played by Liev Schreiber, the titular character in this Showtime crime drama is a professional “fixer,” a crisis manager of sorts who arranges bribes, makes threats and utilizes other underhanded methods to protect his powerful clients, from an A-list actor blackmailed with sex tapes to an NBA player trapped in a spermjacking scam.
Over seven seasons that aired from 2013 to 2020 and a feature-length movie that premiered on Showtime in February ‘22, we learn that Ray’s family dynamics and troubled past are just as compelling and crooked as his choice of career, including his relationships with his father Mickey (played by Jon Voight) and his wife Abby (Paula Malcomson).
Watch on Paramount Plus
Industry
The characters at the core of this British drama may be younger than the rest of the folks on this list, but they’re no less hungry and cutthroat. The show follows a group of recent university graduates (played by Marisa Abela, Myha'la Herrold, Harry Lawtey and David Jonsson, among others) competing for permanent positions at Pierpoint & Co, a prestigious investment bank in London.
Like Billions, Industry spotlights the tenacious financial industry and the competitiveness of making it in the big city, but consider it like a prequel for those kinds of series — a glimpse at the rich and powerful when they were merely eager, enterprising twentysomethings with considerably less riches and power.
Watch on Max
Suits
To say that Suits has had a resurgence in popularity as of late is an understatement — since becoming available on Netflix in June 2023, the legal drama was a smash hit for the streaming platform, becoming the “most-watching acquired series in a single week.” (Per Variety, as of press time, 45.445 billion minutes of Suits has been viewed, prompting NBCUniversal to kick off the development of a spin-off series.)
Originally airing for nine seasons from 2011 to 2019 on USA Network, the series follows Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), a college dropout with a photographic memory who is hired as an associate attorney by Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), a suave and self-assured partner at the Pearson Hardman law firm in New York City, despite Mike not having a law degree. There, Mike encounters not only big-wig corporate clients but also a pre-royals Meghan Markle, who stars as Rachel Zane, a senior paralegal and his erstwhile love interest.
Watch on Netflix
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