Still Not Over Maid? Here Are 12 Gripping TV Shows Like It to Try Next

Like Maid, Shameless is produced by John Wells and focuses on a family living below the poverty line. For the Gallagher family, life on Chicago’s South Side is a constant challenge. Whether it’s eldest sister Fiona juggling multiple jobs to keep the family afloat financially or Ian dealing with his Bipolar Disorder diagnosis when there are so few resources available to him, the series never shies away from tackling tough subjects, even as it maintains a sense of humour.

Showtime’s short-lived SMILF is similar in theme to Maid. The series follows a single mother trying to make ends meet while also navigating a complex family situation. While Bridgette has a stronger support system than Alex does in Maid, SMILF still captures the loneliness that can come with being a single parent.

With plenty of teen drama and a single mom with a deadly past, Ginny and Georgia is much soapier than Maid. However, when you peel back the show’s edgy Gilmore Girls-esque layers, you find a story about a single mother who has had to flee multiple abusive situations to ensure the safety of her children. Along the way, Georgia has worked all manner of jobs and resorted to some extreme methods to move her kids into the suburbs where they’ll have all of the opportunities she was never afforded growing up.

Maid‘s biggest flaw is that it has a very narrow focus. The truth is, Alex has a better chance of escaping the cycle of poverty due to being an educated white woman from a middle-class background. Most of the women on Orange Is the New Black don’t have that luxury. Although the show uses the incarceration of a privileged white woman, Piper, as a gateway into the world of America’s prison system, the stories told focus on women from all walks of life and highlight the inequalities facing Black, Latinx, and LGBTQ+ inmates.

If you want to watch a show that tackles many of the same issues addressed in Maid, but that’s gentler in its storytelling, then try Jane the Virgin. This warm series about a young woman who is accidentally artificially inseminated at a routine gynecology appointment features intergenerational stories about the bonds between mothers and daughters (and grandmothers and granddaughters). It also touches on class inequality and showcases the story of a young woman chasing her dream of becoming a writer, even after unexpectedly becoming a mother.

David Makes Man is one of those rare shows that earns the title of the best series you’re not watching. The drama follows a teen named David, who lives in the projects and attends a magnet school for gifted students. David perpetually finds himself caught between two worlds – the world of his family, and a world that could offer him a way out of the cycle of poverty. Along the way, the young protagonist must face the realities of racial inequality and the weight of responsibility he feels to build a better life for himself.

Just because One Day at a Time is a sitcom, that doesn’t mean it’s not deeply affecting in the ways it handles social issues. Whether the show is exploring what it means to live with PTSD, deal with alcoholism, or come out to your religious grandmother, the comedy is a touching look at what it’s like for a modern family to live in America today.

Told primarily through the eyes of a group of young people growing up on the South Side of Chicago, The Chi is a heartfelt (and heartbreaking) series about a shocking event that unites four residents forever. Along the way, viewers get an inside look at what it’s like to live in the South Side of Chicago, as the characters deal with racial inequality and poverty, while also navigating the universal trials of young adulthood.

Maid does an excellent job of showcasing Alex’s complicated relationship with her mother, who has undiagnosed Bipolar Disorder. If you’re looking for another show with a nuanced portrayal of an adult child’s relationship with a parent who has a mental health condition, then Please Like Me is one of the best ones out there. This Australian gem focuses on a twentysomething named Josh, who is navigating coming out to his family and moving back home to help his mother as she deals with depression.

Yes, it takes place in a completely different era, but Self Made is another Netflix miniseries that’s based on the true story of a woman who drastically changes her life. In this case, the subject is Madam C.J. Walker, who went from being an impoverished washerwoman to America’s first female self-made millionaire thanks to the creation of her beauty empire of hair products for Black women.

Much like Alex, in Unorthodox, Esty knows her only hope for survival is to escape the unhappy relationship that’s holding her back from fully experiencing the world. The difference for Etsy is she’s part of an Orthodox Jewish community, which means leaving her husband also means leaving her family and friends, and rejecting the religious beliefs she grew up with in order to start a new life in Germany.

At its heart, Maid is about America’s broken social services system, and all the ways it is so easy for people to fall through the cracks without receiving the help they need. Dopesick takes on another American system in need of an overhaul: the pharmaceutical industry, which is feeding America’s opioid epidemic. This gruelling series puts a human face on the crisis, while also exploring the bureaucratic and economic factors that have trapped so many people in a cycle of addiction.