What To Watch
These 12 Shows Like The Crown Are Fit for Royalty
There’s more palace intrigue and royal romance where that came from.
By Mary Sollosi
March 5, 2024
Best Shows to Watch After The Crown - Netflix Tudum
Can’t get enough of The Crown? We get it. Unfortunately, the majestic period drama has that classic problem of having a finite number of episodes. The good news, though, is that between actual world history and the wild imaginations of TV creators, there’s an infinite amount of inspiration for more shows with similar themes — doomed royal love affairs, cutthroat courtly politics, enormous homes filled with priceless artifacts, and family baggage even more extensive than the queen’s tiara collection.
So don’t worry! Once you’ve watched (or rewatched — you can admit it) all of The Crown, you have options for what to stream next. Ask your butler to bring you a nice cup of tea (or, um, just make one yourself), and queue up one of these series.
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story
Explore the halls of a different royal court with this Bridgerton prequel, which tells the tale of a queen who came to prominence long before Elizabeth’s reign in The Crown. Set decades before we meet the Bridgerton family, you’ll see the young Queen Charlotte’s (India Amarteifio) rise to power and the beginning of her passionate romance with husband King George III (Corey Mylchreest). Though Queen Charlotte is a fictional story, it’s inspired by historical events, and Charlotte and George were very real people. The royal family drama goes way back!
Young Royals
Rather than giving royal history a dramatic TV treatment, Young Royals serves up a romantic teen drama with a regal twist. The Swedish series follows the fictional Prince Wilhelm of Sweden (Edvin Ryding) as he goes away to boarding school (where he has a very different experience from Prince Charles in Season 2 of The Crown, mercifully) and finds himself falling for his classmate, Simon (Omar Rudberg). The third and final season is arriving in March, so you can make a majestic event of it.
The Empress
If the journey of young Princess Diana finding her way in a strange new role after marrying into royalty spoke to you in The Crown, here’s another series following a young woman in a similar position. Devrim Lingnau stars in the six-episode German historical drama as the 19th-century Bavarian duchess Elisabeth (also called Sisi), who falls in love with Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria (Philip Froissant). Once married and installed in the Viennese court, Sisi must contend with complicated family dynamics and palace politics.
The English Game
For another dose of fictionalized British cultural history, look to this miniseries about the origins of modern English football. (That’s soccer on this side of the pond.) The historical sports drama depicts two 19th-century athletes — upper-class Arthur Kinnaird (Edward Holcroft) and working class Fergus Suter (Kevin Guthrie) — who, when fate brings them together, change the game forever. And who better to tell this tale of crossing a class divide than Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes?
Versailles
The Last Czars
Russia’s last empress, Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna, was related to the British royals — she was one of Queen Victoria’s 42 grandchildren — so to follow up The Crown with The Last Czars is just keeping your streaming in the family, really. The six-part series dramatizes the reign of Czar Nicholas II (Robert Jack), from his accession to the throne in 1894 to his (historical spoiler alert!) imprisonment and execution along with Alexandra (Susanna Herbert) and their five children in 1918, following the October Revolution.
Greatest Events of WWII in Colour
The Crown may begin after World War II ends, but the memory of that earth-shaking, life-altering event sticks with Elizabeth throughout the series — and its history provides the foundation for the latter half of the 20th century. Narrated by Derek Jacobi (who also played the Duke of Windsor in The Crown’s third season), the 10-part docuseries uses colorized archive footage from the era to recount some of the war’s most critical moments.
Medici
The King's Affection
Palace intrigue and crown politics can be fun and all, but if you’d like to turn those down a little and dial up the royal romance element, look no further than the Korean drama The King’s Affection. The series, which consists of a single 20-episode season, follows Dam-yi (Park Eun-bin), a princess in Korea’s Joseon Dynasty who was hidden away at birth while her twin brother grew up as a prince. When he dies unexpectedly, she takes his place, making an effort to conceal her true identity — and her true love.
Secrets of Great British Castles
So your favorite part of The Crown is all the bopping around between the queen’s various palatial properties? There’s another show to stream for that! Over two six-episode seasons of the docuseries Secrets of Great British Castles, historian Dan Jones takes you on a guided tour of some of the oldest, most breathtaking structures in Great Britain, offering insights about the astonishing homes’ most notorious occupants throughout history.
Roman Empire
In The Crown, Elizabeth is often concerned about the status of the British Empire, which dwindles over the course of her reign. For even bloodier imperial politics, look to this anthology series, which dramatizes some of the most shocking and violent periods of the Roman Empire alongside documentary-style historical commentary. Roman Empire consists of three stand-alone seasons, portraying the turbulent careers of three different larger-than-life Roman leaders: Commodus, Julius Caesar, and Caligula.
The Windsors
Additional reporting by Erin Corbett
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