Shows Like
15 Shows Like Outlander — Historical Romance, Epic Love, and Time-Crossed Stories
Missing Jamie and Claire? These shows deliver the same sweeping historical romance, passionate love stories, and richly detailed period settings as Outlander.
16 FILMS·April 2026·By MoviesPack
Section 1
The Outlander Formula
A story about a woman who belongs to two times and one man she can't stop returning to. Outlander worked because it had **a genuinely adult female perspective at its center** — not a passive heroine waiting to be rescued, but a woman with skills, opinions, and desires navigating 18th-century Scotland on her own terms. The romance was urgent because the stakes were real. The history was specific enough to feel true. Finding shows that combine all of that is harder than it looks. [Use our tool: Shows Like Outlander](/shows/similar/outlander) — algorithmically matched
Section 2
The Closest Matches
01
Poldark
2015–2019
★8.1IMDb
Ross Poldark returns from the American Revolutionary War to find his Cornish estate in ruin, his family exhausted, and the woman he was going to marry engaged to his cousin. He rebuilds — reopens a failed mine, hires people others won't hire, makes enemies of every wealthy family in Cornwall. Along the way he falls for Demelza, a kitchen girl he impulsively offers work and eventually marries, who turns out to be capable of navigating the world he inhabits in ways he didn't anticipate. Five seasons of sweeping Cornish drama with genuine moral weight.
Why it matters
Same adult historical romance formula — a heroine who arrived in this world without expecting it, building a life through competence rather than passivity. Demelza goes from kitchen girl to mine owner's wife to political actor across five seasons, and her arc is as satisfying as Claire's.
02
Bridgerton
2020–present
★7.3IMDb
Regency-era London. The Bridgerton family — eight siblings, all with names starting with A — navigates the marriage market each season, with a different sibling at the center. A powerful and anonymous gossip publication called Lady Whistledown broadcasts the ton's secrets every week. Each season is a separate romance with real obstacles: class, family obligation, the gap between what society permits and what people actually feel. Shonda Rhimes's production is intentionally anachronistic — diverse cast, modern pop songs on string quartet — but emotionally satisfying and visually sumptuous.
03
The Pillars of the Earth
2010
★8.1IMDb
12th-century England, torn apart by civil war over the succession. In the middle of it, a master builder named Tom wants to build a cathedral — the greatest cathedral ever attempted — and the town of Kingsbridge becomes the site of decades of political, religious, and personal conflict over whether he'll ever get to finish it. Based on Ken Follett's novel. Multiple love stories embedded in genuine historical sweep, with a world where every wrong choice has permanent consequences.
Why it matters
The epic scale matches Outlander — not a drawing-room drama, but a story of kingdoms and cathedrals and people who build things meant to outlast them.
Section 3
The Royal Romance Shows
04
Victoria
2016–2019
★8.0IMDb
Victoria becomes Queen at 18, barely trained, surrounded by advisors who want to manage her, and has to figure out how to actually rule. Her relationship with Lord Melbourne — the Prime Minister who becomes her closest confidant and something more than that — is the show's first love story, complicated and never quite what it appears. Then she meets Albert. Three seasons of a woman who refuses to be handled, in a role designed to require exactly that.
05
Reign
2013–2017
★7.6IMDb
Mary Queen of Scots arrives at the French court as a teenager to marry the Dauphin and secure Scotland's alliance with France. She navigates assassination attempts, court politics, romantic entanglements, and — in a choice that's either bold or absurd depending on your tolerance — actual supernatural threats at the French court. Historically loose but emotionally compelling. The CW gives it permission to be emotionally excessive in ways that suit the material.
06
Versailles
2015–2018
★7.8IMDb
Louis XIV moves his court to Versailles — a palace he's building specifically to keep the French aristocracy under his eye, dependent on his favor, too distracted by spectacle to conspire against him. The show tracks the political maneuvering, sexual intrigue, and personal cost of living inside absolute power. French production, explicit and stylish. The construction of Versailles becomes a metaphor for how power constructs itself.
Section 4
The Epic Love Stories
07
North & South
2004
★8.6IMDb
Margaret Hale moves from southern England to the industrial northern town of Milton when her father leaves the Church — and clashes immediately with John Thornton, a mill owner she finds cold, self-made, and everything she thinks she despises. Four BBC episodes based on Elizabeth Gaskell's novel. The slow burn rivals any Outlander season: the misunderstandings, the class differences that make attraction feel impossible, the longing they refuse to name. The final scene at the train station is one of TV's great romantic moments.
08
Downton Abbey
2010–2015
★8.7IMDb
The Crawley family owns Downton Abbey, a Yorkshire estate, and the Titanic has just sunk — which means the heir the family expected is dead and the inheritance will go to someone none of them have met. Six seasons of the family and their household navigating the changing world from 1912 through the 1920s: World War One, the Spanish Flu, the decline of the aristocracy. Multiple love stories across the social hierarchy. The Bates-Anna storyline alone could fuel a separate show.
09
Poldark (already listed at #1 — see above)
Section 5
The Time-Travel and Fantasy History Shows
09
The Time Traveler's Wife
2022
★7.0IMDb
Henry has a genetic condition that causes him to involuntarily time-travel — pulled out of the present without warning and deposited somewhere in his own timeline. Clare has known Henry since she was six years old because an older version of him kept visiting her childhood meadow. By the time they meet as adults, she's been in love with him for twenty years. He's never met her before. One HBO season based on Audrey Niffenegger's novel. Rose Leslie and Theo James.
10
Cursed
2020
★6.6IMDb
Nimue, a young woman with a mysterious gift, is given her dying mother's instructions: find the wizard Merlin and deliver a sword. The Arthurian legend told from the perspective of the woman who becomes the Lady of the Lake — who in this version is the protagonist, not the mystical helper. Fantasy-historical, strong female lead, epic scope. Cancelled after one season but the world-building is ambitious.
Section 6
The Scottish and Celtic History Shows
11
Vikings
2013–2020
★8.5IMDb
Ragnar Lothbrok is a farmer and a dreamer who believes the gods want him to sail west. He talks his way into a raid on England, discovers wealth beyond what anyone imagined, and rises from farmer to earl to king while his sons watch and learn and eventually carry the violence forward. Six seasons moving through Norse mythology, the politics of Viking-age Scandinavia, and the brutal encounter between Norse expansion and English, French, and Mediterranean civilization.
12
Jamestown
2017–2019
★7.8IMDb
Three English women travel to 1619 Virginia as mail-order brides for settlers who've been there long enough to need wives but not long enough to have any options. They're strangers in a wilderness — to each other, to their new husbands, to a land that is already occupied in ways the settlers refuse to fully acknowledge. Three seasons of women finding their own power in a world designed to limit them. British production, smaller scale than Outlander, but the same emotional territory.
13
The Last Kingdom
2015–2022
★8.5IMDb
Uhtred of Bebbanburg is born Saxon, captured by Danes as a boy, raised as one of them, and eventually returns to an England being swallowed by Viking invasion. He fights on both sides, loyal to neither fully, trying to reclaim the hall that was taken from him while Alfred of Wessex uses him to unify a country. Five seasons of warfare, political intrigue, and an epic sense of a nation being formed through violence. The battle sequences are among the best in TV.
Section 7
The Period Prestige Dramas
14
Wolf Hall
2015
★8.3IMDb
Thomas Cromwell is the son of a blacksmith who became the most powerful man in England — the architect behind Henry VIII's break with Rome, the dissolutions of the monasteries, the destruction of anyone who stood in his way. Mark Rylance plays him as a man of radical pragmatism: someone who sees exactly what everyone around him wants and finds a way to provide it, at a price. Six episodes based on Hilary Mantel's novels. Less romantic than Outlander, more about the mechanics of power, but the same sense of a world where the wrong political choice means death.
15
Anne with an E
2017–2019
★8.7IMDb
Anne Shirley comes to Green Gables as an orphan who wasn't what the Cuthberts ordered — they wanted a boy to help with the farm. She is not a boy. She is a fierce, unconventional, relentlessly optimistic girl who has been unwanted her whole life and treats every human encounter as a potential friendship. Three seasons of a character whose imagination and refusal to be diminished make a historical setting feel emotionally alive rather than decorative.
Section 8
Quick Match Guide
| Want... | Watch | |---------|-------| | Most similar format | Poldark, Jamestown | | Regency-era romance | Bridgerton, North & South | | Victorian | Downton Abbey, Victoria | | Medieval epic | Vikings, The Last Kingdom | | Royal intrigue | Reign, Versailles, Wolf Hall | | Time travel romance | The Time Traveler's Wife | | Literary source + slow burn | North & South, The Pillars of the Earth |
Section 9
Want More?
- [Full list: Shows Like Outlander](/shows/similar/outlander) — 20+ algorithmic matches - [Historical drama TV shows](/shows/mood/historical) — past worlds, present emotions - [Romantic TV shows](/shows/mood/romance) — love stories worth investing in - [Discover what to watch next](/shows/discover) — random recommendation tool
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