Netflix's Hollywood is a confection blend of several different genre series in one. It's a happy ending fantasy story about change in an industry long resistant to such things. It's a period piece, featuring real people and events of the era. It's a fictionalized tale of a made-up studio, featuring a movie within a show. And it's an alternate history piece, in which actual history is traded out for a different outcome. For those who have finished the series, here are several shows like Hollywood that will help fill the void left behind.
Of course, the most obvious series to watch once Hollywood is over is other Ryan Murphy shows like American Horror Story and American Crime Story. Both share period set seasons with Hollywood, and with AHS, they also include some of the fantasy aspects, though horror driven. Considering that Hollywood is currently being labeled as a "Limited Series" like AHS and ACS, the three shows are peas in a pod. (One could even include the single season of Feud as well.)
But Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu all have other shows that would nicely fill the void left behind by Hollywood as well. Here are some of the juiciest to dive into.
For those looking for history, but a little twisted for dramatic effect, look no further than The Crown. It's a gorgeous period piece, tracing the current British royal family from Elizabeth's ascension to the throne to the end of the century. Like Hollywood, a lot of the characters are real, and the incidents did happen, but perhaps not quite the way it's shown on screen.
For those looking for a showbiz period piece, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel may not be set in the movies, but it's the same "slice of an era" stuff as Hollywood. The difference is location and venue: New York in the 1950s/1960s comedy club scene, instead of Los Angeles in the 1940s. But it's still a heartwarming tale of how the business works.
Perhaps the most lauded period piece of the prestige TV era, Mad Men traces the 1960s from start to finish via the eyes of Don Draper, advertising exec. Much like Hollywood, a lot of the stuff in the background is pulled from real life, with fictional (and fictionalized) characters react to it in real-time.
Netflix's heralded two-season wonder, The Get Down is Hollywood for the 1970s music world, as young men and women in the South Bronx in the late 1970s break into R&B, disco, and a brand new sound that would one day go on to be known as rap and hip-hop.
For the 1980s, there's The Americans. Unlike Hollywood, and most of the other shows on this list, it's a different kind of putting on a show, as a pair of Russian spies working for the USSR attempt to undermine the country where they've been dispatched. It, too, has its share of real history and real people, with fictional characters living in DC during this turbulent time.
For those looking for another story about Hollywood, there's The Last Tycoon. Unlike everything else here, it's an adaptation of an F Scott Fitzgerald novel. The story is centered on the real happenings of 1936 Hollywood, loosely based on the famous producer Irving Thalberg. Known as the "Boy Wonder" of Hollywood, he helped make MGM the powerhouse it began by betting on some of the most famous talkies of the era.
And for those who want more good feeling from Ryan Murphy, there's always Pose, another fairytale set in an oppressive era, in this case, the ballroom scene of New York City in the late 1980s. Season 2 arrives on Netflix in June, so now is the time to start binging.
