Shows Like Mayor of Kingstown

Mayor of Kingstown, Paramount+'s bleak crime drama, ended its third season in typically dark fashion, with violence, tragedy, and a grimly philosophical voiceover where Mike McClusky (Jeremy Renner) contemplates the misery of his existence. Is he evil because he has done evil things, or can he regain his humanity? We'll have to wait to see if Mayor of Kingstown returns for Season 4 to find out — creators Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon's show has not been officially renewed yet (don't worry, though; it'll be back).

In the meantime, we've gathered some other crime dramas you can elect to watch if you want something else like Mayor of Kingstown. If you're in the mood for some violent shows about bad men doing bad things but still somehow trying to do the right thing, you'll find it here.

Every Taylor Sheridan show ties back to Sons of Anarchy, because Sheridan's acting role on FX's popular late '00s/early '10s crime thriller inspired him to start writing full-time, and it's also where he connected with producer John Linson, with whom he co-created Yellowstone. The explicit Sons of Anarchy-Mayor of Kingstown connection comes in the form of Kingstown executive producers and writers Dave Erickson and Regina Corrado, who previously worked as writers and producers on the biker drama. Their previous experience making another gritty, frequently shocking drama about a complex criminal underworld bleeds through in their work on Mayor of Kingstown.

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Speaking of Dave Erickson, he previously co-created and served as showrunner for the first three seasons of The Walking Dead spinoff Fear the Walking Dead. And while FTWD is, of course, a zombie-horror drama, it has more in common with Mayor of Kingstown than you might expect at first glance. FTWD is a violent and moody drama following someone who has to do terrible things to keep things from getting worse — in this case, Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), a mother and high school guidance counselor who's trying to keep her family alive in the early days of the zombie apocalypse. Its bleak tone and morally gray characters will remind you of Mayor of Kingstown. Erickson left FTWD after Season 3 and it basically turned into a different show after that, but those first three seasons are solid. All eight seasons of Fear the Walking Dead are coming to Netflix on Aug. 19.

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This groundbreaking show — it was HBO's first original drama series — is one of Mayor of Kingstown's main predecessors. The prison drama is set inside the walls of Oswald State Penitentiary, where various gangs fight for power (and that includes the guards). In addition to the familiar setting, Mayor of Kingston fans will also find similarities in the darkness of the themes, the brutality of the violence, and just general f'ed up-ness. Oz's cast includes J.K. Simmons (as sadistic Aryan Brotherhood leader Vernon Schillinger), Edie Falco (as hardworking and decent corrections officer Diane Whittlesey), and Christopher Meloni (as psychopathic serial killer Chris Keller). Before they became big stars, they broke out on Oz. 

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Another classic HBO crime series, The Wire is widely (and correctly) considered to be one of the best shows of all time. It's a sprawling drama about the institutions of the city of Baltimore — the government, the police, the criminals, the unions, the schools, the newspaper, etc. — and the people working to keep them going amidst constant corruption and decline. It's another clear influence on Mayor of Kingstown, which is also about how everything is connected in a failing city. It's much more thought-provoking and meaningful than Mayor of Kingstown, though, and we don't recommend watching it if you can't give it your full attention.

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Let's take a quick jaunt across the pond for Gangs of London, another intense action thriller about gangs battling the police and each other for power. When the head of London's most powerful criminal organization is assassinated, his son (Joe Cole) takes his place and tries to find out who is responsible while fending off threats to his family's empire. Gangs of London's criminal organizations come from all over the world, befitting the city's status as a global hub, which gives it a more global flair than Mayor of Kingstown's Rust Belt grit, but the action set pieces are even more violently explosive. The first two seasons of Gangs of London are coming to Netflix on Aug. 19 in order to build anticipation for Season 3 before it streams on AMC+, presumably later this year. 

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If you're looking for another show about warring gangs in a gritty town and the one man trying to keep things from getting really out of hand, check out Banshee, a crime thriller that ran for four seasons on Cinemax from 2013 to 2016. That one man is Lucas Hood, played by The Boys' Antony Starr, an ex-con who assumes the identity of Banshee, Penn.'s police chief and begins instituting his own brand of justice. It's a gonzo action series that's a lot more playful and fun than Mayor of Kingstown, but also has a ton of "oh my God, I can't believe that just happened" moments. And it should also look pretty familiar; its fourth season was filmed in the Pittsburgh area, as is Mayor of Kingstown. (Mayor of Kingstown is set in Michigan, but was filmed in Kingston, Ontario in Season 1 before moving to Pennsylvania for Seasons 2 and 3.)

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The title character of this long-running Showtime thriller is sort of like a white collar Mike McClusky. Not that Ray himself (Liev Schreiber) is white collar — even though he wears a nice suit, his hands get very, very dirty — but his clients are. He works as a fixer for wealthy people in New York and Los Angeles. When they get in trouble, he makes the problems go away, often with the help of a baseball bat. Like Mike McClusky, he has family problems, anger problems, and moral problems with what he does for a living. Just a lot of problems overall. 

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Now we're back to the Rust Belt with One Dollar, a crime drama that ran for one underrated season in 2018. The series follows a dollar bill as it gets passed from person to person in a Kingstown-like town where a gruesome multiple murder just took place. As the dollar changes hands, the show tells its holder's story as a piece of the larger mystery. The series deals with a lot of the same themes of corruption and economic hardship that Mayor of Kingston does, with a visually similar aesthetic (though shot with more yellow than Mayor of Kingstown's blue-and-gray palette) and an emphasis on how everything is connected.

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