How can I find tv shows/films similar to one I like?

Question

As a general case, how can I find movies or TV shows similar to an existing movie or TV show that I like?

Answer 1

There are a couple of websites that can help find similar shows or movies:

• If you go to the TV show or movie's Wikipedia page, scroll to the bottom and you'll see a box with the Categories for that page. Often this will contain links to various genres or classes of TV shows and movies. Clicking on those links will take you to lists of all the works that have been put into those Categories, so they'll share that similarity with the work you enjoyed.

• TV Tropes is a site that documents and classifies works (it covers TV shows and films, but many other things as well, such as books, manga, fanfic, etc.) based on genres as well as 'tropes' which are more specific plot/writing devices. So you have pages that list various works that have casually killed off characters. Similar to Wikipedia, if you head to a specific TV show or movie page, you'll get a list of tropes that this TV show or movie used. Those trope pages will then have links to other works that are in the same genres or use the same tropes.

• IMDb documents TV shows and films and the people who work on them. So if you like a specific actor, or the writing, or the directing of a TV show or film, hit up IMDb. You can look up a specific actor/writer/director and see everything they've worked on. Wikipedia also has some of this information, but IMDb tends to be more comprehensive as this is their specific focus. IMDb also tags shows with keywords which can be used to locate movies with similar plot elements (example).

• Jinni.com is also used to search for movies and TV shows based on your taste.

Answer 2

Jinni is the way to go, and is the future! (See movie genome info.)

Wikipedia was mentioned, but what was not mentioned is that they have a few stellar consolidation pages to do searches from. This list of lists page is invaluable, as just one example.

IMDB was mentioned, but what was not mentioned is the unbelievably great Keyword search function. Searching for movies by keywords is a great way to do it. (Ahm.. I’m rather chuffed with myself for creating the first keyword for “female sitting on a toilet” (Wow – did I just share that?) and “meme”. Be sure to click on the “Movie” link on the right to refine your search to just movies or TV or whatever. Jinni is basically generating huge amounts of keywords like this for movies so that people like us will make it to the next level of the pagoda!

Netflix changed the world! (if you have a subscription.) They have great cross references to similar shows too. Also, you can use their central search field for your own keyword search based on movie summaries. (e.g. “Biker” will bring up Angels from Hell (1968))

Finally, YouTube again for keywords is ..key. Type in a movie name + “trailer” and then see what other movies pop-up on the right hand side. Love that!

Answer 3

Google Search

I think people should be trained/ advised to use Google search.

But seriously, just type "movie/TV Show similar to XYZ" in Google Search. It will give you many link resources. Then see what you would like in different results.

e.g. TV shows similar to Friends

Answer 4

IMDb Advanced usage

In addition to the Keywords mentioned in the main index answer, there are several more advanced ways to locate similar films and TV shows on IMDb which are hidden away in menus:

• User Lists

  On IMDb, users can create lists of titles which appear on IMDb, then apply tags to their list to help you find them.

• Advanced Search

  The new Keyword search interface is very thorough, however there are still search options which are not shown that can only be accessed by using the various advanced searches:

  • Advanced Title Search

    This is the only way to search using the following criteria:

    • Country
    • Language
    • Colour (Black & White / Colour)
    • Plot
    • Cast
    • Runtime
    • Production / Release status
    • Number of user ratings
    • Appears on an automatically generated list (Such as "Top 100 rated titles")
    • Production company
    • Box office gross

  • Common crew

    If you know two people who worked on the film together, you can use the Two People Working Together search, tell it the two people who worked together and click search to see a list of everything they were both credited on, for example Joel Hodgson & Frank Conniff

  • Searching additional fields

    Under the regular search bar at the top you can search the Plots and Quotes of titles, however you need to look under the Title Text Search section of Advanced Search in order to search these more specific title fields:

    • Trivia
    • Goofs (Mistakes)
    • Crazy Credits (Jokes or additional credits such as Chuck Lorre's blog at the end of The Big Bang Theory)
    • Filming Locations
    • Soundtracks
    • Literature (Printed reviews or books which mention the film)
    • Versions (Different edits of the title and what changes are included)

• Exact Searches

  If you are absolutely certain of one of the following criteria, you can begin any search using that criteria:

  • Country
  • Genre
  • Language
  • Year

  There are several issues with these searches though. If you use Country, Language or Year you will get a great "Refine search" menu which will allow you to narrow down your results:

  

  However, with Genre you don't. For this reason, if you pick a genre the best thing to do is trick the Keyword interface, Search for a random keyword, and then click the X button to dismiss the keyword:

  

  It will then allow you to filter all the titles without having any keywords:

  

  This works great, but please note you cannot share links to this page. If you copy the URL of the keyword interface without any keyword specified, you'll just get linked back to the list of keywords.

• Filters

  Once you've got a list of the films similar to the ones you like, you can then sort them with the various filters on the site, here's a quick reference to what they mean:

  • MOVIEmeter

    This is the default filter, and it is based on a combination of the amount of page views the title receives, as well as the IMDb rating for the titles.

  • IMDb Rating or User Rating

    This is simply the rating shown for the title, measured in a number of stars. The advanced search interface says User Rating, whereas the Keyword interface calls it IMDb rating, but they are the same thing.

Answer 5

I know I'm late, but in addition to jinni.com and moviespoiler.com, tastekid.com is really useful and along a similar vein.

But as a bonus, it also allows the user to get similar for Books, Music, and Video Games.

Answer 6

You can try Criticker.com if you are willing to invest in rating movies. The site uses a so called Taste Compatibility Index, a measure of the similarity between two people's taste in films:

Once you've ranked a handful of movies at Criticker, you can generate TCIs with everyone else in the community. It's better than just finding a few people with whom you generally agree -- Criticker will show you the exact people whose tastes are the most similar to your own

So it does not directly tell you what types of movies match, but it will point you to people with similar taste, and you can then look at their favorites for suggestions of movies you might also like.

Answer 7

Me, personally, I search in Google something like "shows / movies like BLANK Reddit". In my experience, there are a lot of posts in Reddit of people who asked for recommendations of shows or movies that might be like the one you already like.

You can also create an account in Reddit and ask in a few subreddits. Such as a subreddit of the movie / show you like, or r/MovieSuggestions and r/televisionsuggestions.