Television series

Parenthood

Name: Parenthood
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Family
Released: 2010
Cast: Peter Krause, Dax Shepard, Lauren Graham, Erika Christensen, Monica Potter

Parenthood follows four adult Braverman siblings, their spouses, kids, and endlessly meddling parents through the daily chaos of family life in Berkeley. Shot with a loose, handheld intimacy that makes every dinner-table blowup feel unscripted, it trades plot twists for the slow accumulation of small truths about marriage, illness, and raising kids who never turn out how you planned. Bring tissues; it earns every one.

TVMaze rating

7.9

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Friday Night Lights2006

From the same creative team (Jason Katims), it has that same handheld intimacy and willingness to sit in a hard conversation. Small-town Texas football is the backdrop; the real subject, like Parenthood, is what parents owe their kids.

But If football holds zero interest for you, the playbook talk and locker-room scenes take patience early on.

This Is Us2016

Same appetite for the big cathartic cry, same sprawling multi-generational family, same faith that ordinary parenting choices carry the weight of a thriller. If Parenthood wrung you out, this finishes the job.

But The timeline-jumping and reveal-heavy structure is more calculated than Parenthood's plainer style — some viewers find it manipulative.

thirtysomething1987

The 1987 series that essentially invented this genre: adults navigating marriage, ambition, and parenthood in real, unglamorous detail. Watching it now feels like meeting Parenthood's grandparent.

But Very much of its decade — slower pacing and gender-and-work politics that read dated in places.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Make Way for Tomorrow1937

Parenthood is fundamentally about generations failing to fit each other's needs — kids too big for their parents' plans, parents too old for their children's houses. This film is the origin point of that exact ache, made decades before the multi-generational family drama became a genre.

Leo McCarey's devastating 1937 drama about elderly parents shuffled between their grown children's households, unable to fit anywhere, does what Parenthood does — the slow accumulation of small domestic cruelties — with none of the network softening.

But It's black-and-white, nearly ninety years old, and offers none of Parenthood's hope; it ends about as bleakly as a family film can.

Brothers & Sisters2006

Another enormous, loud, opinionated family ensemble with sibling rivalries and a matriarch who won't stay out of anyone's business. If the size of the Braverman clan was half the appeal, this scratches the same itch.

But It leans harder into soap-opera plotting — inheritance schemes, political intrigue — than Parenthood's grounded, everyday stakes.

Six Feet Under2001

A family drama with the same emotional honesty about grief, sibling resentment, and parents who damage their kids without meaning to — just filtered through a funeral home instead of a minivan.

But Considerably darker and stranger, with fantasy sequences and a fixation on mortality that Parenthood never goes near.

Gilmore Girls2000

Lauren Graham again, this time as a whip-smart single mother raising a daughter who's basically her best friend. Same warmth, same rapid-fire family bickering, none of the grief.

But It's fundamentally lighter and more whimsical — small-town quirk over the messier realism Parenthood traffics in.

Everwood2002

An underseen family drama about a widowed father dragging his kids to a small Colorado town, built on the same faith that ordinary domestic scenes can carry real weight.

But Early-2000s network pacing, gentler and slower, and it never found a big audience so it can feel forgotten now.

My So-Called Life1994

Only one season, but it captures teenage interiority — Amber and Drew's storylines in Parenthood clearly owe it a debt — with an aching sincerity that still holds up.

But It's a single 19-episode season, cancelled abruptly, so you're left wanting a conclusion that never arrives.

The Middle2009

The comedic mirror image: same unglamorous, lower-middle-class parenting chaos, but played for laughs instead of tears. Good for an evening when you want family dysfunction without the sob.

But It's a much broader sitcom rhythm, so anyone craving Parenthood's naturalism will find the jokes and pacing far more exaggerated.

Olive Kitteridge2014

Where Parenthood spreads its family damage across dozens of episodes and half a dozen households, Olive Kitteridge does it through one impossible woman in a fraction of the time — the same emotional excavation, radically compressed into miniseries format.

A four-part HBO miniseries adapted from Elizabeth Strout's novel, following one difficult mother and wife across decades in small-town Maine. It shares Parenthood's interest in how parents wound their children without villainy — compressed into four unforgettable hours.

But Olive is prickly and often unlikeable by design; there's none of the Bravermans' group-hug warmth to soften the loneliness.

The Sopranos1999

Same machinery — parental anxiety, sibling resentment, a matriarch who won't let go — dressed in crime-genre clothes instead of domestic drama. It's proof the family-ensemble structure works even when the stakes go from Thanksgiving dinner to federal indictment.

Strip out the murders and it's a show about a father terrified he's failing his kids, a sister scheming around an aging mother, and siblings who can't stop hurting each other — the Braverman engine, running on organized crime instead of soccer practice.

But The violence is real and frequent, and Tony Soprano is a far less redeemable protagonist than anyone in the Braverman family.