Television series

The Split Up

The Split Up follows the Aryas, a British-Asian dynasty running Manchester's most discreet family law firm, as a decades-old secret threatens both the business and the bloodline. It's slick, talky, character-driven drama—courtroom cases used as pressure valves for domestic reckonings. Expect boardroom politics tangled with sibling rivalry, a strong ensemble cast, and the queasy pleasure of watching people who solve everyone else's marriages fail to manage their own.

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The Split2018

Abi Morgan's original blueprint for lawyers-as-family-therapists: a London firm of divorce specialists whose own marriages keep buckling under the weight of everyone else's. Same emotional engine, same glossy melancholy.

But If you've already seen it, the parallels might feel too close for comfort rather than complementary.

The Split poster

Big Little Lies2017

Glossy, starry, and built on the same fault line: a community that trades on discretion while everyone's secrets quietly detonate. Terrific ensemble, gorgeous surfaces, real menace underneath.

But American, wealthy-suburb setting swaps the cultural specificity of Kishan Law for pure prestige gloss.

Big Little Lies poster

The Good Wife2009

The gold standard for law-firm-as-family-battlefield drama: sharp cases, sharper office politics, and a marriage under permanent forensic examination.

But Seven seasons is a big ask, and the case-of-the-week format is chunkier than the serialised feel here.

The Good Wife poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Knives Out2019

Same core machinery as Kishan Law's crisis—a powerful family whose fortune and legitimacy hinge on a buried truth—but turned into a gleeful whodunit. It's the 'family firm implodes over a secret' plot done as pure entertainment.

Rian Johnson's whip-smart, endlessly quotable whodunit about a wealthy family circling a fortune and a secret. Funny, twisty, and a genuine pleasure from start to finish.

But It's played almost entirely for fun—if you want the sober weight of family law's real stakes, this is the wrong register.

Knives Out poster
More like this (8)

Unforgotten2015

A masterclass in slow-burn ensemble drama where old secrets resurface to wreck present-day lives, one relationship at a time. Compassionate, unshowy, quietly devastating.

But It's a police procedural at heart, so expect a different rhythm—less boardroom, more interview room.

Unforgotten poster

Silk2011no page yet

Maxine Peake anchors this sharp, unglamorous look at the Bar, where ambition and ethics collide case by case. Less soapy than most legal drama, more procedural bite.

But Criminal law rather than family law, so the domestic stakes that drive The Split Up are largely absent.

This Is Us2016

If you want the multi-generational, secrets-and-inheritance engine without the wig and gown, this delivers it with maximum tear-jerking efficiency across decades.

But Sentimental to a fault; the emotional manipulation is much less restrained than The Split Up's.

This Is Us poster

Indian Summers2015no page yet

A lush, ambitious British-Indian ensemble drama about power, prestige and inherited secrets, set against colonial Simla. Gorgeous production, big emotional canvas.

But Historical setting and slower pace make it a very different watch tonally and visually.

Kavanagh Q.C.1995no page yet

John Thaw's late-career triumph as a working-class barrister navigating class, conscience and courtroom theatre. Old-fashioned in the best sense—confident, unhurried storytelling.

But Nineties pacing and production values will feel slow next to the show's contemporary gloss.

Ackley Bridge2017no page yet

A warm, sometimes funny look at British-Asian community life and family expectation, told through a comprehensive school rather than a law firm.

But Younger cast and school setting make it a much gentler, less high-stakes cousin to this show.

The Staircase2022

Trades scripted courtroom scenes for the real thing: a family whose lawyer becomes the client, and the discretion Kishan Law trades on gets stripped away entirely. Unbearably tense, and true.

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade's landmark documentary series follows a real defence and a real family disintegrating in public, years before true crime became a genre unto itself.

But No fictional comfort here—it's a real death, a real trial, and genuinely upsetting in ways drama can cushion.

The Staircase poster

Kramer vs. Kramer1979

Decades before Kishan Law's crisis, this is the film that first made divorce lawyering personal onscreen—a couple's separation told with unflinching intimacy, no legal theatrics, just the wreckage.

Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in the film that arguably invented the modern custody drama—intimate, unadorned, devastating in its quiet realism.

But No courtroom fireworks, no ensemble cast—just two people and a child, which will feel small after this show's scale.

Kramer vs. Kramer poster

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