Television series

Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots

Name: Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 2013
Cast: Renee Lawless, Tika Sumpter, Crystal Fox, John Schneider, Peter Parros

Family drama

This is Tyler Perry's most gloriously unhinged soap: a Savannah judge with a secret life, his ice-queen wife, and a maid's daughter who holds the keys to the family's ruin. It's melodrama with the volume cranked past ten — cliffhangers every episode, morality treated as optional. Watch it for camp, catharsis, and Crystal Fox's Hanna, the show's beating conscience.

TVMaze rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love a soapy, plot-stacked family saga where wealthy schemers and the staff who serve them keep colliding, and you don't mind melodrama played with total commitment.

Skip it if you want restraint or a tidy self-contained story, since this is a long-running serial with dense continuing plotlines, heavy melodrama, and eight seasons of accumulated history.

What it asks of you: Settle in for hour-long episodes that stack up by the hundred, with plots that unspool slowly across seasons and reward steady, unhurried viewing over a single sitting.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Empire2015

A music-dynasty family tears itself apart over money, loyalty and a dying patriarch's legacy. Same operatic scale as Haves, with Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson chewing every inch of scenery.

But The plots get wilder every season and eventually outrun themselves — commit early or not at all.

Scandal2012

Kerry Washington fixes crises for Washington's elite while hiding one of her own — power, secrets and betrayal at a relentless clip, with the same pleasure in watching respectable people rot from the inside.

But It leans harder into political conspiracy than family drama, so the vibe shifts genre by season three.

Revenge2011

A woman infiltrates a wealthy Hamptons family to destroy them from within. Delicious, plot-heavy soap with the same obsession with old money hiding rot behind good manners.

But The central mystery box gets stretched thin — style occasionally outpaces substance.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Tyler Perry's The Haves and the Have Nots

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Written on the Wind1956

Same engine — wealthy family, buried scandal, a sympathetic outsider caught in the wreckage — just filmed as prestige Hollywood melodrama instead of TV soap.

Douglas Sirk's Technicolor melodrama about a Texas oil dynasty consumed by jealousy, alcoholism and inherited rot is the genre's glamorous, operatic ancestor — every trope Haves uses, invented decades earlier in cinemascope.

But It's a 1950s studio film with stagier acting and none of the serialized cliffhangers modern soap fans crave.

Greenleaf2016

Another OWN network family saga, this time a Memphis megachurch dynasty riddled with hypocrisy and buried scandal. Same network, same DNA, similarly soapy pacing.

But It's slower-burning and more explicitly about faith and guilt than pure melodrama.

Dynasty2017

The reboot of the original 80s excess-fest: rival oil families, backstabbing, absurd wealth. Pure guilty pleasure if you want gloss over grit.

But It's glossier and campier, with less of the moral weight Haves occasionally aims for.

Dallas1978

The granddaddy of the primetime family soap — oil money, sibling warfare, a villain (J.R. Ewing) so good he's iconic. Essential viewing if you want to see where this genre started.

But It's a slower, talkier product of its era; patience required for modern viewers.

Power2014

A nightclub owner's double life as a drug kingpin threatens to collapse his family and empire — same tension between respectable façade and dirty secrets, just with more bullets.

But It's grittier and more violent, closer to crime drama than domestic melodrama.

Queen Sugar2016

Siblings inherit a Louisiana sugarcane farm and must navigate family wounds, class and legacy. Quieter and more artful, but the same bones — family, land, secrets.

But It's far less soapy and more literary; don't expect the same pulpy cliffhangers.

Star2016

Lee Daniels' other music-industry soap, about three young women clawing toward stardom while family secrets threaten everything. Same pulpy energy, smaller scale.

But It never quite reaches the cultural heat of Empire and can feel like a retread.

Born Rich2003

Strips away the melodrama to show the same core idea — that wealth hides dysfunction behind a polished face — as unscripted, first-person testimony instead of soap opera.

A documentary in which actual heirs to enormous fortunes — Ivanka Trump among them — talk candidly about privilege, dysfunction and the loneliness money buys. It's the real-world mirror of everything Haves fictionalizes.

But There's no plot, no villain to root against — just quiet, sometimes uncomfortable honesty from people who normally never talk.