8 Shows Like ‘The Flight Attendant’

Troubled woman gets involved in a mystery that only she is equipped to solve in prestige HBO series. Mare of Easttown, like The Flight Attendant, proved to be one of the streamer’s best series of the last couple years, and while the formats sound similar, Mare was rooted in Kate Winslet’s incredible performance as a cop trying to solve the mystery of dead and missing girls in her hometown, when every close contact she knows seems like a suspect.

Where to watch Mare of Easttown

Okay, so virtually no one besides me watched the 2012 series Pan Am, and maybe I’m being a bit literal with the comparison between a show called The Flight Attendant and a show about flight attendants, but the thing about Pan Am, which starred Margot Robbie in one of her first American roles, is that it was building up to be a very good show with a solid spy/mystery format. The show, a riff on Mad Men‘s stylized take on the 1960s, also starred Christina Ricci and Kelli Garner as flight attendants at the peak of the jet age, and Garner’s character uses her airline job as a cover for her real job as a CIA operative whose handler is David Harbour. Come on, this is solid stuff. It only lasted 14 episodes, but it was solid network TV.

Where to watch Pan Am

Behind Her Eyes begins with Louise (Simona Brown) meeting a man named David (Tom Bateman) at a bar, kissing him, and then realizing the next day that he’s her new boss. Soon, Louise coincidentally (but not actually coincidentally after all) meets David’s wife Adele (Eve Hewson) on the street near Louise’s son Adam’s school, befriends her, and then realizes that Adele is being constantly monitored, controlled, and drugged by David, who is a psychiatrist. Adele and Louise’s friendship must remain secret, Adele explains, because David wouldn’t approve of Adele having friends. Louise is wary of all of this, as it paints a nasty picture of David as a brutal, controlling husband. But, it turns out, Adele is playing Louise and the real secret here is far more wild and unpredictable than your typical love triangle.

Where to watch Behind Her Eyes

Set between two timelines, The Girl Before is a psychological thriller about two women (Jessica Plummer and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who rent a home from a mysteriously rigid and cold architect three years apart. Though they don’t know one another, the mystery of why Plummer’s character, Emma, no longer lives there, and what happened to her, unravels, as do the mysteries behind pretty much everyone else’s characters. David Oyewolo plays the architect, Edward, whose rules  for the house (as well as it’s odd design choices) hint that he’s definitely got some strange proclivities, which also including renting hims home to two women who look strangely alike.

Where to watch The Girl Before

The Undoing is as prestige-TV as it gets, with a cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland. In the series, Kidman and Grant play a wealthy Manhattan couple whose world is rocked when a mother from their son’s tony private school is murdered and Grant’s character, Jonathan, becomes a person of interest. Similar to The Flight Attendant, many scenes in the show are in flashback, as we and the characters try to piece together how this woman might have died and who is ultimately responsible.

Where to watch The Undoing

Like The Flight Attendant, Made For Love features an otherwise normal (ok, normal-ish) woman who finds herself in completely abnormal circumstances. In the first season, Hazel (Cristin Milioti) impulsively marries a tech billionaire, Byron (Billy Magnussen), who then, unbeknownst to her, implants a chip in her head that allows him to monitor her every move and see what she sees. After discovering what he’s done, Hazel flees Byron’s compound and connects with her father, Herb (Ray Romano), who is cancer-stricken and also has a sex-doll for a girlfriend. Hazel will do anything to get rid of Byron, but when it turns out Byron is the only one who can help with her father’s illness, she agrees to return to him if he can help save Herb.

Where to watch Made for Love

Tonally, Tokyo Vice and The Flight Attendant are very different shows, but on paper, they’re both about Americans who are trying to piece together the dark and seedy circumstances occurring in a foreign country. In Tokyo Vice, Ansel Elgort stars as Jake Adelstein, a young journalist working for a Tokyo newspaper who decides to investigate the criminal underbelly of the city to understand the organize crime factions that fight for territory. Forming alliances with the police and another expat who finds herself indirectly working for one of the syndicates, he tries to expose a crime world that no one wants exposed.

Where to watch Tokyo Vice

Only Murders In The Building is an homage to true crime podcasts. When neighbors Mabel (Selena Gomez), Oliver (Martin Short) and Charles (Steve Martin) learn one of their neighbors in their Upper West Side apartment building was murdered, the three unlikely partners go full investigative journalist to see who could have done it, all while recording a podcast that reveals their findings. It’s a comedy at its heart, but each character’s backstory and their relationships to their neighbors are at the heart of the story.

Where to watch Only Murders in the Building