Season 3 of Ginny & Georgia is now streaming and if you’ve finished its roller-coaster ride of courtroom drama, teen angst, and that finale twist no one saw coming, you may be itching for more of your favorite mother-daughter dramedy. While you wait for Season 4’s forthcoming plot twists, flashbacks, triumphs, and heartbreaks, you may be drawing a blank as to what to watch next.
Worry not! We’ve got a list of shows you can stream right now that will satisfy some of the same cravings. So whether you’re looking for teenage romance, pulpy plots, intergenerational conflict, or charming small towns hiding dark secrets and dirty tricks, read on for the perfect pick to fill the Ginny & Georgia–sized hole in your life.
You can’t talk about shows resembling Ginny & Georgia without mentioning its clearest spiritual predecessor, the also alliteratively titled WB/CW dramedy Gilmore Girls, a classic of the aughts created by Amy Sherman-Palladino. Lauren Graham stars as a single mom in her early 30s, Alexis Bledel as the gifted teenage daughter half her mother’s age in the pilot. They share a close bond and live in a picturesque New England town where they both experience triumphs and trials amid a quirky crowd of locals. For millennials who grew up with the Gilmores, Ginny & Georgia serves a chilling dose of reality: Having once identified with the daughter figure, they’re now the same age as the mother.
If your favorite part of Ginny & Georgia is the latter’s hardscrabble origin story, then the Netflix miniseries Maid, created by Molly Smith Metzler, is for you. Margaret Qualley stars as Alex (in an acclaimed performance for which she received an Emmy nomination), the young mother of a toddler who finds work as a house cleaner after escaping an abusive relationship. She keeps on moving — through bureaucratic chaos, her ex’s antagonism, and her mother’s (Andie MacDowell) challenges with undiagnosed mental illness — toward the goal of starting a new life for herself and her daughter.
We can admit that this Netflix series, from executive producer Tim Burton (who also directed half of Season 1’s episodes), definitely has a different, um, vibe than Ginny & Georgia. But strip away its monster-mystery plot and goth-comic tone and the two shows share more than meets the eye. The horror comedy stars Jenna Ortega in the title role, the teenage daughter of the iconic Addams Family, who enrolls in a new school and finds romance and intrigue there — in part due to the peculiar way in which she takes after her singular mother (Catherine Zeta-Jones). With Season 2 incoming, it’s a great time to jump in.
Remember how Buffy the Vampire Slayer used the supernatural as a metaphor to explore serious topics? Well, meet Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives, Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) and Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew), two ghosts who have forged a best friendship after both their deaths went unsolved. Based on characters created for DC, the Dead Boy Detectives use their agency to help other ghosts resolve their unfinished business and move onto the afterlife. Like the characters in Ginny & Georgia, they face issues from their past that emerge in their present, and help their clients — and those they love — work through their trauma. And also like the Millers, they relocate to a small American town, but this time on the opposite side of the country, in the Pacific Northwest.
Based on the Archie Comics characters, this CW horror crime drama has a playful cartoonish spark that adds to the wild (and sometimes supernatural) twists of its plot. K.J. Apa, Lili Reinhart, Camila Mendes, and Cole Sprouse star as the classic characters Archie, Betty, Veronica, and Jughead, respectively, as they solve crimes and swap lovers amid the insidious darkness of their seemingly pleasant small town. Taking some style cues from film noir, this pulpy teen drama from creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa would probably be beloved by Ginny & Georgia’s Maxine.
It may take place on the opposite side of the country and focus on a less privileged group of friends than Ginny & Georgia’s MANG, but the Netflix dramedy On My Block is worth a stream for any fan of smart high school fare. Co-created by Lauren Iungerich, Eddie Gonzalez, and Jeremy Haft, the coming-of-age tale follows Monsé (Sierra Capri) and her three best friends (Jason Genao, Brett Gray, and Diego Tinoco) as they begin high school in their rough Los Angeles neighborhood, their lifelong friendships evolving as they approach adulthood.
Created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, this Netflix dramedy is an empathetic and highly original high school saga. Maitreyi Ramakrishnan stars as Devi, an Indian American teenager who, like Ginny, enters a new phase of her life after a painful event at the onset of the series — sometimes clashing with her mother in the process. After recovering from a psychosomatic reaction to the loss of her beloved father, Devi begins a new chapter at school, where she navigates new friendship dynamics and romantic entanglements.
If Georgia’s frankness about intimacy speaks to you, turn to this dramedy, created by Laurie Nunn for Netflix, for another mother who’s willing to be real about sex. Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson star, respectively, as an awkward teenage boy and his liberated sex-therapist mother in the clever but sincere Sex Education, which follows Butterfield’s Otis and his friends as they attempt — with varying degrees of success — to address their sexual insecurities.
Anyone who’s ever lived in the suburbs knows that beneath the tidy exterior, amid the polite stillness, there lurks a darkness that manifests in surprising ways. The crime dramedy Good Girls, created by Jenna Bans for NBC, focuses on three suburban moms (played by Christina Hendricks, Retta, and Mae Whitman) who are driven by their fraught circumstances to join forces and rob a supermarket. Their endeavor (and its success) sets them down a path of crime and conspiracies that keep piling up — Georgia might identify with them.
Here’s another tale of suburban chaos, courtesy of outwardly conforming women. Netflix’s Dead to Me, from creator Liz Feldman, stars Christina Applegate as a recently widowed woman and Linda Cardellini as a new friend she makes in her grief support group. The plot of this black comedy twists and turns from there, as the pair become bonded not only by grief but also by shared secrets and a little bit of rage — which results in some shocking developments.
This long-running (loooong-running) ABC medical drama from creator Shonda Rhimes portrays the life of Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), a medical resident who finds success, love, tragedy, friendship, and some truly bizarre medical crises during her tenure at a Seattle hospital, surrounded by an ensemble cast of doctors and interns whose personal and professional lives are also wildly tangled. Though its setting differs significantly from that of Ginny & Georgia, both shows share an anything-goes kind of soapiness — and Meredith (who, like Ginny, also provides dramatic voice-over) is strongly influenced by her mother, a legendary surgeon.
A reboot of the ’90s series of the same name (which is also available to stream), the 2022 Aussie dramedy Heartbreak High depicts the social dynamics and romantic happenings among the students and staff at Hartley High. Created by Hannah Carroll Chapman, the Netflix series — which, like Ginny & Georgia, is sensitive to racial tensions and diverse representation among its teenage cast — kicks off with the creation of a mural mapping out the sexual exploits of various classmates, causing chaos among the student body and rendering its creator, Amerie (Ayesha Madon), an outcast.
If watching Ginny fall for the boy next door has been the subplot you live for in Ginny & Georgia, then how about a girl who falls for the boy — or boys — living under the same roof? In My Life with the Walter Boys, Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez) is uprooted from her socialite life in New York City when her parents and sister die in a car accident. Out of her element in Colorado, Jackie moves in with her mother’s oldest friend, Katherine Walter (Sarah Rafferty), along with her husband and 10 children. As she struggles with both her grief and adjusting to unfamiliar surroundings, two of her new housemates — former football star Cole (Noah LaLonde) and bookworm Alex (Ashby Gentry) — both come to her aid in meaningful ways. Cue the love triangle: Season 2 debuts soon.
If there is any superpower Georgia possesses, it’s her ability to sustain a lie. In Younger, encounter another single mother who has to keep up a lie in order to get ahead. In this case it's Liza (Sutton Foster), a broke 40-year-old recent divorcée who’s shoved back into the work force after years away raising her now college-aged daughter. After 15 years removed from the publishing industry, Liza finds herself the target of age discrimination. But when a 26-year-old at a bar perceives her as far younger than her years, she decides to risk masquerading as a twentysomething in order to land a dream job. Her adventures in living as a millennial are both hilarious and heartwarming.
When Ginny finally gets to stay in one place long enough to make lasting friends, she discovers just how valuable true friendship can be. And in Trinkets, three high school girls also learn the same lesson, though in a more unorthodox fashion, via a Shoplifter’s Anonymous group. Elodie (Brianna Hildebrand) is mourning her mother’s death and adjusting to life with her father; Moe (Kiana Madeira) excels academically but she and her single mother struggle financially; and Tabitha (Quintessa Swindell) is the poor little rich girl trying desperately to please everyone else — and all three resort to petty theft to cope with their problems. Based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Kirsten Smith, this two-season series shows the unlikely trio leaning on one another through the pressures of school, relationships, and family dysfunction.
Ginny and Georgia’s mother-daughter dynamic is complicated to say the least, and a perfect example of how essential forgiveness is to relationship growth. Forgiveness for past wrongs is also central to the hilarious female duo of Mom, the long-running sitcom starring Allison Janney and Anna Faris. In this award-winning series, Janney is Bonnie Plunkett, a recovering alcoholic and formerly estranged mother of Faris’ Christy, also a recovering alcoholic and gambling addict. Like Georgia, both Bonnie and Christy were teenage mothers; as adults, they’re trying to be better versions of themselves, with the support of their amusing and eccentric Alcoholics Anonymous girlfriends.
Additional reporting by Ananda Dillon.
