Movies like Babylon (1980)
The best movies like Babylon (1980) are Bob Marley: One Love (2024), Urchin (2025) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980). If Babylon hooked you with its drama, these 30 similar films are what to watch next, and every pick says why it matches.
Quick picks
- Highest ratedSecrets & Lies (1996)7.6/10 from 757 votes
- NewestUrchin (2025)Released 2025
Bob Marley: One Love (2024)
Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley overcomes adversity to become the most famous reggae musician in the world.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisUrchin (2025)
Mike, a rough sleeper in London, is trapped in a cycle of self-destruction as he attempts to turn his life around. Along the way, he encounters unexpected chances for a fresh start.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisLittle Lord Fauntleroy (1980)
Young Cedric Errol and his widowed mother live in genteel poverty in 1880s Brooklyn after the death of his father. Cedric's grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has long ago disowned his son for marrying an American. But after the death of the Earl's remaining son, he decides to accept Cedric as his heir.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSecrets & Lies (1996)
After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense, a successful black optometrist, seeks out her birth mother. She's shocked when her research leads her to Cynthia, a working class white woman.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisBomb City (2017)
An ongoing feud between punk rockers and a more affluent clique in a small Texas town leads to a hate crime.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIll Manors (2012)
Ensemble film revolving around characters living in Forest Gate, London. Over the course of a few days, six inter-linking stories explore issues of drug use, prostitution and urban poverty.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisDisgrace (2008)
Disgrace is the story of a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his good looks, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his cherished daughter. After having an affair with a student, he moves to the Eastern Cape, where he gets caught up in a mess of post-apartheid politics.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisFranklyn (2008)
Set between the parallel worlds of contemporary London and the futuristic faith dominated metropolis of Meanwhile City, Franklyn weaves a tale of four souls, whose lives are intertwined by fate, romance and tragedy. As these worlds collide, a single bullet determines the destiny of these four characters.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSunday Bloody Sunday (1971)
Recently divorced career woman Alex Greville begins a romantic relationship with glamorous mod artist Bob Elkin, fully aware that he's also intimately involved with middle-aged doctor Daniel Hirsh. For both Alex and Daniel, the younger man represents a break with their repressive pasts, and though both know that Bob is seeing both of them, neither is willing to let go of the youth and vitality he brings to their otherwise stable lives.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisCass (2008)
The incredible true story of how an orphaned Jamaican baby, adopted by an elderly white couple and brought up in an all white area of London, became one of the most feared and respected men in Britain.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
SnoozefestMovies like thisBelle (2013)
Dido Elizabeth Bell, the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy admiral, plays an important role in the campaign to abolish slavery in England.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisIt's a Free World... (2007)
Working-class Angie, sacked from a recruitment agency for bad public behaviour, teams up with her flatmate to run a similar business from their kitchen. With immigrants desperate for work, the opportunities are considerable, particularly for two girls so in tune with these times.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisSkin (2009)
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisHardball (2001)
An aimless young man who is scalping tickets, gambling and drinking, agrees to coach a Little League team from the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago as a condition of getting a loan from a friend.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Five Heartbeats (1991)
In the early 1960s, a quintet of hopeful, young African-American men form an amateur vocal group called The Five Heartbeats. After an initially rocky start, the group improves, turns pro, and rises to become a top flight music sensation. Along the way, however, the guys learn many hard lessons about the reality of the music industry.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Young One (1960)
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisThe Nest (2020)
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisShadows (1960)
The relationship between Lelia, a light-skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisBlitz (2024)
In World War II London, nine-year-old George is evacuated to the countryside by his mother, Rita, to escape the bombings. Defiant and determined to return to his family, George embarks on an epic, perilous journey back home as Rita searches for him.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisThe Lords of Discipline (1983)
Will arrives for his last year at Military Academy, in the Deep South USA, in the 1960's. A black student, Pearce, has been accepted, for the first time and Will is asked to keep an eye out for the inevitable racism. The racists come in the form of The Ten, a secret group of the elite students. They want Pearce to leave on his own free will, but are prepared to torture him to make it 'his free will'. Will is forced to help Pearce and he is prepared to risk his own career to do so.
Why it matches: Recommended by TMDB viewers · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like thisTo Market to Market (1987)
A man from an upper class family is manipulated into laundering drug money by his brother.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
Working-class British housewife Myra Savage reinvents herself as a medium, holding seances in the sitting room of her home with the hidden assistance of her under-employed, asthmatic husband, Billy. In an attempt to enhance her credibility as a psychic, Myra hatches an elaborate, ill-conceived plot to kidnap a wealthy couple's young daughter so that she can then help the police "find" the missing girl.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisMiss Marie Lloyd: Queen of the Music Hall (2007)
Witness the life and loves of Marie Lloyd, the music hall legend known for her bawdy songs and outrageous lifestyle, which included three marriages and an illegitimate child.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Death Squadrons: The French School (2003)
After the Battle of Algiers, France and its army exported, as true experts, anti-subversive methods to Latin America and the United States in the 1960s. After more than a year of investigation in Argentina , in Chile, Brazil, the United States and France, the director collected, sometimes under the cover of a hidden camera, recorded conversations, the exclusive testimonies of the main protagonists. From General Aussaresses to former Minister of the Armed Forces Pierre Messmer, including General Reynaldo Bignone (head of the military junta in Argentina from 1982 to 1984), General Albano Harguindéguy, General Manuel Contreras, and Generals John Johns and Carl Bernard, this investigation gives us a hidden reality of the country of Human Rights.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Jemima + Johnny (1966)
A white boy and a black Jamaican girl have a day out in a city where racial hostility prevails.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Green Street Hooligans (2005)
After being wrongfully expelled from Harvard University, American Matt Buckner flees to his sister's home in England. Once there, he is befriended by her charming and dangerous brother-in-law, Pete Dunham, and introduced to the underworld of British football hooliganism. Matt learns to stand his ground through a friendship that develops against the backdrop of this secret and often violent world. 'Green Street Hooligans' is a story of loyalty, trust and the sometimes brutal consequences of living close to the edge.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisLondon's Burning: The Movie (1986)
It's Josie Ingham's first day at Blackwall Firestation but things aren't going so well being the only female firefighter in an all-male team. Not only does she have to prove to them that she can do the job, problems at home complicate her life even further. Outside, in the heart of the city, tensions are rising to the extreme, Blue Watch have a long night ahead.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Orlando (1992)
England, 1600. Queen Elizabeth I promises Orlando, a young nobleman obsessed with poetry, that she will grant him land and fortune if he agrees to satisfy a very particular request.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Worth the HypeMovies like thisSliding Doors (1998)
Helen, a London ad executive, is fired from her job and rushes out to catch a train, but, as she runs down, her life suddenly splits off. In one version she catches the train; in the second, she misses it. Her whole life changes in that one second, and the rest of the film depicts what happens in each scenario.
Why it matches: Similar story and style · both drama
Popcorn FlickMovies like this
Like Babylon and something else?
Blend two favourites and we’ll find the films in between.
Frequently asked questions
What are the best movies like Babylon?
The closest matches to Babylon are Bob Marley: One Love (2024), Urchin (2025) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980). Below are 27 more, each with the reason it matches.
What should I watch after Babylon?
Start with Bob Marley: One Love (2024), the closest match to Babylon.
What is the highest-rated movie like Babylon?
Secrets & Lies (1996), rated 7.6/10 by 757 TMDB users.
What is the newest movie like Babylon?
Urchin (2025) is the most recent release on this list.
Are there English movies like Babylon?
Yes: Bob Marley: One Love (2024), Urchin (2025) and Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980).
How are movies similar to Babylon chosen?
First come films that Trakt’s viewers watch alongside Babylon, then TMDB’s recommendations and films it rates as similar in story and genre. Each pick says which signal put it there.