Five powerful Netflix stories like ‘Maid’ to watch next
Do you have a count of the number of times you found yourself in floods of tears while watching Maid because most people had lost track before Alex had even finished being put through the wringer?
For God’s sake, the woman could barely catch her breath before life lobbed another catastrophe in her direction. Author Stephanie Land, on whose book the show is based, drew the memoir behind the series from her own years cleaning houses while raising her daughter through poverty.
It is the personal experience that makes Maid such a bruising watch, because it doesn’t marry survival with some triumphant montage. Yes, we know the escape is tedious, and yes, we know it is expensive and riddled with bureaucratic nonsense, while Alex keeps scraping together enough resolve to push on.
So, fancy another emotional battering? These five Netflix stories have plenty waiting in the chamber.
Five powerful Netflix stories like Maid to watch next
Shameless (John Wells, 2011–2021)
Fiona Gallagher does not so much grow up as get shoved into adulthood with both hands. Her father, Frank, is an alcoholic wrecking ball, her mother, Monica, is absent for much of the family’s life, and Fiona becomes the de facto parent to her younger siblings, while money is just purely absent.
Sound familiar? Yeah, there is a reason Maid fans tend to clock the resemblance fast.
Shameless plays it louder and dirtier, sure, but the pressure beneath all that is dead serious, especially when money is tight, and the family is on the verge of crashing. Sure enough, the bad ‘hood doesn’t help. One missed payment and suddenly the week is shot. Although lucky for Fiona, her family comes to her rescue at times, Alex is mostly always on her own.
Unorthodox (Maria Schrader, 2020)
This show tests the limits of a girl who asks us how far one would have to go before the life you left behind stopped following them. Esty Shapiro is only 19 when she walks out of an arranged marriage within Brooklyn’s Satmar Hasidic community and heads for Berlin, which sounds like freedom right up until you remember she has spent her whole life being told what that freedom should look like.
Music starts opening a door to something that feels like her own, and then, of course, Yanky comes looking for her. That is where Unorthodox and Maid start speaking the same language. Alex leaves Sean, Esty leaves Brooklyn, and neither gets the reset they deserve for the trouble they went through.
The rules may loosen their grip, but the fear and guilt do not vanish on cue. Honestly, would that not be easier? Both women have to build a life while still carrying pieces of the one they escaped, and that is what makes the freedom feel earned rather than handed over.
The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021)
Motherhood onscreen loves a halo; however, The Lost Daughter does not agree with that statement. Olivia Colman’s Leda is on holiday in Greece when a young mother and her daughter stir up memories of raising her own children, and these are not the type of memories anyone is sticking in a family album.
Through Jessie Buckley’s younger Leda, you see a woman who loves her daughters but also feels crushed by how much being their mother takes from her, and there is your Maid connection, lying in plain sight.
Alex loves Maddy to bits, obviously, but love does not magic away exhaustion or make every sacrifice feel noble. Sometimes motherhood is too much. There, said it. Both stories let women admit that without immediately slapping a ‘bad mother’ label on them, which really should not feel this radical!
Penguin Bloom (Glendyn Ivin, 2021)
Penguin Bloom might be a harder watch, especially when you remember this actually happened. Sam Bloom had been an active mum and surfer before a fall on a family holiday left her paralysed from the chest down, and the film drops you into the part when everyone else has gone home, and she is left staring at a life that no longer feels like hers. Just so brutal.
Then an injured magpie called Penguin turns up, and yes, it might sound so close to one of those ‘animal heals broken family’ films, but give it a minute. What Sam gets is not some miracle reset. It is a way of inching towards a life she can stand being in.
Naomi Watts lets Sam stay furious, which matters because recovery without anger would be complete rubbish.
Luckiest Girl Alive (Mike Barker, 2022)
Yes, we know what you are thinking, Ani FaNelli looks like the anti-Alex. She has the Manhattan job, the wealthy fiancé and the immaculate wardrobe, while Maid opens with Alex scrambling for somewhere safe to sleep. So, is that it? Nope!
Ani has spent years building a life so polished that nobody thinks to ask what is underneath it, and then a documentary comes knocking about her teenage past, which includes all the wrong keywords: sexual assault, a school shooting.
Then you watch that perfect little setup start crumbling. Yes, you are looking for a connection, and here it is: protection. Alex is trying to find safety, while Ani has already reached the version that looks safe, and surprise, the trauma came with her.