Shows Like Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story: 6 Dramas to Watch Next
True crime dramas matching the Victorian paranoia, sensational courtroom battles, and public mythmaking of the Borden axe murders.
KinoShelf Journal · · 2 min read
The closest shows to Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story are The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, Dark Angel, and Love & Death. These follow-ups work best when the draw was not only murder, but the series' treatment of Lizzie's acquittal, its domestic setting, and the stories told after a case enters popular culture.
- Closest in spirit: The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, for a highly fictionalized, pulpy continuation of Lizzie's life after the trial.
- If the axe murder parallel hooked you: Love & Death, detailing the closest 20th-century equivalent to the Fall River panic.
- For a British period crime story: Dark Angel, about a serial killer in Victorian England.
Lizzie Borden After the Verdict
The Lizzie Borden Chronicles (2015) continues Lifetime's 2014 television film "Lizzie Borden Took an Ax," with Christina Ricci again playing Lizzie after her acquittal. It is the direct follow-up for viewers who want more Borden mythology and are comfortable with a fictionalized continuation rather than a historical reconstruction.
A Female Killer in Victorian England
Dark Angel (2016) dramatizes the story of Mary Ann Cotton in Victorian England. It replaces the Borden case's axe-murder imagery with poison, but keeps a period true-crime setting and a woman whose crimes remain hidden for a time.
Another Domestic Axe-Murder Case
Love & Death (2023) dramatizes the Candy Montgomery case, involving an extramarital affair and an axe murder in 1980s Texas. Its domestic crime and courtroom story offer the closest modern parallel to the Borden trial.
Candy (2022) dramatizes the same Candy Montgomery case as Love & Death. Watching both is useful when you want to compare how two scripted series frame the same real case, but they are not separate recommendations for different historical events.
Bleak British Period Crime
Series · 2016 · 52 min / ep · TMDB 7.3
Rillington Place
Crime · Drama
Where to watch, trailer and cast→
Rillington Place (2016) moves to 1940s and 1950s London and the murders associated with John Christie. Its three episodes tell a bleak story of murders and suspicion in postwar London.
Griselda (2024) is a fictional dramatization inspired by Griselda Blanco's rise in Miami. It is furthest from the Borden case in setting and crime, but may interest viewers drawn to a female subject whose public image becomes part of the drama.
