12 Best Shows Like Home Economics That Fans Should Watch Next

Economic uncertainty is rarely a main topic for sitoms, but ABC's "Home Economics" tackles the precarious position of many elder millennials head-on. The three Hayworth siblings were raised middle class in northern California, but as adults their lives have taken markedly different turns. Eldest son Tom (Topher Grace, who also executive produces) is a novelist who lives with his wife (Karla Souza) and kids in the Sacramento suburbs, but his middle-class life threatens to crumble after his most recent novel turns out to be a commercial failure. Recently unemployed middle child Sarah (Caitlin McGee) is a caricature of a liberal vegan do-gooder, living with her wife (Sasheer Zamata) and two kids in a cramped Oakland apartment. And baby brother Connor (Jimmy Tatro) is a lunkheaded finance bro raising his daughter in an ultra-modern mansion previously owned by Matt Damon with views of the Golden Gate Bridge from his front door.

The show, created by writers Michael Colton and John Aboud, is as much about adult siblings learning to be a family once again after years spent apart as it is about their individual financial issues. Tom, Sarah, and Colton fall back into their childhood dynamics and conflicts whenever they get together; the biggest laughs in any given episode often come from Souza and Zamata's deadpan reactions to the family of lunatics they have married into. At the end of the day, family (almost) always trumps money, and their shared trials bring the Hayworths closer together. Let's take a look at some other shows that "Home Economics" fans will love.

Originally titled "The Second Fattest Housewife in Westport," ABC premiered the renamed "American Housewife" in 2016 and ran the show for five seasons. Katy Mixon ("Eastbound and Down") stars as Katie, a no-nonsense middle-class mom whose family relocates to the tony suburb of Westport, Connecticut so her neurodivergent daughter (Julia Butters) can attend a better school. At odds with the other Westport mothers who all seem so thin and rich and perfect, Katie and her mild-mannered husband Greg (Diedrich Bader) work to stake a claim for themselves and their children in this blue-blooded town.

Like "Home Economics," the show mines a lot of humor from the distance between Katie and her monied neighbors, and the way her older children (Daniel DiMaggio and Meg Donnelly) can't help but be seduced by the yachts-and-Roth-IRAs lifestyle of their peers. The show tried to be an economic equal defender, though, taking so many potshots at the nearby lower-income town of Norwalk that Norwalk's real-life citizens complained to ABC after the first season. The series perhaps overstayed its welcome — the shortened fifth season was beset with cast departures and behind-the-scenes drama — but Mixon remains a star throughout, with a live-wire energy that recalls her "Mike & Molly" big sister Melissa McCarthy.

Before creating "Home Economics," Michael Colton and John Aboud were writers on the HBO Max adult animated series "Close Enough," a show whose beginnings and untimely end were at the mercy of corporate forces beyond its control. Created by J.G. Quintel (Cartoon Network's "Regular Show"), Sean Szeles, and Calvin Wong, "Close Enough" was originally set to air in 2018 as part of TBS' late night animation lineup, but a series of delays, controversies, and just plain "bad luck" (in the words of the creators of fellow TBS animated series "Final Space"), the show was set adrift without a home for nearly two years, finally premiering on HBO Max in 2020.

Like "Regular Show," "Close Enough" was not afraid to go into surreal, often grotesque flights of fancy, but in its view of cash-strapped millennials trying their best to raise a young daughter, it actually shares quite a bit of DNA with "Home Economics." Quintel and Gabrielle Walsh play Josh and Emily, a married couple who live with their daughter Candice in a home shared by divorced couple Alex (Jason Mantzoukas) and Bridgitte (Kimiko Glenn). "Close Enough" ran for 24 episodes across three seasons before being canceled by the streaming service in the wake of Warner Bros.' purchase by Discovery in July 2022. The following month, it was one of several shows that were scrubbed from HBO Max entirely.

Greg Garcia's 2017 semi-anthology series "The Guest Book" uses the eponymous journal from a mountain rental cabin to tell all sorts of wild stories from week to week. The format allows for a new set of main characters in every episode, featuring guest stars like Jenna Fischer, Danny Pudi, and Pete Davidson, whose adventures often intersect with the local townsfolk like Garrett Dillahunt's Dr. Brown and Carly Jibson as cheerful stripper Vivian. Garcia likes to work with his friends, and many of the regular characters are played by familiar faces from his previous series "My Name Is Earl," "Raising Hope," and "The Millers," including Dillahunt, Margo Martindale, and Eddie Steeples as food delivery man Eddie.

Season 2 switches locales, with Vivian and Eddie leaving the mountains for a sunny beach town that just so happens to have a popular vacation rental home. "Home Economics" star Jimmy Tatro joins the cast as beach bum and sometime-handyman Bodhi, whose adventures often intersect with the beach's guests. Tatro is just as good as a lovable dope on the low end of the economic spectrum as he is as a lovable dope on the high end, whether he's putting up "missing" signs for Eddie that feature a cubist interpretation of his face instead of a photo, or inadvertently kidnapping a baby with Vivian.

Like "Home Economics," the 2015 CBS sitcom "Life in Pieces" follows the intertwining lives of the three adult siblings in the Short family: Heather (Betsy Brandt), Matt (Thomas Sadowski), Greg (Colin Hanks), their spouses and children, and their parents (James Brolin and Dianne Wiest). And like "Home Economics," the show employs a literary device, but rather than Tom narrating each episode as if it were a chapter in his novel, "Life in Pieces" breaks itself up into four short stories per episode, each focusing on a different branch of the Short family tree. Sometimes the stories are connected by plot, but more often by theme, as when a hospital visit becomes an impromptu date night for new parents Greg and Jen (Zoe Lister-Jones), while Short patriarch John (Brolin) tries to make up for all he missed while the kids were growing up by being an overly supportive dad to them now.

Creator Justin Adler got his start as a staff writer on "Futurama," and every so often a hint of that show's deadpan absurdity peeks through, as when Jen complains about their emergency room wait while an elderly man has a heart attack in the background. For the most part, though, "Life in Pieces" is a sincere family comedy, focusing on both the joy and the pain that one generation leaves for another. The series ran for four seasons until it was canceled by CBS in 2019.

Can a parent be too much of a parent? That's the question posed by "Single Parents," the 2018 ABC series from "New Girl" creator Elizabeth Meriwether and writer/producer J.J. Philbin. When high-strung single dad Will ("Saturday Night Live" alum Taran Killam) arrives with his young daughter at a new school, a crew of fellow single parents (Leighton Meester, Kimrie Lewis, Jake Choi, and Brad Garrett) immediately spot that he's in desperate need of non-parenting time. Inviting him to join the group, they teach Will how to be a grown-up again and to rediscover the adult pleasures of drinking, dating, and staying up past 10pm.

The setup bears more than a little resemblance to "New Girl," with Killam's often painful-to-watch sincerity in place of Zooey Deschanel's "adorkable" quirkiness, and with two handfuls of sassy child actors thrown in. Like that show, though, "Single Parents" does best when it lets its characters ease off on their respective schtick (such as Garrett's overbearing conservative fat cat) and just be real and funny with one another. Garrett's Season 1 romance with Lewis' straight-talking sommelier is surprisingly sweet, and Killam and Meester make a strong platonic duo. The series ran for two seasons on ABC before getting axed in 2020.

After laughing with the Hayworths, why not go cry with the Piersons? NBC's hit drama series "This Is Us" isn't the funniest show on this list by any means, but it is perhaps the most sincere, and that firm belief in the importance of family above all else is something it shares with "Home Economics." Creator Dan Fogelman sets us off on a time-hopping journey in the first episode, centered around the three Pierson siblings: twins Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Kevin (Justin Hartley) and adopted brother Randall (Sterling K. Brown). We see them as adults in present day, as well as when they were children growing up in the 1980s and '90s via a parallel storyline about their parents Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and the painful circumstances surrounding Jack's death.

"Home Economics" has had limited flashbacks to the Hayworths as children, mostly in the form of old videos, and their parents (Phil Reeves and Nora Dunn) are supporting players at best, but there is a melancholy that connects both shows, around the way one's life never quite turns out the way it was intended, the way that reconnecting with family can bring up painful truths about how you were raised. Both sets of siblings carry the wounds of the past with them, even if on "Home Economics" those wounds take the form of a large stick stolen from a national park in 1995.