15 TV Shows You Didn't Know Were Based On A True Story

The best TV shows are based on some semblance of truth. The better fantasy and science fiction shows often contain a relatable emotional truth, even if the stories themselves are obviously entirely made up. True crime engages with our cultural fascination with literal truth, purporting to tell us what really happened ... or, at least a television version of what happened. When you're watching Netflix's "Dahmer" or Amanda Seyfried in "The Dropout," you know you're watching a fictionalized version of real events — not a documentary.

In other instances, television shows borrow from reality without worrying about accuracy. In these cases, you might be unaware of the show's IRL roots, because the story seems larger than life or too good to be true. Meanwhile, plenty of great series simply use actual events as inspiration without calling too much attention to it. Here are 15 TV shows with real-life origins that you might not expect.

The Canadian miniseries "Alias Grace" premiered in 2017 to near-universal acclaim, captivating viewers with its tense storytelling and showstopping finale. Based on the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, the show follows Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon), a maid sent to prison for the supposed murder of her employer and his housekeeper. The story picks up 15 years after Grace's conviction with a psychiatrist trying to get to the bottom of what really happened.

"Alias Grace" was brought to life by an impressive group of collaborators. Oscar-winning filmmaker Sarah Polley adapted Atwood's novel for the screen, and "American Psycho" director Mary Harron helmed the project. However, the original story came not solely from Atwood's imagination, but from real-life events. Her book is based on the 1843 case surrounding actual Irish teenager Grace Marks. The novel fictionalizes these events, but Atwood used newspaper clippings and other primary sources to make her version as accurate as possible.

Though it's not talked about much these days, "Boardwalk Empire" is one of the best gangster shows of all time. The HBO series is set in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, and stars Steve Buscemi as Enoch "Nucky" Thompson. Martin Scorsese, who served as an executive producer, directed the pilot episode of the show, which is visually stunning and precise in its period-specific production design. Buscemi imbued Nucky with unexpected nuance and complexity.

If Nucky seems like he could have been a real mobster in the 1920s, that's because he was ... sort of. Creator Terence Winter used Nelson Johnson's 2002 book "Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City" as inspiration. Johnson's book tracks the life of crime boss Enoch L. Johnson — Winter's basis for Nucky. Winter changed Enoch L. Johnson's name in the series to give himself creative freedom with the character. As Winter told Atlantic City Weekly, "With Nucky Johnson, people know how he ended up, but Nucky Thompson can do anything."

The Netflix series "Maid" is difficult to watch, and that's the point. The show follows Alex (Margaret Qualley), a young mother who escapes an abusive relationship. She moves into a shelter with her daughter and finds work as a maid. She struggles to access government assistance and keep her head above water, and her mentally unstable mother Paula (played by Qualley's real-life mom Andie MacDowell) isn't able to offer her much help.

The series emits a sense of authenticity and realism, partly because it's based on a true story. Molly Smith Metzler adapted the show from Stephanie Land's memoir "Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive." The show was executive produced by Margot Robbie and veteran TV maker John Wells, who worked alongside Metzler on "Shameless." The series strays from the source material by inventing characters and locations, but Land approved of these changes, and the result is a compelling piece of television.

Arguably the greatest sports show ever made, "Friday Night Lights" stands out from the pack by prioritizing depth, nuance, and authenticity above all else. The show centers on Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), the coach of the Dillon Panthers, a high school football team in small-town Texas. High school football is everything to the town of Dillon, and the players — as well as Coach Taylor himself — face immense pressure from their friends, family, and broader community.

The show has a documentary-like feel — a callback to the immersive journalism that inspired it. NBC's "Friday Night Lights" is an adaptation of an adaptation. In 2004, creator Peter Berg wrote and directed a feature film of the same name inspired by H. G. Bissinger's non-fiction book about the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, during their 1988 season. The television format allowed Berg to explore some of the more complex themes and storylines he couldn't fit into the movie.

The Netflix series "Baby Reindeer" depicts an alarming, disconcerting series of events. While working as a bartender, comedian Donny Dun (Richard Gadd) offers a moment of kindness to a distraught customer, Martha (Jessica Gunning). Martha takes this interaction and uses it as a pretext for stalking Donny and upending his life. Her increasingly erratic behavior forces Donny to confront traumatic events of his past.

"Baby Reindeer" is based on Richard Gadd's one-man show, which itself was inspired by his experience being stalked and trying to heal from his trauma. It's a harrowing, bizarre story, and the fact that it's based on real events makes it all the more fascinating. However, the alleged real-life inspirations for the show created problems Some fans tried to uncover the real people behind the characters, even after Gadd asked them not to. The controversy reached a fever pitch when a woman claiming to be the real Martha sued Gadd for defamation, complicating the show's balance of fact and fiction even further.

The Netflix series "GLOW" is a delightful romp through the colorful world of retro wrestling. Set in Los Angeles in 1985, "GLOW" introduces us to out-of-work actress Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie). She successfully auditions for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (GLOW), and winds up butting heads with Sam Sylvia (Marc Maron), the group's director. She's also forced to work with her longtime nemesis Debbie (Betty Gilpin).

GLOW was a real women's wrestling promotion and television show, and it served as the inspiration for the TV series. The 2012 documentary "GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling" was a starting point for creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, who were on the hunt for their next project when they discovered the film. Though the characters and storylines on Netflix's "GLOW" are made up, there are many parallels between the real women of GLOW — who had wrestling names like Big Bad Mama and Colonel Ninotchka — and their fictional counterparts.

Widely considered one of the greatest shows ever made, HBO's "The Wire" is known for its gritty realism. The series looks at crime from two perspectives: that of law enforcement and that of criminals. Set in Baltimore, much of the show centers on the illegal drug trade, while later seasons focus on topics like education and journalism. "The Wire" features an impressive cast of actors, some of whom were unknown before the show, including Idris Elba, Lance Reddick, Wendell Pierce, and Michael B. Jordan.

Creator David Simon was a police reporter in Baltimore, while Simon's writing partner, Ed Burns, is a former homicide detective and teacher. Many of the storylines on the show are based on cases Burns worked on or Simon reported on. Some of the characters have real-life counterparts as well. For example, Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) was partially inspired by real-life heroin dealer Nathan Barksdale, and stick-up artist Omar Little (Michael K. Williams) was based on a man named Donnie Andrews.

For six years, Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Patricia Arquette played a psychic on TV. On the NBC (and later CBS) series "Medium," she was Allison DuBois, a woman who uses her psychic abilities to help police solve crimes in Phoenix, Arizona. She struggles to convince her colleagues and her husband Joe (Jake Weber) that her abilities are real and that she's not crazy. Allison's three daughters share her supernatural gifts.

Allison DuBois is a real person and served as the inspiration for the TV show. She works as a psychic and claims to have consulted with several law enforcement agencies on murder cases. Her veracity has been called into question by multiple police departments and victims' families, but whether the real DuBois is a legitimate psychic is beside the point; the creators of "Medium" used her public persona as a jumping-off point for the show.

Medical shows have been the bread and butter of network television for decades, but "Scrubs" – which follows the exploits of a group of medical interns — has its own unique format and tone. Zach Braff plays J.D., the main character, who narrates each episode of the show.

Considering its light-hearted, comedic nature, it might surprise you to learn that some doctors find "Scrubs" to be TV's most accurate hospital show. Creator Bill Lawrence based "Scrubs" on his college friend's tumultuous experiences in medical school. Lawrence witnessed the toll the profession can take on a person, and this weightiness made its way into the beloved comedy.

A two-time Peabody award winner, "The Americans" is prestige TV at its best. Real-life partners Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys play Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, a married couple living in the suburbs of Washington D.C. with their two kids. What their neighbors and colleagues don't know is that they are secretly KGB spies tasked with infiltrating the American government to gain vital intel for the Soviet Union. Though formally a spy show, "The Americans" is also a story about marriage and the compromises necessary to maintain a partnership.

The events of "The Americans" aren't pure fantasy. Creator Joe Weisberg was inspired by his recollections of undercover agents with families going about their daily lives as if they were average citizens. As for the plot of the show, Weisberg drew from the real-life Illegals Program, in which a group of Russian sleeper agents posed as American citizens. The FBI arrested 10 of these spies in 2010, but because that seemed too unbelievably modern, Weisberg transported the drama to the 1980s.

A cornerstone of Shonda Rhimes' Shondaland universe, "Scandal" was water-cooler television in the age of Twitter. The twisty show stars Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, a Washington, D.C. "fixer" who runs a crisis management firm. Olivia's clients run the gamut from Supreme Court justices to senators to the President of the United States, with whom Olivia has a particularly charged — and unprofessional — relationship.

Olivia Pope is based on Judy Smith, a Washington fixer who was posted in the White House under George H.W. Bush. Smith has worked with high-profile clients ranging from Monica Lewinsky to Michael Vick. Rhimes and her producing partner were inspired by Smith's work and asked her to come on as an executive producer, which involved reviewing all the scripts for accuracy. Some of the cases Olivia works on are ripped from the headlines, including scandals involving Edward Snowden and Anthony Weiner.

Following "House of Cards," "Orange Is the New Black" was one of Netflix's first hit shows. It remains one of Netflix's best original series, featuring complex characters, nuanced writing, and powerful acting. Initially, the show introduces us to Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a 30-something middle-upper-class white woman sent to prison for smuggling drug money.

"Orange Is the New Black" is based on the memoir of the same name by Piper Kerman, who served as the inspiration for the show's protagonist. Though interesting, Kerman's memoir focuses primarily on her inner world, rather than the fascinating people she lived with for a year. The show improves on the book in that respect, filling out the characters that were mere sketches in Kerman's words and adding new characters to the mix. Creator Jenji Kohan told NPR that Piper Chapman was her "Trojan horse" — an easily digestible protagonist that allows viewers to get to know a diverse group of women they may have never seen on TV before.

You may have missed "Tokyo Vice" when it aired for two seasons on HBO Max, but it tells a story worth looking into. The show stars Ansel Elgort as Jake Adelstein, an American journalist. Adelstein moves to Tokyo and becomes the first foreign reporter at Meicho Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper. Hiroto Katagiri (Ken Watanabe), a senior detective who covers the crime beat, mentors Adelstein, and he begins reporting on Japan's dangerous criminal underworld.

Jake Adelstein is a real person, and this larger-than-life story is based on his 2009 book. Adelstein's memoir is filled with all kinds of wild tales. "Tokyo Vice" draws directly from Adelstein's book, though since the show premiered, some have questioned the truthfulness of his accounts.

Arguably the greatest Western TV show ever made, "Deadwood" takes place in a town that sounds right out of a folk tale. The HBO series is set in Deadwood, South Dakota, in the 1870s. During this period, Deadwood was quite literally lawless — it was not part of any U.S. state or territory, and as such, was not governed by U.S. law. The show follows the legendary figures that populated Deadwood, including Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), saloon owner Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), and Wild Bill Hickock (Keith Carradine).

Though the characters of "Deadwood" sound like mythical figures, they were real people and all lived in Deadwood around the same time. Creator David Milch conducted extensive research on the town's history, and the show's producers consulted with Deadwood History Inc., even hiring a part-time researcher. Milch's writing style has often been called Shakespearean — he wrote in his memoir that "most of the show is written in iambic pentameter" — and the true story of "Deadwood" has all the makings of a Shakespearean drama.

One of the best shows streaming on Apple TV, "Black Bird" is a serial killer story with a twist. Taron Egerton plays Jimmy Keene, a man who faces 10 years in prison for drug and weapons charges. The FBI offers Jimmy an unusual deal: They will transfer him to a maximum-security prison, and if he can elicit a confession out of serial killer Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser), he will go free. Jimmy accepts the deal and is faced with the prospect of becoming friendly with a deranged killer.

This juicy plot for a six-episode miniseries is based on a true story — the real life of Jimmy Keene, as told in his autobiographical novel, "In with the Devil: a Fallen Hero, a Serial Killer, and a Dangerous Bargain for Redemption." Keene was a football star who began selling drugs in high school, at which point he realized he could make more money from the drug trade than going to college. When he got caught, Keene was reluctant to take the deal until his father, Big Jim, played by Ray Liotta in his final TV role, fell ill. The FBI kept their promise and released Keene early, and he says in his book that "the five years I had with my father meant more to me than all the money in the world."