In the golden age of television and the renaissance of literary fiction, the family drama has undergone a massive resurrection. From the Roys of Succession to the Whitmans of This Is Us , audiences cannot get enough of watching relatives tear each other apart—or stitch each other back together.

The best family drama doesn't just make you cry or laugh. It makes you pick up the phone to call your own mother—or decide, with peace, that it is finally okay to hang up for good.

There is a reason the oldest stories in human history—from the Greek tragedy of Oedipus to the epic fratricide of The Mahabharata —are about families. Before there were countries, police forces, or corporate ladders, there was the tribe. And at the center of every tribe was the family unit: a volatile cocktail of love, obligation, history, and resentment.