Television series
A Young Doctor's Notebook
A wickedly smart period comedy-drama where Daniel Radcliffe plays an idealistic young doctor arriving at a remote Russian village in 1913, guided by visions of his older self (Jon Hamm). Based on Mikhail Bulgakov's real diaries, it's mordant, humane, and brief—thirty minutes of perfect tonal balance between comedy and genuine pathos about learning medicine, love, and failure.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you enjoy dry, sardonic comedy about a clumsy idealist fumbling through a job he is not ready for, where the grim absurdity of rural medicine is played for laughs.
Skip it if you need brisk plotting or steady laughs, since the pace is episodic and the jokes arrive unevenly between long stretches of bleak, slow isolation.
What it asks of you: Each episode runs about half an hour, and the show lingers in its cramped rural rooms, letting awkward silences and small humiliations stretch longer than you'd expect.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Better Call Saul2015
Like this show, it uses a split timeline to explore how good people become compromised by circumstance and ambition. Both are character studies wrapped in dark comedy, with meticulous period detail and a protagonist watching their own decline.
But It's slow and deliberate. If you want plot momentum and clear villains, this will feel like watching someone think very carefully for five seasons.
The Knick2014
Steven Soderbergh's hospital drama set in 1900s New York has the same blend of technical brilliance, moral complexity, and dark humour. Doctors learning their craft while wrestling with ethics, addiction, and the gap between ambition and ability.
But Graphically depicts period surgery and medical experimentation. It's visceral in ways that go beyond what most people expect from a hospital show.
Chernobyl2019
Both centre on educated men confronting catastrophe in Soviet-adjacent settings, forced to improvise solutions with inadequate resources. The same blend of historical specificity, gallows humour, and genuine stakes about lives hanging on decisions.
But It's relentlessly bleak and moves at a funeral pace. There's no redemption arc, only varying degrees of tragedy.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from A Young Doctor's Notebook
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Death of Ivan Ilyich2024
Both adapt Russian literary works about the confrontation between youthful ideals and the messy reality of living; both use formal precision to examine failure and self-knowledge.
Andrei Konchalovsky's 1989 adaptation of Tolstoy's novella about a bureaucrat confronting mortality. It has the same DNA as Young Doctor's Notebook—Russian literature about the gap between how we imagine our lives and how they actually unfold, shot in the same precise, unflinching style.
But It's ninety minutes of a man dying, mostly alone, in a room. There's almost no plot and it never looks away from suffering. It's the inverse of comfort.
More like this (8)
Fleabag2016
Both use direct address and temporal jumps to let us inside a flawed protagonist's head. The comedy comes from watching someone's internal chaos play out against the mundane world expecting them to function.
But The humour is sometimes cruel and the emotional whiplash isn't for everyone. It asks you to love someone you probably wouldn't want to know.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel2017
Impeccably written period comedy-drama about someone discovering who they are outside their circumstances. Fast, witty, warm, and genuinely moving about ambition and identity.
But It can feel frothy and the tone rarely lets darkness linger. If you want weight and shadow, this might feel too shiny.
Parade's End2012
Benedict Cumberbatch in a five-part miniseries about the slow destruction of a good man by World War I and emotional paralysis. Gorgeously shot, deeply human, and funny in ways that catch you off-guard.
But It's deliberately paced and more interested in internal states than plot. The final episode hinges on a decision that some find anticlimactic.
Vinland Saga2019
An anime about a young Viking warrior learning that violence doesn't solve what he thought it would. Like Young Doctor's Notebook, it pairs a protagonist with a wiser older version of himself, examining how we change and what we owe to others.
But It's animated, which puts some people off automatically. The first season is revenge narrative before it becomes something deeper—takes patience.
Godless2017
A miniseries (four episodes) about a young man arriving in a town run by women, learning medicine and ethics in an ungoverned place. Compact, visually stunning, and genuinely surprising about power and competence.
But It's western pulp dressed in prestige clothes. The tonal shifts between pulp and earnestness don't always land, and some will find it precious.
The Night Manager2016
A six-part limited series with Tom Hiddleston as a young man trained into a dangerous game by an older mentor. Beautifully shot espionage with real moral weight about complicity and the cost of loyalty.
But It hinges on Tom Hiddleston's ability to project interiority through stillness. If that doesn't work for you, long scenes feel empty rather than full.
Bloodline2015
Both explore how capable people can be fundamentally broken in ways their profession or position won't reveal; both use time jumps and dual timelines to show the distance between who we were and who we've become.
A South Florida family drama where the real tension comes from what people know about each other and refuse to say. Like Young Doctor's Notebook, it's interested in the gap between public competence and private chaos—only here it's spread across three seasons of accumulated dread.
But It's slow-burn psychological drama, not thriller. The climax comes very late and some people find the pacing insufferable. Also, the ending divides viewers sharply.
A Cure for Wellness2017
Both are deeply suspicious of medicine as salvation; both centre on a young protagonist learning that knowledge and authority can be weaponised; both use visual precision to explore psychological states.
Gore Verbinski's fever-dream film about a young man arriving at a mysterious spa in the Alps, where nothing is as it seems and medicine becomes a form of control. It has Young Doctor's Notebook's preoccupation with medical authority as potentially corrupting, but filtered through gothic horror and visual surrealism.
But It's 146 minutes of deliberate, increasingly unhinged atmosphere. The plot doesn't resolve neatly and the tone is hypnotic rather than propulsive. Some will find it pretentious; others won't find it quite surreal enough.
