Television series

Better Things

Name: Better Things
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Family
Released: 2016
Cast: Pamela Adlon, Hannah Riley, Mikey Madison, Olivia Edward, Celia Imrie

Pamela Adlon's semi-autobiographical dramedy follows Sam Fox, a working actor raising three daughters in LA, and refuses to resolve anything neatly. There's barely a plot from week to week, just texture — arguments over homework, sex on her own terms, the exhaustion and tenderness of being everyone's default parent. It's funny, unglamorous, and often quietly devastating. Best for people who like their comedy raw and their family drama true rather than tidy.

TVMaze rating

6.7

If you liked this

Fleabag2016

Same appetite for messy, funny, unfiltered womanhood, told with a formal daring Better Things doesn't attempt. If you loved Sam's directness, Fleabag's fourth-wall confessions will feel like a cousin speaking a different dialect.

But Tighter, sadder, and more stylised — six episodes a season rather than Sam Fox's sprawl. Some find the archness a bit much.

Ramy2019

Another semi-autobiographical, plotless-on-purpose comedy about a flawed person trying to be decent to their family while failing constantly and specifically. The tenderness under the mess is the same muscle.

But Centres a young man's spiritual confusion rather than a mother's domestic load — the concerns don't overlap as much as the tone does.

Catastrophe2015

Sharp, foul-mouthed, deeply humane look at marriage and parenting that never softens its characters to make them likeable. Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan write exhaustion and love in the same breath, just like Sam's household does.

But Married-couple energy rather than single-mother energy, and considerably shorter — four seasons, done.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore1974no page yet

This is Sam Fox's ancestor: a working mother refusing to be martyred or ennobled by her circumstances, decades before Adlon inherited the same unglamorous comic-tragic register.

Ellen Burstyn plays a suddenly single mother dragging her sharp-tongued son across the Southwest, working diner jobs and fending off men, in a film that's funny and unsentimental about single motherhood forty years before it became a TV genre.

But Slower, grainier, and very 1970s in its pacing — a road movie, not an episodic sitcom, so the rhythms feel unfamiliar at first.

Transparent2014

Another LA family falling apart and reassembling in real time, shot with the same loose, observational rhythm and total lack of interest in being likeable. Jill Soloway's autobiographical instincts run parallel to Adlon's.

But Heavier on identity and history, lighter on the day-to-day comedy of parenting three kids under one roof.

One Mississippi2015no page yet

Tig Notaro's own semi-autobiographical FX comedy about grief, family and coming home — smaller and stranger than Better Things but built from the same raw, personal material.

But Much quieter and sadder in tone; two short seasons, and it never found the audience it deserved.

Grace and Frankie2015

Swaps Sam's frazzled midlife for two women decades further along, but the comedy of running a household while nobody quite listens to you is identical, and Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are a joy.

But Glossier, more conventional multi-camera sensibility underneath, and considerably less interested in being messy or uncomfortable.

Girls2012

Lena Dunham's willingness to make her characters selfish, embarrassing and true rather than sympathetic is the same nerve Adlon operates on, just aimed at twenty-somethings instead of a mother of three.

But Younger, more self-absorbed cast with less at stake — no kids to answer to changes the whole emotional weather.

Casual2015no page yet

An underseen Hulu dramedy about a fractured LA family muddling through dating, parenting and adulthood with the same wry, unresolved episode structure Better Things favours.

But Cooler and more ironic in tone, with a sibling relationship at its centre rather than a mother-daughter one.

Shameless2011

Turns the chaotic-household-full-of-kids premise up to eleven, with more plot, more crisis and more dysfunction, if you want the same DNA played at a louder volume.

But Trades intimacy for melodrama over eleven seasons — a very different, much soapier machine.

Stories We Tell2012

Where Better Things fictionalises a real life for comedy, Polley documents one for truth — same instinct to mine your own family, opposite tool for doing it.

Sarah Polley turns her own fractured family history into documentary, mixing interviews, home movies and staged reenactments until you can't tell what's memory and what's performance — the exact blurring Adlon does with fiction.

But It's a documentary, not a comedy, and demands patience for its structural puzzle rather than delivering easy laughs.

Roseanne1988

Same exhausted, funny, unromantic mother-at-the-centre engine, just dressed in broad sitcom clothes instead of prestige-cable naturalism.

A working-class mother juggling money, kids and marriage with a mouth on her and zero patience for sentimentality — broader, louder, laugh-track and all, but built on the same unglamorous parenting truths Sam Fox lives by.

But Old-fashioned multi-camera sitcom format with none of Better Things' quiet or visual poetry — this is bluntness where the other is texture.