Television series

Catastrophe

Catastrophe drops you into the mess right after a one-night stand becomes an accidental pregnancy, and never slows down. It's fast, filthy-mouthed and disarmingly honest about how love actually gets built — through bad tempers, drink, in-laws and fear — rather than how it's supposed to look. Six tight seasons, no padding. For anyone who wants romantic comedy with teeth and a hangover.

TVMaze rating7.6

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Fleabag2016

The same bruising honesty about love, guilt and self-destruction, but filtered through one woman's fourth-wall confessions instead of a couple's shared chaos — equally filthy, equally devastating, equally funny.

But It's about one person unravelling alone, not two people colliding — less romance, more reckoning.

Fleabag poster

You're the Worst2014

Two deeply flawed, often insufferable people fall in love against their own instincts, mixing addiction and depression into the laughs the way Catastrophe mixes drink and dread.

But Five seasons means some sag in the middle, and the humour leans meaner than Catastrophe's warmth.

You're the Worst poster

This Way Up2019

Aisling Bea's post-breakdown comedy shares Horgan's producing hand, the same London mess, and a refusal to make mental illness either punchline or lecture — funny and unguarded.

But It's about sisters and friendship more than romantic combat, so the marital sparring you came for isn't really here.

This Way Up poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Scener ur ett äktenskap1973

Catastrophe compresses courtship and crisis into six brisk seasons; Bergman's original does the same compression in reverse, taking a marriage apart scene by scene with the same unblinking honesty about what two people actually say to each other.

Bergman's six-part dissection of a marriage's slow collapse is the blueprint every messy-couple drama since has quoted from, shot with unbearable intimacy and a total absence of trickery.

But Subtitled, glacially paced, and completely without jokes — this is grief in slow motion, not comedy.

Scener ur ett äktenskap poster
More like this (7)

Motherland2016

Horgan turns her scalpel onto the school gates and playdate politics, finding the same exhausted, foul-mouthed honesty in parenting that Catastrophe found in marriage itself.

But Ensemble-driven rather than couple-focused, and the stakes are smaller — birthday parties, not the future of a relationship.

Motherland poster

Together2021no page yet

James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan spend a single lockdown trapped together, letting resentment and love collide in real time with the same bruising candour Catastrophe built its whole show on.

But One claustrophobic setting and barely any plot — it's a pressure cooker, not a story with momentum.

Divorce2016no page yet

Horgan's other marriage show, this one about the unravelling rather than the falling — sadder, sharper, and anchored by Sarah Jessica Parker at her most unglamorous best.

But Considerably less funny and warmer despair than comedy — go in braced for something bleaker.

Married2014no page yet

FX's quietly brilliant, underseen comedy about broke, tired marrieds bickering through the mundane disasters of ordinary life — Catastrophe's chaos, dialled down to a simmer.

But Slower and smaller in scale, with none of Catastrophe's propulsive plotting or shock-value jokes at all.

Bad Sisters2022no page yet

Horgan again, but darker — a comic thriller about sisters plotting a killing, keeping her acid wit and family chaos intact while trading romance for revenge.

But It's a murder mystery, not a love story, and the tone leans thriller more than sitcom.

Pulling2006no page yet

Horgan's scrappier, earlier sitcom about disastrous single life before she got anywhere near marriage — the same anarchic, unsentimental streak, just rawer and younger and less polished.

But Only two short seasons and rougher production values, with less warmth than her later, more assured work.

Blue Valentine2010

Catastrophe asks whether a marriage built on an accident can actually work and answers with laughter; Blue Valentine asks the exact same structural question and answers with heartbreak — same bones, opposite ending.

Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams play the same falling-in-love-then-living-with-it arc as tragedy instead of comedy, cutting between courtship and collapse until the two timelines meet.

But It's a heavy, unflinching two hours with none of the jokes — go in knowing it will not cheer you up.

Blue Valentine poster

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