Television series

Dead to Me

A tightly wound widow and a chaotic free spirit strike up a friendship that starts as grief support and quickly turns into something far stranger and more dangerous. Thirty-minute episodes move fast, swinging between broad comedy and real anguish, carried almost entirely by two performances that refuse to let either woman be simply likeable or simply awful. For anyone wanting dark comedy with actual consequences.

TVMaze rating7.7

If you liked this

Big Little Lies2017

Same DNA: women who seem to have everything hiding a body count of secrets, friendships forged under pressure, and a slow-burn mystery about what actually happened.

But It's a full hour of prestige gloss and Malibu real estate porn — less scrappy, less funny, more interested in wealth than in grief.

Big Little Lies poster

Killing Eve2018

Two women locked in an obsessive, darkly funny dance where attraction and violence keep blurring — that same electric charge between mismatched women who can't stay away from each other.

But It's a spy thriller with a body count, not a friendship drama — the tone tips further into camp and away from grounded grief.

Killing Eve poster

Good Girls2018no page yet

Suburban women who start small and spiral into genuinely criminal territory, using comedy to defuse tension right before it detonates — the same recipe of ordinary lives curdling into felony.

But It leans broader and more sitcom-y, with less interest in grief or interior life than in the mechanics of the scheme itself.

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Thelma & Louise1991

Both are built around two women fused by a violent secret whose friendship deepens exactly as their situation becomes more impossible — Thelma & Louise did it first, on the highway instead of in the suburbs.

Two women, one impulsive act of violence, and a bond that only gets fiercer as the world closes in — the road-movie ancestor of every mismatched-women-bound-by-a-crime story that followed.

But It's a road movie shot decades ago, with none of the modern dark-comedy irony — this one plays it earthier and angrier.

Thelma & Louise poster
More like this (8)

Sharp Objects2018

A woman returns home carrying trauma she can barely name, and the show lets grief curdle into something closer to horror — the same fascination with what women do with pain unwatched.

But It's slow, sweaty, and genuinely bleak — there's no comic relief here, and the ending offers very little comfort.

Sharp Objects poster

Grace and Frankie2015

Two women who shouldn't like each other become inseparable, finding dark comedy and real tenderness in disaster — proof odd-couple female friendship can carry a whole show for years.

But It's warmer and much lower-stakes — nobody's hiding a body, and the comedy is gentler, almost cozy by comparison.

Grace and Frankie poster

Desperate Housewives2004

The original suburban-secrets soap: a dead neighbor, gossiping cul-de-sac women, and murder hiding behind manicured lawns — a lighter, campier ancestor of the same premise.

But It's soapier and far more melodramatic, with none of the grounded grief — this is comfort television, not a character study.

Desperate Housewives poster

Fargo2014

Ordinary-seeming people get pulled into escalating violence they can't undo, told with deadpan humor sitting right next to real horror — a similar tonal tightrope, played out across the American Midwest.

But Each season resets with new characters, and the violence is bloodier and more absurdist than anything here.

Fargo poster

Search Party2016

A small lie spirals into an unrecoverable mess for a group of self-absorbed millennials — the same escalating-cover-up engine, but faster, weirder, and increasingly unhinged with every season.

But It gets stranger and more satirical as it goes, trading emotional grounding for absurdist comedy about narcissism.

Search Party poster

Barry2018

A killer trying to become a better person while lies pile up around him — the same mix of pitch-black comedy and real guilt, filtered through a hitman-turned-actor instead of two suburban women.

But It's about a literal assassin, so the crime sits more central and the female-friendship element is entirely absent.

Barry poster

A Simple Plan1998

Same engine — one body, one lie, and the terrible arithmetic of trying to keep it buried — rebuilt as a male-driven crime thriller instead of a female friendship dramedy.

One decision, made in a moment of temptation, drags ordinary people into a spiral of lies, cover-ups and mounting dread — the same slow-motion guilt machine, run through two brothers instead of two women.

But It's a grim, wintry thriller with almost no jokes — the tension is played straight, with little of the show's warmth or humor.

A Simple Plan poster

After Life2019no page yet

Both use black comedy as a pressure valve for grief that would otherwise be unbearable — After Life strips away the crime plot entirely and just sits with the raw feeling underneath it.

A man whose wife has died processes grief through cruelty, jokes, and quiet devastation, sometimes in the same scene — the rawest version of the show's central trick: comedy as a coping mechanism for loss.

But There's no crime, no mystery, no plot engine at all — just one man's grief, unfiltered, which can be a genuinely hard watch.

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