Television series

Divorce

Name: Divorce
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance
Released: 2016
Cast: Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Molly Shannon, Talia Balsam, Sterling Jerins

Family drama

Divorce isn't really about the paperwork — it's about the ugly, funny, exhausting years around signing it, when love curdles into logistics and resentment. Sarah Jessica Parker trades Carrie Bradshaw's romantic optimism for something wearier as Frances, matched beat for beat by Thomas Haden Church's Robert. It's for anyone who's watched a marriage die slowly and found, uncomfortably, that some of it was hilarious.

TVMaze rating

2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy comedy that finds the awkward, funny truth in a long marriage going sour, with sharp dialogue and characters who are more exasperating than villainous.

Skip it if you want big laughs or a fast plot, since this is a slow, wry show where much of the humour sits in glances and the mess of ordinary life.

What it asks of you: Thirty-minute episodes, twenty-four across three seasons, sit lightly on an evening, though you will need patience with characters who stay prickly for stretches.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Marriage Story2019

Baumbach's clear-eyed portrait of a divorce covers the same emotional ground as Divorce but compresses it into two devastating hours — the arguments feel lived-in, the tenderness never quite disappears, and the performances are extraordinary.

But It's raw and unrelieved by sitcom rhythms — no half-hour escape valve, just one long, exhausting fight.

Catastrophe2015

Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan's marriage comedy has the same appetite for finding jokes in domestic wreckage, but it's rowdier, ruder, and somehow more romantic about the mess.

But It's about staying together rather than splitting up, so the stakes and rhythm shift quite a bit from Divorce's slow unraveling.

Big Little Lies2017

Same wealthy-suburb backdrop and simmering marital resentment, but turned up into a glossy murder mystery with a stacked cast clearly relishing being awful to each other.

But The murder-mystery plotting and glossier tone are a long way from Divorce's scrappier, more grounded comedy.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Divorce

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Scenes from a Marriage2021

Bergman invented the genre Divorce works in — the slow, honest dissection of a marriage's failure — decades before it became Sunday-night television. Watching it reveals the blueprint underneath Frances and Robert's story.

Six close, unflinching conversations between a couple as their marriage disintegrates over years — the original template for every prestige divorce drama since, still unmatched for honesty.

But It's slow, subtitled, nearly fifty years old, and offers zero comic relief — a very different commitment than a half-hour HBO comedy.

Enlightened2011

Mike White's underseen HBO gem follows a woman blowing up her old life with the same mix of cringe and hope that fuels Frances's story, pushed further into spiritual absurdity.

But Laura Dern's character is far more delusional and grating than Frances, which some viewers find hard to sit with.

The Affair2014

A soapier, structurally clever cousin — the same suburban infidelity and fallout, told from dueling unreliable perspectives that reveal how differently two people remember one marriage.

But It leans much further into prestige-drama melodrama and away from Divorce's dry comic relief.

Fleabag2016

Not about divorce, but about the same species of person: funny, self-sabotaging, incapable of admitting how much they're hurting until it's staring them in the face.

But It's younger, single, British, and far more stylistically daring — a different show wearing a similar emotional coat.

Younger2015

A lighter, sunnier take on starting over after a marriage ends, with much of the same reinvention-in-your-forties energy but traded for rom-com breeziness.

But It's frothier and far less interested in the actual pain Divorce sits with — comfort food, not confrontation.

Motherland2016

A British sitcom about the low-grade warfare of suburban parenting and marriage, sharing Divorce's eye for the absurdity buried in ordinary domestic resentment.

But It's broader and sillier, more concerned with playground politics than with the wreckage of a marriage ending.

Kevin Can F**k Himself2021

A formally audacious show that literalizes marital resentment by switching between multi-cam sitcom and grim single-cam drama every time the husband leaves the room — a wild cousin to Divorce's tonal shifts.

But The format gimmick is divisive, and its anger runs hotter and darker than Divorce ever gets.

The War of the Roses1989

Same starting point — a marriage curdling into a fight over the house and the stuff inside it — pushed to its gleefully savage extreme, showing the black-comedy nightmare version of what Frances and Robert are trying to avoid.

Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner turn a divorce into all-out domestic warfare, with the pettiness and cruelty Divorce only hints at played out as full slapstick horror.

But It's far broader and meaner — an '80s farce with body-count energy, not the wry melancholy Divorce trades in.

Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars2014

It's the unscripted, dignity-free mirror of everything Divorce dramatizes with restraint — real couples performing the exact same fights about resentment, sex, and money, minus the writing or the subtlety.

If you've ever wanted the raw, unfiltered version of the marital dysfunction Divorce dresses up in wit and production value, this reality show delivers it with zero self-awareness and maximum chaos.

But It's genuinely trashy reality television — exploitative, repetitive, and a world away from the craft of a scripted HBO comedy.