Television series
Easy
Joe Swanberg's Chicago anthology strings together eight standalone half-hours, each a different couple (or almost-couple) fumbling through sex, apps, jealousy and cohabitation. Loosely improvised, warmly naturalistic, occasionally graphic — it feels less written than overheard. Good for anyone who likes their romance messy, unresolved and shot on a handheld camera rather than tied up with a bow.
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High Maintenance2016
Another anthology stitched together by a recurring thread (here, a weed delivery guy), with the same generous, non-judgmental eye for how strangers actually live and love in a big city.
But Lower stakes than Easy — it's gentler, more observational, less interested in conflict or heartbreak.
Love2016
Judd Apatow's Netflix series does the same unglamorous, cringingly honest take on modern dating, minus the anthology structure — one couple, stretched over seasons, at their most embarrassing.
But The two leads are calibrated to be hard to love at times; some viewers find the will-they-won't-they exhausting rather than charming.
Casual2015no page yet
A quieter, LA-set cousin — single life, sibling entanglement, dating app despair — with the same low-key, half-hour dramedy rhythm and refusal to tidy anyone's messes.
But It can feel slighter and more meandering than Easy, with less narrative payoff episode to episode.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Scener ur ett äktenskap1973
Easy's naturalistic, camera-close honesty about intimacy is a direct descendant of Bergman's clinical dissection of a marriage — same instinct, fifty years and one language earlier.
Bergman's Swedish miniseries is the ancestor of every unflinching two-person relationship drama that followed — long, close, unbearably intimate conversations about why love curdles.
But Black and white, subtitled, and devastatingly serious — nothing here is played for laughs, and it asks for real patience.
More like this (8)
Master of None2015
Aziz Ansari's show shares Easy's interest in modern romance, identity and the texture of a specific city, but with more polish, warmth and visual ambition.
But Considerably more stylized and joke-forward — less of Easy's loose, semi-improvised, slice-of-life feel.
You're the Worst2014
A relationship comedy willing to go somewhere genuinely dark and unflattering, with the same appetite for showing people at their least likeable and most human.
But More plotted and sitcom-shaped than Easy; the anthology looseness is traded for a single, escalating relationship arc.
Fleabag2016
British, sharper, funnier, but with the same unflinching honesty about sex, shame and what people do to themselves in the name of intimacy.
But Far more formally daring (fourth-wall breaks, a single voice) — a different kind of experiment than Easy's naturalism.
Girls2012
Lena Dunham's messy twenty-somethings share Easy's DNA — unglamorous bodies, bad decisions, a city as backdrop rather than postcard.
But Younger, more narcissistic characters and a much bigger cultural footprint that some viewers find exhausting by now.
High Fidelity2000
Same city, same interest in ordinary people's romantic failures, filtered through record-shop obsessives and a narrator who can't stop cataloguing his heartbreak.
But A single narrative rather than an anthology, and its wit is more scripted, less improvised, than Easy's loose scenes.
Togetherness2015no page yet
The Duplass brothers' quietly devastating look at marriage, friendship and stalled adulthood matches Easy's low-fi, handheld intimacy almost exactly.
But Slower and sadder in tone — less variety of story, more sustained melancholy over two short seasons.
Paris Je T'aime2006
Both use a city's neighbourhoods as an excuse to tell unconnected love stories — Easy just swaps Parisian lyricism for Chicago's flannel and Wi-Fi.
Eighteen different directors, eighteen short love stories set in different Paris neighbourhoods — the same anthology-of-a-city idea Easy runs with, but rendered as cinema, not television.
But Wildly uneven in quality between segments, and considerably more romantic and stylised than Easy's grubby realism.
Dating Around2019no page yet
Strip away Swanberg's script and improvisation and you get this: the same raw material of app-era dating, minus the fiction, in reality-TV register.
Real people, real awkward first dates, edited into tight little episodes — the unscripted, reality-TV mirror of everything Easy fictionalises about modern courtship.
But There's no writing to hide behind, so the cringe is unfiltered and the insight shallower — it's people-watching, not drama.
People
Writing
- Joe SwanbergCreator
Production
- Daniel JohnsonAssociate Producer
- Harrison AtkinsAssociate Producer
- Billy RosenbergCo-Producer
- David SwinburneCo-Producer
- Alex OrrExecutive Producer
- Andy WeilExecutive Producer
- Jane WisemanExecutive Producer
- Joe SwanbergExecutive Producer
- Kristen ZolnerExecutive Producer