Television series

Enlightened

Name: Enlightened
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2011
Cast: Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Timm Sharp, Mike White, Sarah Burns

Laura Dern plays Amy Jellicoe, a corporate high-flyer who has a very public breakdown, checks into a Hawaiian wellness retreat, and returns home evangelizing for kindness and change — while still being the most exhausting person in every room. It's a cringe comedy that keeps swerving into genuine ache, about how badly we want to be good and how little that guarantees we will be. For anyone who can sit with a protagonist who is right and insufferable at the same time.

TVMaze rating

7.0

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Lena Dunham's half-hour HBO comedy about people who are certain they're growing while everyone around them can see they're not, told with the same unsparing tenderness toward its flawed heroine.

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A family reorganizes itself around one member's transformation, with the same interest in how personal awakening ripples outward and wrecks the people nearby.

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Same structural bet — one flawed woman decides to expose corporate wrongdoing from the inside — but played utterly straight and triumphant, showing the fantasy version of the story Enlightened refuses to grant Amy.

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