Television series
Happyish
Steve Coogan stars as a 44-year-old advertising executive watching his world crumble—his career threatened by youth, his marriage strained, his happiness forever out of reach. It's a bleakly funny half-hour comedy that asks whether pursuing happiness is the problem. Sharp, sometimes uncomfortable, best for adults who've felt the sting of obsolescence.
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Succession2018
Like Happyish, it's a caustic portrait of ambitious people trapped in systems that dehumanize them. Immense cast, meticulous writing, and moral rot at the center of every scene.
But Bleak and relentless across four seasons. If you need a show to cheer you up, this isn't it.
Better Things2016
Pamela Adlon's semi-autobiographical comedy about a woman managing work, motherhood, and the tyranny of self-improvement. Sharply observed, genuinely funny, surprisingly moving about the gap between life and expectation.
But The tone shifts unpredictably between comedy and pathos. Some scenes are almost painfully intimate.
Mad Men2007
The definitive show about professional men watching the world move past them. Glacial pacing, gorgeous cinematography, and a protagonist whose pursuit of meaning leads nowhere but inward.
But The first season is slow. Many characters are actively terrible, and the show doesn't apologize for them.
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The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
American Psycho2000
Both are about men whose desperate pursuit of self-improvement and status is actually the thing destroying them. The gap between who they think they are and who they actually are is the joke and the tragedy.
Patrick Bateman's obsessive performance of success—the perfect apartment, the perfect business card, the perfect veneer—masks a void where a person should be. It's a scream about the death of meaning inside capitalism, wrapped in pitch-black comedy.
But The violence is graphic and degrading. The film finds the horror comedy in scenes that are genuinely disturbing.
More like this (8)
The Morning Show2019
Corporate scramble and existential panic, this time in the TV news world. Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston navigate power games that destroy everything they touch. Propulsive and angry.
But Uneven writing and a tendency to soften its own critique. Some plot turns feel contrived.
Veep2012
Julia Louis-Dreyfus as a vice president whose ambition collides with absolute incompetence at every level. Vicious, quotable, laugh-out-loud funny about the grotesque machinery of power.
But The jokes can feel one-note if you're not in the mood. It's exhausting by design.
30 Rock2006
Tina Fey's comedy about a woman managing chaos at a late-night show. Snappy, inventive, full of characters at war with their own ambitions and the world around them.
But The tone is relentlessly bright. Not as interested in the existential dread Happyish obsesses over.
Curb Your Enthusiasm2000
Larry David as a man whose attempt to live authentically keeps destroying his relationships. Improvised, uncomfortable, brilliant at showing how self-righteous we become defending our own unhappiness.
But The protagonist is contemptible. If you need to like the person on screen, you'll struggle.
WKRP in Cincinnati1978
A gentler show about people trapped in jobs they've outgrown, finding meaning in chaos. Warm and funny, with real affection for its characters' small rebellions and compromises.
But The format is dated and the humor broad. It lacks Happyish's bitter edge.
The Newsroom2012
Aaron Sorkin's passionate argument that integrity matters, even when it costs you. Fast-talking, idealistic characters fighting for something bigger than themselves in an industry falling apart.
But The politics are heavy-handed and the dialogue is stilted. Sorkin's earnestness can feel naive.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both follow men spiraling as they age, watching their lives become smaller and stranger. Both ask what you've actually built when you've spent your entire life building. Both have a deadpan narrator voice driving us further into the protagonist's despair.
Charlie Kaufman's one directed feature about a theater director whose life becomes indistinguishable from his art, his obsession with authenticity eating everything he touches. Baroque, painful, visionary. Not like anything else.
But It's demanding and deliberately difficult. The narrative dissolves. Some will find it pretentious; they might be right.
Fleabag2016
Like Happyish, it's a character study in the gap between what we pretend and what we are, using comedy as a weapon against despair. Both are genuinely funny about existential problems. Both understand that wanting to feel better is not the same as feeling better.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays a woman performing confidence while collapsing underneath. It's funny and heartbreaking in rapid succession, using the medium itself—breaking the fourth wall, playing with time—to show the distance between self and self-image.
But The show gets more sentimental as it progresses. The first season's acidic edge softens into something closer to warmth.
People
Cast
Writing
- Shalom AuslanderCreator
Production
- Alexandra BeattieCo-Executive Producer
- Brad CarpenterCo-Producer
- Sean FogelCo-Producer
- Ken KwapisExecutive Producer
- Shalom AuslanderExecutive Producer
- Kathy CiricProducer
- Sean FogelProducer