Television series

Insecure

Name: Insecure
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2016
Cast: Issa Rae, Yvonne Orji, Jay Ellis, Natasha Rothwell, Amanda Seales

Insecure is a coming-of-age story wearing a hangout-show disguise, following Issa Dee through five seasons of bad dates, sketchier jobs, and the slow unraveling of her friendship with Molly. It's cringe comedy with a mirror-rap soundtrack and real stakes underneath the jokes. For anyone who's wondered if their twenties would ever actually add up to something.

TVMaze rating

5.5

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The blueprint for Insecure's whole universe — four Black women navigating love, work, and each other with wit that still lands twenty years later. Watch it and see where Issa Rae learned to build a friend group.

But Early-2000s sitcom pacing and laugh-track rhythms feel dated next to Insecure's cinematic, single-camera cool.

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Donald Glover's surreal, genre-hopping look at Black life in the South shares Insecure's appetite for mining specificity for both comedy and ache. Same era, similarly bold, wildly different rhythm.

But It drifts into dream logic and standalone anthology episodes that reward patience more than plot momentum.

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Abbi and Ilana's chaotic devotion to each other is Molly-and-Issa's friendship turned up to eleven — messy, filthy, deeply loyal, and never not funny.

But The humor is broader and cartoonier; if you loved Insecure's quiet realism, this might feel like a different show entirely.

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Both dissect the psychic toll of being the only Black person in white corporate spaces, but one does it through naturalism and the other through absurdist nightmare.

A surreal satire about a Black telemarketer who discovers a 'white voice' that gets him promoted, skewering the same corporate maze that swallows Molly whole.

But It swerves into full-blown body-horror sci-fi in its back half — a tonal left turn Insecure never takes.

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Michaela Coel's unflinching look at a writer piecing her life back together shares Insecure's confessional intimacy but pushes into much rawer, harder territory.

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Same confessional close-up on a woman narrating her own disasters, same gift for finding a laugh right next to a wound.

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HBO's earlier stab at aimless twenty-somethings figuring out love and work in a specific city, with the same appetite for characters behaving badly and meaning it.

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Michaela Coel's first show is a scrappier, way more absurd cousin — awkward sexuality, terrible decisions, a heroine who overshares directly to camera.

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A newer, glossier take on the same premise: four Black women friends in a specific city, juggling careers, love, and each other's business.

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The '90s ancestor of every Black-women-one-apartment-big-feelings show since — funny, warm, and quietly influential on everything that followed, including Insecure.

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