Television series
Kidding
Jim Carrey plays a children's television icon whose perfect public persona shatters when his family collapses. It's a tonal highwire act—whimsical one moment, devastating the next—that asks whether kindness can survive contact with real suffering. For anyone who's wondered what happens to the light when it goes off.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love dark comedy that sits in the uncomfortable gap between a sweet public persona and a private collapse, and you don't need the jokes to let up for the sadness to land.
Skip it if you want a tidy sitcom rhythm, since episodes are half-hour but the mood stays bleak and the pace drags through long stretches of unhappiness.
What it asks of you: Half-hour episodes, two seasons, and your full attention, since the discomfort is quiet and the laughs arrive in the middle of it rather than being handed to you.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
BoJack Horseman2014
A cartoon about a washed-up sitcom star grappling with depression, fame, and the gap between the person you play and who you actually are. The emotional precision is stunning, and it gets darker as it goes.
But It's relentlessly bleak. If you need your comedies to end with hope, this will exhaust you.
Fleabag2016
Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character breaks the fourth wall while navigating family chaos, romantic disaster, and the performance of being fine. Hilarious and aching in the same breath, with a priest who changes everything.
But The second season slows down considerably. Some find it precious; others find it necessary.
The Affair2014
Each episode retells the same events from different perspectives, revealing how memory lies. Stunning performances, especially Dominic West and Ruth Wilson, and it understands infidelity as a symptom, not a plot.
But It's exhausting by design. Five seasons of the same wounds examined from new angles will wear you down.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Kidding
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The King of Comedy1982
Both explore the fracture between the persona you show the world and the person collapsing underneath. Both suggest that kindness performed long enough might eat you alive.
Scorsese and De Niro's portrait of a failed entertainer's delusion. It's about performance as psychosis, the celebrity obsession that precedes social media, and the terror of not mattering. Prescient, cruel, and weirdly funny.
But It's uncomfortable on purpose and offers no catharsis. The ending is bleak in a way mainstream film audiences find punishing.
More like this (8)
Parenthood2010
A multigenerational family drama that actually earns its sentiment. It's messy and funny and angry and tender without ever feeling manipulative. The Braverman house is a place you'll want to live in.
But It's long and occasionally soapy. Six seasons is a commitment, and some arcs resolve slower than satisfying.
Transparent2014
A family implodes when the patriarch comes out as transgender. It's formally inventive—shifting perspectives, styles, even genres—and brutally honest about how love and resentment tangle together.
But It's often uncomfortable to watch, which is partly the point. Some storylines feel unresolved or self-indulgent.
Halt and Catch Fire2014
About ambitious people building computers in the 1980s, but really it's about how ambition corrodes relationships. Extraordinarily well-written, with characters who change and hurt each other realistically over time.
But The first season is rougher than the rest. Patience through ten episodes is necessary before it becomes essential.
Mr. Robot2015
A hacker's descent into paranoia and madness, formally innovative and genuinely unsettling. The protagonist is unreliable in ways that make you question what you're seeing. Urgent and strange.
But It gets more interested in its own mystery than its characters by season three. The ending divides people sharply.
Rectify2013
A man released after nineteen years in prison tries to exist in a world that moved on. Meditative, poetic, and uninterested in easy answers. Every frame matters. Macon Blair's performance is transcendent.
But Nothing happens quickly. If you need plot momentum, this will feel glacial and frustrating.
Undone2019
A rotoscoped animation about a woman having a mental health crisis, possibly supernatural. It looks like nothing else on television and refuses to explain itself. Genuinely unsettling and tender.
But The animation style is divisive. The second season took four years. It may never be finished.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both are about artists whose work is meant to heal or help, but whose private lives are devastated. Both suggest that the puppet show and the person are different things that cannot coexist.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a theater director whose life and art collapse into each other until he can't tell them apart. Kaufman's only film is a box of fractured mirrors about art as therapy and obsession.
But It's deliberately confusing and exhausting. You'll need to sit with it rather than enjoy it. Some find that transcendent; others find it pretentious.
The Banshees of Inisherin2022
Both are about good men—kind men even—who cannot save themselves or their families from disappointment and time. Both find comedy in despair without letting it soften the truth.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play former best friends on an Irish island where one decides the friendship is over. It's a comedy-drama about aging, bitterness, and the cruelty of ordinary men. Magnificent and strange.
But It's slow and talky and the ending is small, not triumphant. If you want resolution, this offers grief instead.
People
Cast
Writing
- Dave HolsteinCreator
Production
- Cody HellerCo-Executive Producer
- Sarah CaplanCo-Executive Producer
- Andrea P. StilgenbauerCo-Producer
- Dave HolsteinExecutive Producer
- Jason BatemanExecutive Producer
- Jim CarreyExecutive Producer
- Jim GaraventeExecutive Producer
- Michael AguilarExecutive Producer
- Michel GondryExecutive Producer
- Raffi AdlanExecutive Producer
- Roberto BenabibExecutive Producer
- Halley FeifferProducer
- Michael VukadinovichProducer
- Nicole MontezProducer