Television series
Klovn
Klovn is Denmark's answer to Curb Your Enthusiasm: real comedians Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen playing fictionalised, much worse versions of themselves, filmed handheld and largely improvised. It specialises in the slow-motion car crash of a small lie or bad decision, held just past the point of comfort. Funny in the way that makes you watch through your fingers — for people who find secondhand embarrassment funnier than jokes.
If you liked this
Curb Your Enthusiasm2000
The template Klovn borrowed wholesale — a semi-fictional persona making everything worse through small lies and social miscalculations, escalating with beautiful inevitability.
But Larry David's neurotic, wealthy-guy irritability is a different flavour of awful than Frank's spinelessness — some find him grating rather than funny.
Peep Show2003
British cringe at its most claustrophobic — two flatmates' internal monologues expose every cowardly, petty thought, filmed almost entirely from their own eyelines.
But The dual-narration gimmick can feel gimmicky before it clicks, and both leads are almost aggressively unlikeable from episode one.
The Office2005
Gervais and Merchant invented modern mockumentary's specific brand of pity-laughter, and David Brent is cringe comedy's founding disaster.
But Only twelve episodes plus a Christmas special — it ends just as you're settled in, and the humour is gentler than Klovn's.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Fawlty Towers1975
Basil Fawlty is Frank Hvam's spiritual grandfather — a man whose every attempt to manage a small social lie detonates into catastrophe, decades before 'cringe comedy' had a name.
Twelve perfect episodes of escalating disaster from a hotelier who cannot stop lying his way into worse and worse corners — the gold standard for farce.
But It's theatrical, broad, and studio-shot with a laugh track — nothing like Klovn's handheld realism, and some of it now reads as dated.
More like this (8)
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia2005
Similar engine — terrible people doing terrible things to each other with total conviction — but turned up to a cartoonish, gleeful nastiness.
But Eighteen-plus seasons means huge tonal range; some early episodes are rougher than the show it eventually became.
Extras2005
Gervais again, this time skewering fame and status rather than office politics, with real celebrities gamely playing monstrous versions of themselves.
But The celebrity-cameo structure dates it, and the satire is broader and less personally excruciating than Klovn's.
Louie2010no page yet
Louis C.K.'s loosely autobiographical, tonally restless series shares Klovn's willingness to let a scene sit in real discomfort rather than resolve it with a joke.
But It drifts into surreal, near-arthouse territory some episodes, and what happened after for its creator now colours the watch.
The Trip2011
Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play semi-fictional, competitive, insecure versions of themselves on a restaurant tour, mining ego and male friendship for real awkwardness.
But Much gentler and slower than Klovn — this is simmering resentment over good food, not scrotum-related disasters.
Fleabag2016
Same commitment to a deeply flawed narrator sabotaging her own life, with the same trick of making you laugh right up until it suddenly hurts.
But More formally daring and ultimately more moving than Klovn ever tries to be — different ambitions entirely.
Nathan for You2013
Nathan Fielder's deadpan-real prank format shares Klovn's fascination with watching someone commit fully to an obviously terrible plan in front of bewildered real people.
But It's not scripted comedy at all — real businesses, real strangers — which changes the kind of discomfort you're feeling.
American Movie1999
Where Klovn fictionalises real comedians humiliating themselves, this documentary captures an actual amateur filmmaker doing it for real, with none of the safety net of a script.
A real man's disastrous, years-long attempt to make a horror film, so painfully sincere and mismanaged it out-cringes almost anything scripted comedy dares try.
But It's a documentary with no punchlines — the laughs come with real guilt, since this man's life isn't a character's.
Force Majeure2014
Same Scandinavian obsession with a man's small, cowardly lie about a moment of panic spiraling through a marriage — but played as tense, humiliating drama rather than sitcom.
A father's split-second act of self-preservation on a ski trip unravels his marriage in achingly awkward, beautifully shot scenes of unspoken humiliation.
But It's a serious festival drama with barely a joke in it — go in expecting a cold, clinical tone, not sitcom relief.
People
Cast
Writing
- Casper ChristensenCreator
- Frank HvamCreator