Television series

Master of None

Name: Master of None
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Romance
Released: 2015
Cast: Aziz Ansari, Lena Waithe, Naomi Ackie, Eric Wareheim, Noël Wells

Aziz Ansari's dramedy follows Dev, a working actor drifting through New York trying to sort out what to eat, who to date, and who he owes what. It's loose and generous, unusually attentive to the people orbiting its hero — parents, exes, friends — and happy to swing from silly to devastating inside one episode. Comedy with real appetite and real stakes.

TVMaze rating

7.7

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Same prestige-comedy DNA: anthology-style episodes that swerve into surreal, genre-bending territory while staying warm and personal underneath the strangeness. Donald Glover at his most fearless.

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Fleabag2016

The same intimate, confessional register — comedy that turns devastating without warning, and a protagonist trying, badly, to become a better person.

But Single-perspective and theatrical, with fourth-wall breaks that can feel claustrophobic if you want an ensemble.

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Friendship, career anxiety, and romantic missteps rendered with the same specificity and warmth, just relocated to LA with a longer emotional arc.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Big Night1996

Dev's pasta pilgrimages and family dinners have a spiritual ancestor here — food-as-love-language storytelling didn't start with prestige TV, it started decades earlier in one small, doomed kitchen.

Two immigrant brothers pour everything they have into keeping their Italian restaurant alive over one impossible night, and the food becomes grief, love and pride all at once.

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A half-hour dramedy about identity, family expectation, and faith, carried by the same restless, searching energy as Dev's aimlessness.

But Darker and more morally uncomfortable — Ramy's spiritual crisis has real teeth where Dev stays easygoing.

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Anthology vignettes of New Yorkers whose lives brush together for twenty minutes, giving small human moments real weight and tenderness.

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Chicago relationships, food, sex and parenting told with the same loose, naturalistic charm as Dev's early dating misadventures.

But Uneven from episode to episode, with a less starry cast and lower visibility than the shows around it.

You're the Worst2014

A rom-com that gets more honest and painful as it goes, sharing Master of None's appetite for messy relationships under sharp wit.

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But Tightly focused on a single couple, trading the anthology variety and globe-trotting for a narrower lens.

The Bear2022

Same reverence for food as identity and inheritance, wrapped in a prestige half-hour dramedy about family, grief, and cooking.

But Much more anxious and intense — kitchen chaos energy replaces Dev's laid-back charm almost entirely.

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Take the 'Parents' episode, strip out every laugh, stretch it across two full hours — this is what's left underneath, and it's worth sitting with.

A quietly devastating generational saga following an Indian-American son negotiating names, expectations, and grief across two continents and two decades.

But No jokes to soften it — this plays the show's best subject, immigrant parents' sacrifice, entirely straight, and some nights you'd rather have the relief.

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A vital, joyful, heartbreaking documentary about New York's ballroom scene and the families people build when their own won't hold them.

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