Television series

Miracle Workers

Name: Miracle Workers
Genre: Drama, Comedy, Supernatural
Released: 2019
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Steve Buscemi, Geraldine Viswanathan, Karan Soni, Lolly Adefope

An anthology comedy from Simon Rich, retooled each season: first heaven as a crumbling celestial bureaucracy, then a medieval village choking on inequality. Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi anchor a cast doing dry, absurdist office-comedy energy in wildly inappropriate settings. It's for people who like their whimsy with a spine of real bleakness underneath — silly, but not actually weightless.

TVMaze rating

6.2

If you liked this

The Good Place2016

Heaven run like a badly managed startup, philosophy smuggled in under sitcom jokes, and an ensemble that gets warmer and stranger the longer you stay. The closest cousin Miracle Workers has.

But It commits hard to its mythology across seasons — you can't dip in casually the way you can with an anthology.

Man Seeking Woman2015no page yet

Also Simon Rich, also surreal — a breakup comedy where metaphors become literal monsters and demons. Same brain, same appetite for turning a small human problem into full nonsense.

But More scattershot and less warm; it's willing to be genuinely upsetting for a joke in a way Miracle Workers mostly isn't.

What We Do in the Shadows2019

Supernatural beings treated as exhausted coworkers with petty grievances — the same trick of shrinking cosmic stakes down to office politics, played completely straight-faced.

But Vampires instead of angels and villagers; if you wanted more heaven bureaucracy specifically, this swaps genres entirely.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

A Matter of Life and Death1946

This literally invented the joke Miracle Workers is telling — heaven as paperwork and process, not mystery, decades before it became a comedy premise.

A dying RAF pilot appeals his own death in a celestial courtroom, heaven rendered as a vast, orderly bureaucracy long before it was a sitcom setup. Gorgeous, funny, and quietly moving.

But Wartime pacing and Technicolor stateliness feel a world away from half-hour TBS comedy; patience required.

Our Flag Means Death2022

Historical setting, absurd premise, a cast of misfits failing upward with real tenderness underneath the jokes — the same balance of silly and sincere that season two's village nails.

But Pirates, not peasants, and leans further into romance than Miracle Workers ever does.

Ghosts2021

A small, bickering afterlife ensemble stuck dealing with the living — gentle, silly, and surprisingly moving in short bursts, much like Miracle Workers' half-hour rhythm.

But Cozier and lower-stakes throughout; it never reaches for the bleak social commentary of the medieval season.

Black Mirror2011

Proof that the anthology format can reinvent its whole world each run — same structural gamble Miracle Workers takes, letting you jump in fresh every season.

But Almost none of the comedy and almost all of the dread; a very different emotional temperature.

The Office2005

The workplace-mockumentary DNA that's baked into how heaven's staff bicker and underperform in Miracle Workers — small stakes, big personalities, dry delivery.

But Grounded and realistic where Miracle Workers is fantastical; no angels, no plagues, just a paper company.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail1975

The medieval-squalor comedy that season two is clearly in conversation with — filth, futility, and jokes about how miserable the actual Middle Ages were.

But Sketch-based and looser than a narrative sitcom; don't expect much emotional through-line.

Avenue 52020no page yet

Incompetent staff, a slowly collapsing system, everyone smiling through catastrophe — the same comic engine of disaster-management-as-farce, just in space instead of a village.

But Colder and more cynical, with less of Miracle Workers' underlying affection for its characters.

Disenchantment2018

Same target — medieval misery played for laughs about power and poverty — but animation lets it get sillier and gnarlier than live TV ever could.

Matt Groening's animated medieval kingdom, run by idiots, full of plague jokes and class resentment dressed as fairy tale — the same rotten-kingdom comedy engine, drawn instead of filmed.

But Groening's house style of comedy is broader and more cartoonish; less character-driven warmth than Miracle Workers' village.

Wings of Desire1987

Strip away every gag in Miracle Workers and you're left with this question — what does it mean for something not-quite-human to care about us — asked here with total sincerity instead of a punchline.

Angels drift silently through Berlin, listening to human thoughts, aching to be mortal — poetic, black-and-white, almost unbearably tender. One of cinema's great meditations on watching versus living.

But Nearly plotless and deeply serious; anyone hoping for jokes about celestial middle management will be lost immediately.