Television series

Mom

Mom is a multi-camera CBS sitcom that uses a laugh track to talk about things sitcoms usually avoid: relapse, amends, generational wreckage. Anna Faris and Allison Janney play a mother and daughter clawing toward sobriety together, one AA meeting and one disaster at a time. It's broader and punchier than prestige dramedy, but underneath the jokes sit real grief, real anger, and real hope.

TVMaze rating7.6

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One Day at a Time2017

Norman Lear's reboot has the same DNA — a fierce single mother, a meddling elder, and studio-audience laughs that don't flinch from addiction, PTSD, and immigration. It's the show's closest living relative.

But If you came to Mom for something different, this will feel like more of the same family, just rearranged.

One Day at a Time poster

Grace and Frankie2015

Two women in their seventies rebuild their lives after their husbands leave them for each other, with the same mix of big laughs and unexpected tenderness. Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin are electric together.

But It's gentler and less chaotic than Mom — the stakes are emotional, not survival, and the pace is slower.

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Shameless2011

A family held together by addiction, poverty, and dark humor, with a matriarch-shaped hole at its center much like the one Christy's mother left in her. Messier, meaner, and rawer than Mom ever gets.

But It trades sitcom warmth for grime and chaos — the comfort of a laugh track is gone entirely.

Shameless poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

BoJack Horseman2014

Same engine as Mom — comedy as a survival mechanism for people who inherited their worst habits from their parents — run through a completely different, animated register.

An animated Hollywood horse comedy that turns into one of TV's most unflinching studies of addiction, depression, and the damage a broken parent passes down — funny until it suddenly isn't.

But The shift from jokes to genuine despair can be jarring, and it earns every bit of its reputation for bleakness.

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More like this (8)

The Conners2018no page yet

Roseanne's world after Roseanne, still working-class, still funny, now grappling openly with opioid addiction and grief. It shares Mom's instinct to find the joke inside the wreckage without excusing it.

But Some of the laughs feel dutiful rather than earned, a show finding its new shape in real time.

Nurse Jackie2009

Edie Falco plays a nurse secretly addicted to pills, brilliant at her job and a disaster in her own life — the same tightrope between competence and self-destruction Christy walks daily.

But It's a drama with jokes rather than a comedy with feelings, and considerably darker in where it goes.

Nurse Jackie poster

Roseanne1988

The blueprint for every blue-collar, big-laugh family sitcom that dares to be about something — money, marriage, addiction, class. Bonnie and Christy's fights owe it a real debt.

But It's a product of its era, tonally and politically, and some jokes have aged considerably worse than others.

Roseanne poster

United States of Tara2009

Toni Collette plays a mother with dissociative identity disorder, and the show finds real comedy inside a serious mental health story without ever making her the punchline.

But It's stranger and more theatrical than Mom, built around one extraordinary performance rather than an ensemble.

United States of Tara poster

Weeds2005

A suburban single mother turns to dealing weed to keep her family afloat — darker and less redemptive than Mom, but sharing its fascination with a mother improvising her way through disaster.

But The moral compass spins much further off than Mom's ever does, and the humor is considerably more cynical.

Weeds poster

Superstore2015

A scrappy ensemble comedy about people who mostly can't afford to fail, finding absurdity and solidarity in a big-box store. Same generous, working-class heart as Mom, wrapped around a workplace instead of a family.

But There's no addiction storyline at its center, so if that's what you came for, it's a much lighter watch.

Superstore poster

Days of Wine and Roses1963

It's the story underneath Mom's story, from an era before sitcoms would touch addiction — the same subject with every joke stripped away.

Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick play a married couple sliding into alcoholism together, decades before recovery narratives had any comic distance at all — devastating, precise, unforgettable.

But There is no laugh track, no punchline, no relief — just a slow, clear-eyed look at what Mom's jokes are keeping at bay.

Days of Wine and Roses poster

The Anonymous People2013no page yet

This is the real AA room Christy and Marjorie sit in every week, shown straight, with none of the sitcom's comic scaffolding.

A documentary that puts real people in recovery on camera, the actual meetings and language Mom borrows for its jokes, told without any fictional distance at all.

But It's advocacy filmmaking more than entertainment — earnest, talky, and without a single joke to soften anything.

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