Television series
Nathan for You
- Absurdist comedy
- Strange
- Dip in and out
Nathan Fielder plays a hapless, oddly earnest business consultant who inflicts genuinely deranged marketing schemes on real, unsuspecting small-business owners, then documents the fallout with total deadpan sincerity. It's structured like ordinary reality TV but powered by absurdist willpower. Watch for the gasp-laughs, but stay for the strange, lonely tenderness humming underneath every stunt.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you love comedy built on deadpan awkwardness, where the joke is a earnest man committing fully to a terrible idea and the tension comes from watching people react to him for real.
Skip it if you want jokes landing every minute or a tidy, sitcom-style arc; many scenes sit in long silences and stiff small talk, and the humour can feel like it is withholding itself.
What it asks of you: Each episode runs about twenty-one minutes, so it is easy to dip into, but it rewards close attention to faces and pauses rather than quick punchlines, and the discomfort is part of the point.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
The Rehearsal2022
Fielder's own follow-up takes the same deadpan-experiment engine and turns it inward, rehearsing real people's biggest life decisions through increasingly elaborate simulations. Funnier and sadder than anything he did before.
But The meta layers pile up fast, and its ambiguous truthfulness can feel more unsettling than fun.
Jackass2000
A different flavor of chaos, but the same commitment to escalating real-world stunts for a laugh. Jackass turns physical pain into slapstick poetry, with a camaraderie that keeps it warm rather than cruel.
But It's a lot dumber and more painful to watch than Nathan's cerebral cringe, with zero pretense of business logic.
Impractical Jokers2011
Four friends humiliate each other in public via hidden-camera dares, keeping that improv-with-strangers spirit alive but stripped of narrative ambition. Purely easy, giggly comfort viewing.
But It never aims for anything deeper than a laugh, so if you loved Nathan's melancholy undertow, this will feel shallow.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Nathan for You
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Act of Killing2012
Same structural trick as Nathan's stunts — stage an elaborate fake scenario with real people to expose something true they'd never say outright — pointed at the darkest possible subject instead of a laugh.
Indonesian death-squad leaders re-enact their real killings in the genre-movie styles they love, exposing how performance can surface a moral truth no straight interview ever could.
But This is genuinely harrowing, not funny at all — a documentary about mass murder, and it will sit with you uncomfortably.
More like this (6)
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan2006
Sacha Baron Cohen's fearless commitment to staying in character while real people reveal themselves is the closest big-screen cousin to Nathan's whole shtick. Outrageous, blunt, weirdly revealing about people.
But It's cruder and more confrontational, less interested in Nathan's gentle sadness than in outright social satire.
Review2014
Andy Daly plays a host who reviews life experiences by actually living them, however disastrous, with the same escalating-dare structure and unbearable deadpan commitment as Nathan's schemes.
But It's scripted rather than working with real bystanders, so the vertiginous is-this-real tension Nathan built is gone.
Trigger Happy TV2000
An old-school British hidden-camera prank show, low-fi and gleefully mean, showing where a lot of this improvised-comedy-on-strangers DNA originally comes from.
But Dated production and simpler pranks make it feel thin next to Nathan's layered, structural absurdity.
Curb Your Enthusiasm2000
Larry David's semi-improvised misadventures, occasionally involving real bystanders, share Nathan's talent for turning a small social miscalculation into a slow-motion catastrophe.
But It's warmer, more character-driven sitcom than experiment; nobody's actually being pranked, which changes the stakes entirely.
How To with John Wilson2020
John Wilson's hushed, wandering documentary-essays about ordinary New Yorkers carry the same deadpan, faintly melancholy curiosity about human weirdness that powers Nathan's best episodes.
But It's slower and gentler, much less interested in engineering elaborate stunts than in just quietly watching.
Synecdoche, New York2008
Both artists build increasingly enormous simulations of real life to chase an emotional truth plain reality won't give up — Kaufman just drops the jokes and leans all the way into grief.
Charlie Kaufman's film about a director building an ever-expanding, life-size replica of his own life to understand it shares Nathan's obsession with staging elaborate fake versions of reality to reach something true.
But It's a devastating, unfunny meditation on mortality and failure — expect to leave sad, not chuckling.
People
Cast
Writing
- Michael KomanCreator
- Nathan FielderCreator
Recommended by
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