Television series

PEN15

Two grown women play their own thirteen-year-old selves in the year 2000, surrounded by an actual cast of real teenagers, and the effect is uncanny rather than jokey — every gel-pen note and hallway humiliation lands with the full weight it had at the time. It's cringe comedy with real tenderness underneath, best for anyone who remembers middle school as a low-grade emergency.

TVMaze rating5.6

If you liked this

Freaks and Geeks1999

The blueprint for taking teenage misery seriously without losing the jokes. One season, note-perfect, and it treats every small humiliation like the crisis it felt like at fifteen.

But Cancelled after one season, so you'll fall for characters and then just... lose them, permanently.

Freaks and Geeks poster

Derry Girls2018

Same chaotic, hormonal, best-friend-or-mortal-enemy energy, but louder, faster, and set against the Troubles for a backdrop PEN15 never dares touch.

But Thick Northern Irish accents and local references take a minute to tune your ear into.

Derry Girls poster

Sex Education2019

Picks up exactly where PEN15's anxieties leave off — sex, bodies, and the sheer terror of being perceived, played with warmth instead of cruelty.

But Glossier and more soapy than PEN15's grubby realism; less cringe, more heightened teen-drama gloss.

Sex Education poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Big Mouth2017

Same raw material — puberty, shame, bodies doing embarrassing things at the worst moment — but swapped from live-action cringe into raunchy animated fantasy, proving the format can bend without losing the honesty.

Puberty as literal monster-movie body horror, with hormone monsters voiced by comedy heavyweights turning every humiliation PEN15 plays straight into gleeful, filthy cartoon spectacle.

But Aggressively crude and sexually explicit in ways PEN15 mostly implies rather than shows; not for the squeamish.

Big Mouth poster
More like this (8)

Eighth Grade2018

Elsie Fisher's performance is the closest thing on film to PEN15's specific frequency of dread — a girl narrating confidence she doesn't have to a phone camera nobody's watching.

But It's unrelentingly anxious in a way that offers almost no comic release; watch when you can sit with discomfort.

Eighth Grade poster

Booksmart2019

Same two-best-friends-against-the-world engine, just fast-forwarded to senior year and turned up to eleven for one wild last night.

But Slicker and more polished than PEN15's deliberately unglamorous world — this is high school as fantasy, not documentary.

Booksmart poster

My So-Called Life1994

The earnest, aching original of the diary-voiceover teen drama, and proof this genre was doing emotional truth long before irony became mandatory.

But Dated visually and paced slower than modern viewers may have patience for; only nineteen episodes exist.

My So-Called Life poster

Blockers2018

Flips the gaze to panicking parents chasing their daughters on prom night, which makes a funny, useful companion to watching the kids' side of adolescence.

But Broader and more slapstick than PEN15 — this is studio comedy, not delicate character work.

Blockers poster

The Diary of a Teenage Girl2015

Bel Powley's diary-and-illustration narration captures the same lurching mix of bravado and terror that makes PEN15's Maya and Anna so recognizable.

But Deals frankly and uncomfortably with a teenager's sexual awakening involving an adult — heavier and murkier territory.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl poster

Broad City2014

If you loved watching two adult women commit fully to being idiots together, here's the grown-up, New York, weed-fuelled version of that exact friendship dynamic.

But Trades the delicate emotional realism for pure absurdist comedy — no aching nostalgia here, just chaos.

Broad City poster

American Teen2008

PEN15's entire trick is hyperreal recreation of teenage life; this film gives you the genuine, unrehearsed article, cliques and heartbreak included, with no adults playing pretend.

A documentary following real Indiana high schoolers through their senior year, capturing the unscripted version of everything PEN15 so carefully reconstructs.

But Some staged-feeling moments have been questioned over the years, and it lacks any comic distance to soften the sting.

American Teen poster

The 400 Blows1959

Strip away PEN15's laughs and gel pens and you're left with its real subject: a kid failed by the adults around them and left to narrate their own small disasters — this film did that, dead seriously, over sixty years earlier.

Truffaut's black-and-white portrait of a misunderstood, unsupervised Parisian boy is where the modern language of adolescent alienation on film essentially begins.

But No jokes, no nostalgia glow, subtitled French New Wave pacing — this is the same wound with none of the comic anesthetic.

The 400 Blows poster

People

Cast

Writing

Production

Recommended by