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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People
Cast
Writing
- Anna KonkleCreator
- Maya ErskineCreator
- Sam ZviblemanCreator
Production
- Akiva SchafferExecutive Producer
- Andy SambergExecutive Producer
- Anna KonkleExecutive Producer
- Becky SloviterExecutive Producer
- Brin LukensExecutive Producer
- Brooke PobjoyExecutive Producer
- Debbie LieblingExecutive Producer
- Gabe LiedmanExecutive Producer
- Jordan LevinExecutive Producer
- Jorma TacconeExecutive Producer
- Marc ProvissieroExecutive Producer
- Maya ErskineExecutive Producer
- Sam ZviblemanExecutive Producer
- Shelley ZimmermanExecutive Producer
- Don DunnProducer
- Jeremy ReitzProducer
- Scott LevineProducer
Recommended by
Reservation Dogs, Derry Girls, Girls, Turning Red, Sex Education, Big Mouth, Freaks and Geeks, Broad City, Eighth Grade, Booksmart, Never Have I Ever, Inside Amy Schumer, This Way Up, American Vandal, Somebody Somewhere, Tuca & Bertie, Everything Sucks!