Television series

Scenes from a Marriage

Hagai Levi's remake of Bergman's 1973 original strips a marriage down to five long, mostly unbroken conversations between Jonathan and Mira — an academic and a tech executive whose intimacy curdles into something harder to name. Shot close, in tight two-shots with barely any score, it's less plot than autopsy: patient, uncomfortable, occasionally very funny, and built for viewers who'd rather sit inside a fight than watch it escalate from a distance.

TVMaze rating6.4

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Marriage Story2019

Noah Baumbach's own anatomy of a collapsing marriage, with Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson trading tenderness and cruelty in the same breath — the emotional inverse of Scenes' clinical calm, but just as devastating.

But The custody-battle plotting is more conventional than Scenes' loose, theatrical structure, and its ending offers more closure than you might want.

Marriage Story poster

The Affair2014

Two perspectives, one crumbling marriage — Dominic West and Ruth Wilson circle the same events from opposite memories, turning infidelity into an unreliable-narrator puzzle that keeps rewriting itself.

But Five seasons is a big commitment, and it drifts into soapier, more plot-heavy territory as it goes on.

The Affair poster

Blue Valentine2010

Derek Cianfrance cuts between a couple's giddy beginning and its exhausted end, so you watch a marriage die and be born in the same ninety minutes — brutal, tender, unforgettable.

But The nonlinear structure can feel like a gut-punch delivered twice; some find it emotionally manipulative rather than illuminating.

Blue Valentine poster

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Something you would not have found on your own.

Couples Therapy2019

Same closed-room, two-person excavation of a relationship — except this one has no script, no actors, and no ending you can trust.

Real couples, filmed in an actual therapist's office, with none of the writerly precision of Scenes — just the same unbearable intimacy, minus the safety net of knowing it's fiction.

But Watching real people's pain without a script can feel voyeuristic in a way that scripted drama, however raw, never quite does.

Couples Therapy poster
More like this (8)

Revolutionary Road2008

Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio play a suburban couple suffocating inside the life they built together — the same quiet resentment and thwarted ambition Scenes examines, filtered through 1950s conformity.

But It leans harder into tragedy and melodrama than the Levy-Chastain series' more conversational, ambiguous tone.

Revolutionary Road poster

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?1966

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton go twelve rounds of verbal warfare in one house over one drunken night — the theatrical two-hander that Scenes' bottle-episode format quietly descends from.

But The stagey, booze-soaked cruelty is far louder and more operatic than the naturalistic quiet Scenes prefers.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? poster

Closer2004

Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman and Clive Owen turn desire and betrayal into a chilly, elegant chess match, asking the same question Scenes does about whether honesty and love can coexist.

But It's colder and more cynical, with less interest in redemption or reconciliation than the newer series allows.

Closer poster

45 Years2015

Charlotte Rampling's face does more damage in this quiet British drama than any shouting match could — a single piece of news slowly dismantling a marriage everyone assumed was settled.

But It's slow and almost eventless by design; if you need incident, this will test your patience.

45 Years poster

A Separation2011

An Iranian couple's divorce splinters into a moral thriller touching class, faith and family, proving the mechanics of a marriage ending can carry as much tension as any crime story.

But Subtitled and culturally specific — the legal and religious stakes require a bit more context than the HBO series does.

A Separation poster

In Treatment2008

Same creator, Hagai Levi, in miniature: half-hour sessions where a therapist's own marriage frays session by session, proving he's been rehearsing this kind of intimate two-person combat for over a decade.

But The show-within-a-show format and multiple patient storylines are a different shape entirely, less focused than Scenes.

In Treatment poster

A Woman Under the Influence1974

Same unflinching camera pressed against a marriage in crisis, but traded Scenes' careful choreography for a genuinely unrehearsed-feeling breakdown.

Gena Rowlands unravels in real time as a wife and mother whose marriage cannot contain her, shot handheld and close by Cassavetes decades before 'raw' became a marketing word.

But The camera is jittery and the performances deliberately messy — it asks for patience with chaos rather than the controlled long takes Scenes offers.

A Woman Under the Influence poster

Force Majeure2014

Same instinct to put a marriage under a microscope and watch what it's really made of — just staged as comedy instead of tragedy.

A family ski holiday turns into a forensic audit of a marriage after one split-second decision — Östlund finds every fracture Scenes takes five hours to locate, with a dry, mortifying comic eye.

But The humor is uncomfortable rather than warm, and some will find its clinical detachment colder than Scenes' emotional directness.

Force Majeure poster

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