Television series
SKAM
SKAM follows the tangled friendships and love lives of a handful of Oslo teenagers, with a different one at the centre each season. It aired in real time online, clips dropping at the exact hour they happened, texts and all. The pace is slow, the shame is loud, and nothing gets softened for TV. If you want the ache of being sixteen without the gloss, this is it.
If you liked this
Euphoria2019
Zendaya's performance anchors a show that understands teenage excess as both thrilling and terrifying, with visuals as intoxicating as the highs it depicts.
But The glossy cinematography and heightened melodrama trade SKAM's quiet realism for spectacle — this is teen life turned up to eleven.
Sex Education2019
Warmer and funnier than SKAM, it treats teenage sex and anxiety with the same seriousness but wraps it in genuine comedy and a killer soundtrack.
But The tone is broader and more sitcom-adjacent — if you loved SKAM's hush, this can feel like it's shouting.
My Mad Fat Diary2013
A British teen dealing with body image and mental illness, told with the same unflinching intimacy and refusal to tidy pain into a lesson.
But Nineties setting and mixtape needle-drops date it slightly, and the humour is broader than SKAM's deadpan realism.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
My So-Called Life1994
SKAM's real-time intimacy has a direct ancestor here — the same insistence that a teenager's crush or humiliation deserves the full weight of drama, decades before online formats made it possible.
Long before anyone filmed a text message, this show found the same unbearable intensity in a teenage diary entry — one perfect, painfully sincere season.
But The fashion and slang are pure 1994, and its pace is even slower and more interior than SKAM's.
More like this (8)
Derry Girls2018
Same fierce loyalty between school friends, same acute embarrassment of being a teenager, but here it's played as riotous comedy against the Troubles.
But It's a sitcom at heart — if you want SKAM's slow-burn ache, this moves fast and goes for laughs first.
Skins2007
The show that first proved teenagers could be filmed like this — messy, sexual, self-destructive, and never condescended to by the camera.
But More chaotic and less emotionally patient than SKAM; it swaps close psychological focus for ensemble party sprawl.
Please Like Me2013
An Australian dramedy about early adulthood, coming out, and depression that shares SKAM's gift for finding devastation inside ordinary hangouts.
But It's about people a few years older than SKAM's cast, and its humour is drier — less swoon, more wince.
Atypical2017
A gentler, more mainstream family drama that still cares about the same things SKAM does — first love, identity, the terror of being different.
But Considerably softer and more sitcom-paced; the edges SKAM leaves rough get smoothed here.
The End of the F***ing World2017
Two teenage outsiders on the run, filmed with the same deadpan close attention to awkward silence and unspoken longing.
But It's stylised and darkly comic where SKAM is naturalistic — crime-thriller adjacent rather than slice-of-life.
Freaks and Geeks1999
One near-perfect season of American high school life, aching with the same specific embarrassments and quiet cruelties SKAM captures so well.
But It's twenty-five years old and more comedic in rhythm — the raw emotional exposure of SKAM isn't quite matched.
Boyhood2014
Both are obsessed with capturing time honestly rather than compressing it — SKAM through real-time release schedules, Boyhood through literal years of filming, each refusing to fake the texture of actually growing up.
Filmed over twelve real years with the same actors actually aging, it captures growing up with a truthfulness scripted performance rarely reaches.
But It's slow, plotless by design, and two and a half hours long with no crisis to resolve — patience required.
Big Mouth2017
Same raw material — sex, shame, bodies, first love — but where SKAM whispers it, Big Mouth screams it through cartoon monsters, proving the anxiety underneath is universal enough to survive any tone.
Animated, filthy, and gleefully explicit about puberty's horror and hilarity, it says the unsayable things SKAM only lets its characters feel in silence.
But The crude humour and literal hormone monsters are about as far from SKAM's hushed realism as teen content gets.
People
Cast
Writing
- Julie AndemCreator
Production
- Cathrine SimonsenExecutive Producer
- Håkon MosletExecutive Producer
- Hildri GulliksenExecutive Producer
- Marianne Furevold-BolandExecutive Producer
- Olaf HelmersenExecutive Producer
- Therese BergheimExecutive Producer
- Mari MagnusProducer
Recommended by
Sex Education, Young Royals, One Tree Hill, Byker Grove, Love, Victor