Television series
Slings & Arrows
Slings & Arrows is a comedy-drama about running a Canadian Shakespeare festival, following an artistic director whose brilliance and breakdown are the same coin. Each six-episode season stages one play — Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear — as the actors' offstage lives echo the drama they're performing. It's sharp, wounded backstage farce with real feeling underneath, and it might be the best thing ever made about why people bother with theatre at all.
If you liked this
Ted Lasso2020
Same trick as Geoffrey Tennant — a leader whose faith in the work outstrips everyone's patience, turning a struggling institution into a family through sheer bloody-minded belief. Warm, funny, sneaks up on you emotionally.
But The relentless kindness can feel syrupy if you came for Slings & Arrows' sharper, more cynical edges.
The Bear2022
Swap Shakespeare for sandwiches and you get the same engine — a haunted, brilliant obsessive dragging a chaotic crew toward greatness while barely holding himself together. The backstage panic feels identical.
But Far more anxious and claustrophobic; the kitchen chaos has none of the festival's affection or laughs.
Schitt's Creek2015
Canadian, ensemble-driven, and just as generous about people who are ridiculous and lovable in equal measure — the small-town equivalent of New Burbage's theatre bubble, full of outsized egos learning to actually care.
But Gentler and sitcom-shaped; you lose the Shakespeare scaffolding and the melancholy undertow entirely.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
All About Eve1950
Same backstage theatre world decades earlier — ambition, aging, and the terror of being replaced, told with the bitchy elegance New Burbage's actors would recognise instantly.
The urtext of every backstage drama since — Bette Davis as a stage actress watching a younger rival's ascent, all wit, daggers, and one of cinema's greatest closing lines.
But Black-and-white classic Hollywood pacing and dialogue-heavy scenes will feel slow if you want anything resembling modern TV rhythm.
More like this (8)
Extras2005
Ricky Gervais turns the industry's ego and insecurity inside out with the same backstage-versus-front-stage irony, skewering actors and directors who mistake ambition for talent.
But Much more embarrassment comedy than drama — less warmth, more cringe, and no equivalent emotional payoff.
30 Rock2006
A show about making a show, run by a control freak trying to wrangle egos into something coherent — the writers'-room chaos plays like New Burbage on amphetamines.
But Pure absurdist sketch comedy; if you loved the quieter, sadder notes of Slings & Arrows, this offers almost none.
The Larry Sanders Show1992
The original backstage-comedy blueprint — vain performers, harried staff, and a host whose neediness runs the whole operation, told with the same clear-eyed affection for people who are impossible to work with.
But Talk-show satire rather than theatre; some of its industry-specific jokes have aged into history lessons.
Party Down2009
Failed actors catering parties between auditions, watching their dreams curdle in real time — the bleaker, funnier cousin of New Burbage's actors scraping by for love of the work.
But Nastier and more deflating; there's little of the earnest, redemptive uplift Slings & Arrows offers.
Smash2012no page yet
A backstage musical about mounting a Broadway show, complete with warring collaborators, an unstable star, and a production that might fall apart before opening night.
But Broadway musical theatre rather than Shakespeare, and considerably soapier — camp where Slings & Arrows earns its emotion.
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip2006
Aaron Sorkin's take on the same idea — a gifted, erratic creative director trying to save a struggling institution through sheer belief in the work, walking and talking through crisis after crisis.
But Sorkin's speechy earnestness can feel self-important next to Slings & Arrows' lighter comic touch.
King Lear1970no page yet
The exact play New Burbage stages in its bleakest season, performed here with none of the comic scaffolding — same text, opposite tone, showing what the tragedy looks like without a laugh to soften it.
A brutal, austere Shakespeare adaptation that strips Lear down to cold and cruelty — worth seeing right after watching Geoffrey wrestle the same play into being.
But Deliberately harsh and joyless filmmaking; it's an endurance test, not entertainment, and offers zero backstage comfort.
UnREAL2015
Same premise turned inside out — a talented, unraveling producer manipulating a cast to create drama, except the 'art' here is a trashy dating show instead of Shakespeare, and the manipulation is the point rather than the tragedy.
A vicious, addictive look at how reality TV gets made, with a heroine as brilliant and self-destructive as Geoffrey, just aiming her talent at exploitation instead of art.
But Considerably darker and nastier with no redemptive warmth — this is about complicity in cruelty, not love of craft.
People
Cast
Writing
- Mark McKinneyCreator
Production
- Aeschylus PoulosAssociate Producer
- Barbara Willis SweeteAssociate Producer
- Jennifer WeissAssociate Producer
- Larry WeinsteinAssociate Producer
- Sheena MacdonaldCo-Producer
- Laura MichalchyshynExecutive Producer
- Niv FichmanExecutive Producer
- Daniel IronProducer
- Niv FichmanProducer
- Sari FriedlandProducer
Recommended by
Waiting for Guffman, Day for Night, Halt and Catch Fire, The Larry Sanders Show, Episodes, Living in Oblivion, Much Ado About Nothing, Call My Agent! The Movie, The Producers, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, A Cock and Bull Story, Major League