Television series

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Name: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Released: 2017
Cast: Rachel Brosnahan, Tony Shalhoub, Alex Borstein, Michael Zegen, Marin Hinkle

Comedy

A whip-smart, visually sumptuous comedy about Midge Maisel, a 1958 Upper West Side housewife who stumbles into stand-up comedy after her marriage implodes. It's dazzlingly costumed, relentlessly fast-talking, and unapologetically theatrical — equal parts backstage drama and screwball comedy. Best for people who love banter, glamour, and watching someone discover they're far more dangerous than anyone assumed.

TVMaze rating

4.1

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love sharp, fast-talking period comedy where the jokes land on the rhythm of the dialogue and the costumes and music do as much work as the punchlines.

Skip it if you prefer stories that stay put, since this one keeps moving at a brisk clip and hops between bright banter and sadder moments without much pause.

What it asks of you: Attention at full volume: forty-three episodes across five seasons, each about fifty-six minutes, and it rewards you for keeping up with rapid-fire dialogue.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Gilmore Girls2000

Same creator, same DNA: rapid-fire dialogue, a fierce mother-daughter dynamic, and a small world rendered so vividly you'll want to move there. If you love Midge's cadence, this is where it was born.

But It's cosy small-town Connecticut, not glitzy Manhattan — the stakes are gentler and the pace, believe it or not, is even quicker.

Mad Men2007

The same Manhattan, a few years later, seen through the ad agency instead of the comedy club — gorgeous, meticulous, and just as obsessed with reinvention and appearances.

But It's slow, melancholic, and unglamorous where Maisel is quick and buoyant — a very different emotional register.

Hacks2021

A prickly, brilliant look at a female comedian's career, ego, and survival instincts, with the sharpest jokes-about-jokes writing on television right now.

But It's set in the present day and is far more acidic — less romantic period fantasy, more brutal industry satire.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Funny Girl1968

Maisel's whole premise — a funny woman clawing her way onto a stage nobody wanted her on — is a direct, acknowledged descendant of this film, right down to the title.

Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice, a plain-looking Jewish girl from nowhere who becomes a comic sensation through sheer force of personality — this is Maisel's literal great-grandmother, right down to the borrowed title pun.

But It's a full-blown musical, nearly three hours long, and sincere in a way modern audiences may find corny rather than charming.

GLOW2017

Women in the 1980s reinventing themselves through a disreputable form of performance, with the same mix of comedy, ambition, and messy female friendship.

But Wrestling instead of stand-up, and a scrappier, less polished visual style than Maisel's lush production design.

Younger2015

A woman starting over under a false identity in the New York publishing world — light, funny, and full of the same fizzy, aspirational energy.

But Contemporary setting and lower stakes; it's comfort television rather than the layered family drama Maisel occasionally becomes.

Fleabag2016

A whip-fast, emotionally reckless woman narrating her own disaster with unstoppable wit — the closest thing British TV has to Midge's voice and speed.

But Much darker and more intimate, with a bleakness underneath the jokes that Maisel rarely allows itself.

Schitt's Creek2015

A family stripped of status forced to rebuild from nothing, with the same warmth, absurd supporting cast, and eventual tenderness beneath the comedy.

But Contemporary rural Canada instead of glamorous 1958 Manhattan — tonally cosier and far less concerned with ambition.

Feud2017

Old Hollywood glamour, vicious wit, and women fighting for space in industries built to discard them — lavish, catty, and gorgeously costumed.

But Far more caustic and tragic in tone; there's little of Maisel's forward-charging optimism here.

The Crown2016

If it's the production values you love — the frocks, the interiors, the sense of history rendered as spectacle — this delivers on an even grander scale.

But Stately and reserved where Maisel is loud and fast; royal restraint instead of comedy-club chaos.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work2010

Rivers is the real-world echo of Midge: a woman who broke into comedy through personal catastrophe. This documentary shows what that actually costs, decades on.

A documentary following the real Joan Rivers in her seventies, still hustling, still terrified of irrelevance — the unglamorous, exhausting truth behind every stand-up fantasy Maisel makes look easy.

But There's no romance here, just raw exhaustion and real financial desperation — it's sobering where Maisel is a fairy tale.

A Serious Man2009

Both mine the same seam of mid-century Jewish domestic life and comic fatalism, but where Maisel finds triumph in chaos, this film finds only the joke of an indifferent universe.

The Coen brothers' pitch-black comedy about a Jewish family unraveling under absurd cosmic pressure — same cultural texture as Maisel's Weissmans, filtered through dread instead of delight.

But It's bleak, ambiguous, and deliberately unresolved — closer to a fable about suffering than anything resembling a crowd-pleaser.