Television series

The Rehearsal

Nathan Fielder builds full-scale replicas of real people's lives so they can practice conversations, confrontations, even parenthood, before they happen for real. It's deadpan to the point of vertigo, the humor souring into something stranger and sadder as the artifice swallows its creator too. Equal parts prank show, essay film and confession, it's for people who like their comedy laced with real dread.

TVMaze rating6.7

If you liked this

Nathan for You2013

Fielder's original show is the blueprint — deadpan business "help" that spirals into elaborate, absurd real-world stunts, laced with genuine tenderness underneath the discomfort. Start here to see the method before it got existential.

But Lower budget, punchier episodes — less of the slow, creeping unease that defines The Rehearsal.

Nathan for You poster

Who Is America?2018

Sacha Baron Cohen ambushes real public figures with elaborate false personas, exposing what people will say when they think the cameras believe them too. Same nerve, same discomfort watching real people get fooled in service of a larger truth.

But Meaner and more overtly political than Fielder's work — less empathy, more ambush.

Who Is America? poster

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson2019

Sketch after sketch of ordinary social situations curdling into humiliating disaster, played with the same total commitment to a bit long after it's stopped being funny and started being unbearable.

But Broader, sillier, and much shorter — sketches, not sustained slow-burn discomfort.

I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Synecdoche, New York2008

A man builds a life-size replica of his own city to rehearse and control every relationship in his life, literalizing the exact obsession that drives Fielder's simulations — just played as devastating tragedy instead of comedy.

Charlie Kaufman's masterpiece follows a theatre director building an ever-expanding, full-scale replica of his own life to finally get it right, spiraling into something achingly sad about the impossibility of truly rehearsing living.

But Bleak, demanding, occasionally unbearable — no comic relief, just grief dressed as metaphor.

Synecdoche, New York poster
More like this (8)

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan2020no page yet

Real people, unaware they're part of a joke, reveal themselves in front of a character built entirely to provoke them — the same collision of scripted absurdity and unscripted human truth.

But Broader satire, louder jokes, none of the Rehearsal's slow, mournful undertow.

Curb Your Enthusiasm2000

Larry David turns minor social missteps into escalating catastrophes with the same gift for finding the exact wrong thing to say at the exact wrong moment. A masterclass in overthinking a simple interaction into disaster.

But Broad sitcom energy throughout — no interest in Fielder's quieter, more melancholic side.

Curb Your Enthusiasm poster

Jury Duty2023no page yet

One unwitting, decent man believes he's on a real jury while everyone around him is an actor — an elaborate, sustained hoax played for warmth rather than cruelty, and shockingly moving by the end.

But Sweeter and more straightforwardly funny — none of Fielder's self-implicating unease.

Documentary Now!2015

Pitch-perfect parodies of prestige documentaries, deadpan to the point that you sometimes forget you're watching fiction — the same total commitment to a bit that makes the joke feel almost too real.

But Anthology format, no ongoing story or emotional throughline like Fielder builds across a season.

Documentary Now! poster

The Office2005

The original mockumentary hum of cringe and quiet compassion for people trying too hard, or not knowing how they look on camera, sits somewhere near Fielder's sensibility.

But Warmer, safer, and far less interested in the ethics of watching people at all.

The Office poster

American Vandal2017

A true-crime parody that takes its dumb premise dead seriously, treating high school vandalism with the same doc-style gravity as a murder case — commitment to a bit as philosophy.

But Teen-comedy energy throughout; lacks the melancholy undertow running beneath Fielder's work.

American Vandal poster

Sherman's March1986

Ross McElwee set out to document General Sherman's Civil War march and ended up turning the camera on his own romantic failures instead — an unwitting ancestor of Fielder's trick of using a fake premise to stage a real reckoning.

A wandering, wry, deeply personal documentary where the filmmaker's search for a subject becomes a search for himself, decades before "personal documentary" was even a category people had a name for.

But Slow, meandering, and shot on grainy 1980s film stock — patience required, no punchlines waiting.

Sherman's March poster

The Joe Schmo Show2003no page yet

One real, unwitting contestant believes he's on an actual reality show; everyone else is a paid actor performing an elaborate fake production around him — the same architecture of staged reality and real emotion, just gleefully trashy where Fielder is melancholy.

Early-2000s reality TV at its most delightfully cruel and clever — a whole fake competition show built around one guy who has no idea he's the only real person in it.

But Cheap, dated, and unapologetically mean-spirited — none of the moral weight Fielder brings to the same premise.

People

Cast

Writing

Production

Recommended by