Television series
The Soup
- Satire
- Light-hearted
- Relentless
- Dip in and out
The Soup is a weekly comedy romp through television's worst, weirdest, and most unhinged moments. Joel McHale presides over a blur of clips, sketches, and celebrity guests, finding the humor in reality TV meltdowns and daytime talk disasters. It's for people who love pop culture enough to mock it—and mock it well.
If you liked this
Mystery Science Theater 30001988
The spiritual ancestor of everything about watching bad media together. A human and robots provide hilarious live commentary over a terrible B-movie, finding gold in genuine garbage. Pure comedic alchemy.
But The low-budget aesthetic is intentional but relentless. After 10 seasons, the format can feel repetitive if you're not already invested in the characters.
Saturday Night Live1975
The clearest DNA match: sketch comedy rooted in current events and celebrities, built for people who watch television obsessively. SNL's hit rate varies wildly, but the hits are genuinely brilliant.
But Most sketches overstay their welcome. You're committing to 90 minutes for maybe three great moments, depending on the host.
30 Rock2006
Tina Fey's show about making a sketch comedy show. It has the same affection for TV absurdity as The Soup, but weaponizes it into a tight narrative structure with recurring characters you actually love.
But The rapid-fire jokes can feel exhausting after a while. Some episodes prioritize gags over story in ways that land unevenly.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Soup
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Troll 21990
Both are built entirely on the principle that sometimes the funniest thing is simply letting something be exactly what it is—without irony, without apology, without sense.
A genuinely incompetent horror film that somehow becomes a perfect comedy through no intentional effort. It's what The Soup would show if it existed in 1990—proof that sometimes reality is funnier than anything writers could invent.
But It's actually difficult to watch. The pacing is glacial, and finding the fun requires you to actively work and surrender to its awfulness.
More like this (7)
Arrested Development2003
Masters of absurdist humor and the callback. Like The Soup, it revels in the ridiculous and rewards close attention, but builds a world where the madness accumulates into something cohesive and oddly touching.
But The constant winking can feel smugly self-satisfied. If you don't catch the jokes, you feel left out, which is by design.
Veep2012
Armando Iannucci's obscenity-laced masterpiece about incompetence in power. It channels the same gleeful mockery of human behavior and institutional insanity that drives The Soup's best moments.
But The relentless nihilism is exhausting. There's no warmth or respite; it's 30 minutes of characters being terrible to each other without mercy.
I Love You, America with Sarah Silverman2017
Silverman roaming the country having conversations with strangers, finding both humor and unexpected human connection in everyday absurdity. It keeps The Soup's eye for the weird but grounds it in genuine curiosity.
But It meanders. When the conversations don't land, there's nothing but Silverman trying to force something funny to happen, and it shows.
Schitt's Creek2015
Eugene Levy and Dan Levy create a show about ridiculous people in a ridiculous situation, but treat them with genuine affection. It has The Soup's comedic sensibility but uses it to build something warm underneath.
But The early seasons are broad and uneven. The characters don't fully cohere until season two, and some people bounce off before it gets there.
Extras2005
Ricky Gervais's mockumentary about failed actors and pretentious celebrities. Sharp, cringe-inducing, and genuinely angry at mediocrity and fame-chasing—like The Soup but concentrated and more venomous.
But The humor is almost entirely dependent on your feeling bad for the main character. If that doesn't work for you, there's not much else.
The Comeback2005
Like The Soup, it loves television and celebrity culture enough to understand exactly how to hurt it. But instead of clips, it creates the material itself—the thing The Soup would later clip and mock.
Lisa Kudrow as a delusional failed actress creating a one-woman show. It's a faux-documentary shot like a real reality show, finding horror in people's self-delusion. The mockery is surgical but never cruel.
But The cringe is brutal. It's constructed specifically to make you uncomfortable; if you can't sit with that, it won't work.
Mulholland Drive2001
The Soup mocks TV and celebrity from outside. Lynch dismantles the machinery from inside, treating the same subject with existential dread instead of jokes—proof that obsession with entertainment runs so deep it can become tragedy.
David Lynch's fractured fever dream about Hollywood failure, identity, and the gap between fantasy and reality. It's serious cinema for people obsessed with how entertainment and delusion intersect—the opposite register from The Soup but the same obsession.
But It's deliberately obscure and refuses to explain itself. If you want coherence or catharsis, Lynch won't give it to you, and that's the point.
People
Cast
Jade Catta-PretaHost
Production
- Andrew GenserAssociate Producer
- Dan RiesserAssociate Producer
- Joel McHaleCo-Executive Producer
- Barbara WellnerExecutive Producer
- Edward BoydExecutive Producer
- K.P. AndersonExecutive Producer
- Stan EvansExecutive Producer
- Greg FidelerSupervising Producer