Television series

This Country

This Country is a mockumentary sitcom about two bored cousins scraping through life in a Cotswolds village with no jobs, no prospects and nowhere to be. It's dry, melancholic, built on long pauses and small humiliations rather than jokes-per-minute. Funny in a way that sneaks up on you, and quietly devastating about what it costs to be young somewhere with nothing left to do.

TVMaze rating6.8

If you liked this

People Just Do Nothing2014

Same mockumentary deadpan, same gallery of hopeless dreamers who think they're main characters, same ache under the laughs — just swap the Cotswolds for a Brentford tower block.

But The characters are even more clueless and cringeworthy, so if Kerry and Kurtan's delusions grated, this turns that dial up.

People Just Do Nothing poster

Detectorists2014

Mackenzie Crook's gentle, melancholic comedy about two metal-detecting hobbyists in rural England shares that same slow, affectionate patience with small lives and unglamorous landscapes.

But It's much softer and kinder — almost nothing bad happens, which some will find soothing and others will find slack.

Detectorists poster

The Office2005

The mockumentary format this show borrows wholesale started here — the same cringing sympathy for small people trapped in small worlds, filmed like nobody's watching.

But It's over twenty years old now and its influence has been absorbed everywhere, so some beats feel more familiar than fresh.

The Office poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Kes1970

Ken Loach's film almost invented the vocabulary this show plays with — a bored, overlooked kid in rural England going nowhere, filmed with unglamorous honesty. The show's compassion for its own hopeless kids is a direct descendant.

A devastating, tender portrait of a working-class boy in rural Yorkshire finding meaning in training a kestrel, filmed with a documentary rawness that shaped fifty years of British social realism.

But No jokes to soften it — it's a genuinely sad film about a childhood with no exits, and it ends without mercy.

Kes poster
More like this (8)

Him & Her2010no page yet

A scruffy, low-budget sitcom that never leaves one flat, built entirely on the boredom and bickering of two people going nowhere — the same appetite for finding comedy in doing nothing.

But Almost nothing happens across whole episodes, which some viewers find hypnotic and others will find like watching paint dry.

Derry Girls2018

Swaps the Cotswolds for Derry and cousins for schoolgirls, but keeps the same specific, regional, fiercely local comedy of teenagers going slightly mad from boredom.

But It's warmer, faster and more plot-driven, with none of the show's dry, awkward pauses or quiet sadness.

Derry Girls poster

Rain Dogs2023no page yet

Daisy May Cooper's follow-up trades rural boredom for London poverty, keeping her gift for finding wild, chaotic comedy inside genuinely precarious lives.

But It's angrier and more overtly dramatic, with real stakes and danger that push it further from sitcom comfort.

Toast of London2012

A completely different flavour of British eccentricity — broader, sillier, more surreal — but the same commitment to a deluded man convinced he's about to make it big.

But It's a lot weirder and more theatrical, with none of the naturalistic, documentary-style grounding.

Toast of London poster

The Inbetweeners2008

Cruder and broader, but built from the same fuel — bored teenagers with nothing to do and nowhere to go, endlessly humiliating themselves in the process.

But It's much more juvenile and gross-out, chasing bigger laughs at the expense of the quieter character work.

The Inbetweeners poster

Gavin & Stacey2007

A warmer, more traditional sitcom, but it shares that same deep affection for ordinary, unglamorous people and the strange specificity of British regional life.

But It's a multi-camera studio sitcom with none of the dry, single-camera awkwardness that gives This Country its edge.

Gavin & Stacey poster

American Movie1999

Swap the fictional cousins for real people and you get this documentary — a broke filmmaker and his hapless friend trying to finish a horror short, shot with the same fond, cringing affection the show has for Kerry and Kurtan.

Real life delivers a funnier, sadder, stranger version of small-town ambition than fiction could invent, following an amateur filmmaker's chaotic quest to finish his horror movie.

But The humour comes from watching real people fail in real time, which some viewers find uncomfortable rather than charming.

American Movie poster

American Honey2016

Strip out the jokes and you're left with the same raw material — broke kids, no prospects, small towns offering nothing — reimagined as a sprawling, sun-bleached road movie.

A three-hour fever dream following disaffected teens crossing the American Midwest, showing the same rootless boredom and hunger for belonging with none of the comfort of a laugh track.

But It's long, loose and unresolved, more interested in mood than plot, and doesn't offer the release of a punchline.

American Honey poster

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Recommended by

Derry Girls, Chewing Gum, Peep Show, Detectorists, The Royle Family, Little Britain, Rev., Camberwick Green, People Just Do Nothing, Lark Rise to Candleford, The Yorkshire Vet, Gavin & Stacey