Television series
This Way Up
This Way Up follows Aine, an English teacher in London rebuilding her life after a breakdown and a stint in rehab, leaning hard on her sister Shona for support she resists needing. It's funny the way real friends are funny — quick, filthy, generous — and precise about how depression coexists with ordinary days. Warm without turning soft, and never trades honesty for a tidy recovery arc.
If you liked this
Fleabag2016
Comedy built directly on top of grief and self-sabotage, the same confessional intimacy and willingness to be funny and unlikeable in the same breath.
But More stylised, colder at the edges, breaks the fourth wall where This Way Up stays quietly inside its own head.
Catastrophe2015
Sharon Horgan again, this time paired with Rob Delaney, mixing filthy jokes with real crisis and unglamorous honesty about relationships falling apart and holding together.
But Centres on marriage and parenthood rather than mental illness specifically, and it's a touch broader in its comedy.
Feel Good2020no page yet
Mae Martin's semi-autobiographical show about addiction and recovery has the exact same blend of London wit and real vulnerability underneath it.
But More focused on romantic obsession specifically, and tonally jumpier between comedy and crisis.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
A Woman Under the Influence1974
This Way Up's lightness is a choice, not an absence of feeling — this shows exactly what the jokes are quietly covering for.
Cassavetes' unflinching portrait of a wife unraveling, with a Gena Rowlands performance that is still the rawest depiction of collapse ever put on screen.
But No comic relief whatsoever, nearly two and a half hours of sustained emotional intensity with no easy exit.
More like this (8)
Motherland2016
Horgan's ensemble sitcom about exhausted women barely keeping their lives together is brutally, precisely funny in a similar register.
But Bigger ensemble, sitcom pacing, doesn't dig into mental illness the way This Way Up does.
Derry Girls2018
Same quick Irish wit, same sisterly chaos-and-love tangle, the sort of warmth that makes you laugh out loud alone in a room.
But Teenage, period-set, no thread of adult mental illness running underneath it.
Please Like Me2013
Australian comedy-drama about mental illness within a family, gentle and generous, with a sibling dynamic that echoes Aine and Shona's.
But Slower and more meandering, with softer jokes than the rapid-fire style This Way Up runs on.
PEN152019
Willing to be humiliating and tender in the same scene, mining discomfort for empathy rather than cruelty, much like Aine's worst moments.
But Adolescent setting and subject matter, a world away from adult breakdown and recovery.
Colin From Accounts2022no page yet
An odd-couple comedy with real awkwardness and heart, generous toward flawed people the way This Way Up is generous toward Aine.
But Lighter stakes, more romance than reckoning, less interested in mental illness as a subject.
Girls2012
Messy young women, self-destructive but sympathetic, comedy wrung out of real pain and bad decisions in a very similar key.
But More caustic, more navel-gazing New York energy, less warmth extended toward its characters.
BoJack Horseman2014
Same trick as This Way Up — bury despair inside comedy's rhythms until you don't notice you've been gutted — in a totally different costume.
An animated sitcom about a talking horse that turns out to be one of the most honest things ever made about depression and the limits of willpower.
But Takes a few episodes to earn its depth, and the talking-animal premise is a genuine barrier for some viewers.
Stutz2022no page yet
This Way Up dramatises the comedy of getting better; this swaps fiction for documentary and jokes for the real, undramatic mechanics of a session.
Jonah Hill's documentary about his own therapist, unpolished and quietly moving about what therapy actually looks like with no fictional safety net.
But Not funny by design, and the meta setup of filming your own sessions can feel a little self-indulgent.
People
Cast
Writing
- Aisling BeaCreator
Production
- Aisling BeaExecutive Producer
- Clelia MountfordExecutive Producer
- Sharon HorganExecutive Producer
- Hannah WilcockLine Producer
- Alex WincklerProducer
- Gavin O'GradyProducer