Summary

• Shows with bizarre premises, dark comedy/satire, and stars from "The Curse" are the best options for fans looking for similar content.
• "The Rehearsal" is Nathan Fielder's earlier work that showcases his absurd humor and is worth binge-watching.
• "Six Feet Under" and "Barry" are dark comedies that explore intense themes, while "Succession" and "Atlanta" use satire to examine wealth and American social issues.

Showtime's The Curse has received overwhelming critical acclaim, and there are several similar shows for audiences to explore. Starring comedian Nathan Fielder, alongside Emma Stone and Benny Safdie, The Curse is a satirical comedy series centered around a married couple developing an HGTV show. Fielder and Stone star as Asher and Whitney, the couple stumbling to send a positive message with their show, Fliplanthropy, while trying to conceive a child and struggling with a "curse" planted on them by a small child. There's a bizarre mix of ideas, which makes the Showtime series so fantastic.

Like Nathan Fielder's previous work, The Curse embraces its absurd humor, making it comparable to several other well-known TV series. Shows with bizarre premises, dark comedy/satire, and shows that feature the stars of The Curse are the best options. While it's safe to say after the show's finale that there's nothing precisely like Fielder's latest hit, there are plenty of options to supplement the craving for more.

10 The Rehearsal

Streaming on Max.

In 2022, Nathan Fielder's HBO docu-comedy series, The Rehearsal, was released, and it's some of his best comedy to date. The bizarre premise is that Nathan finds ordinary people and helps them rehearse difficult conversations they may need to have in their lives. Using information he gathered about the subjects without their knowledge, each episode of the series sees a different person subjected to an extravagant simulation of a possible situation. With only six hilarious episodes so far, viewers can catch up on The Rehearsal in a day of binge-watching.

9 Nathan For You

Streaming on Max and Paramount+.

Nathan Fielder's first show for Comedy Central was Nathan For You, a unique and hilarious reality comedy series. Each episode of the series consists of Nathan helping out small businesses, utilizing unconventional, absurd methods to help them compete. The best Nathan For You segments, like "Dumb Starbucks" and "Petting Zoo," actually had their events go viral before audiences knew they were happening because of a comedy show.

8 Six Feet Under

Streaming on Max.

The show's central theme is mortality, closely tied to death. Six Feet Under examines complex aspects of humanity through a mix of drama and satire.

One of HBO's classic shows, Six Feet Under, was massively popular in its era, mixing dark comedy with intense themes, similar to The Curse. The series is centered around a family who own and operate a funeral home. Given their close proximity to death, mortality is one of the show's central ideas. Six Feet Under explores complex aspects of humanity with drama and satire, and while the humor is dark, it's not as bizarre as The Curse.

7 Barry

Streaming on Max.

Barry is dark and unsettling, but with excellent performances and some genuinely funny episodes.

HBO and dark comedy go hand-in-hand, and Barry is the network's most recent masterpiece in the genre. Like The Curse, Barry comes from the artistic creativity of a beloved comedian, in this case, Bill Hader. Hader's style of performative humor typically differs from Fielder's, though Hader's character in Barry is extremely deadpan and dry. He plays a hitman who attends a Los Angeles acting class and decides he wants to move on from his life of crime and murder to pursue acting, falling in love with a classmate named Sally. Barry is an incredibly dark, sometimes disturbing series, but it's filled with fantastic performances and has several laugh-out-loud funny episodes.

6 Succession

Streaming on Max.

HBO's Succession and The Curse don't seem too similar at first glance, but the series have several similarities. To be clear, Succession's humor is dark and satirical, but it's not nearly as bizarre as The Curse. However, both shows are filled with painfully awkward dialogue and examine themes of wealth through satire and performative activism. While Asher and Whitney try to utilize their philanthropic reality TV series to build their brand, the Roy family plays a constant game of public appeal as they vie for the company.

The character of Logan Roy, played by Brian Cox, is loosely based on real-life media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

5 Atlanta

Streaming on Hulu.

The show embraces surrealism and heightened reality, exploring American social issues through a fascinating lens.

FX's Atlanta is a massive artistic accomplishment on modern television, boasting an all-star cast, phenomenal writing, and great direction. While the first season is relatively tame, centered around Donald Glover's Earnest Marks, a music manager for a famous Atlanta rapper, each season grows more bizarre and experimental. Starting in season 2, the show embraces surrealism and heightened reality, exploring American social issues through a fascinating lens. The series also stars Lakeith Stanfield, Brian Tyree Henry, and Zazie Beetz.

4 Maniac

Streaming on Netflix.

Maniac is a psychological dramedy that criminally flew under the radar.

Emma Stone's current career trend is centered around darkly comedic projects, which can also describe her previous TV series from 2018. The Netflix series Maniac is a psychological dramedy that criminally flew under the radar. The ten-episode series is fantastic, centered around a mind-bending pharmaceutical trial. Maniac is filled with bizarre hallucinatory worlds that offer similar craziness to The Curse finale. The show boasts a tremendous cast of Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, Justin Theroux, Julia Garner, and more.

3 Jury Duty

Streaming on Prime Video.

The reality series Jury Duty actually seems like something Nathan Fielder could have written. The show's premise is that it's a hoax where a fake jury trial is established, with eleven actors composing a majority of the jury. The twelfth spot is filled by Ronald Gladden, a man who unknowingly signed up to star in the TV series and is the only person on it who doesn't know it's fake. Naturally, the series is hilarious, with a style of humor that resembles Fielder's work.

2 Fargo

Streaming on Hulu.

FX's Fargo has been one of the best drama TV shows of 2023, returning for its fifth season. The show's anthology format means each season offers a new story with a fresh cast, though each is inspired by the film Fargo and the work of the Coen Brothers. In each narrative, a series of absurdly unfortunate events occur surrounding a crime or murder. Each season's cast includes movie star actors like Ewan McGregor and Kirsten Dunst. The show mixes its dramatic premise with hilarious, often absurd, dark comedy.

The TV series is inspired by the 1996 film "Fargo" directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.

1 Twin Peaks

Streaming on Paramount+.

It is one of the few series that can match The Curse in its off-beat, fever-dream-like nature.

Three decades after its release, Twin Peaks is still unparalleled in of absurdist storytelling on television. While Twin Peaks doesn't lend itself as much to comedy as other shows like The Curse, it's considered one of the best TV shows of all time and is one of the few series that can match The Curse in its off-beat, fever-dream-like nature. The classic series is known for feeling nonsensical, with bizarre dream sequences that inspired many great 21st-century shows like The Sopranos, Lost, and many more.