25 Half-Hour Shows to Watch Now

Watch it on: Netflix

Sorry for Your Loss

On another platform, Sorry for Your Loss might have found the viewers it deserves, but Kit Steinkellner’s compact, humane drama about life after grief is worth braving the glitchiness of Facebook Watch. Elizabeth Olsen is very good as Leigh, an advice columnist who’s reeling from her husband’s unexpected death, and navigating not only the existential destabilization of profound loss, but also the bureaucratic small stuff that comes with it. Making jokes about death is hard to do well, but Steinkellner finds a tone that’s just right, portraying the comedy of Leigh’s emotional oscillations, the poignancy of her family’s efforts to help her get by, and the flashes of hope that peek through.

Watch it on: Facebook Watch

Read: What ‘Sorry for Your Loss’ understands about grief

This Way Up

Aisling Bea (Living With Yourself) created and stars in this six-episode dramedy about a woman, Áine, trying to recover after a “teeny little nervous breakdown.” Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe), who executive produced, plays Áine’s sister, and the bond between the two is one of the show’s biggest assets, along with Áine’s nascent flirtation with a starchy single father played by Tobias Menzies. This Way Up is loaded with comic absurdity: Áine makes farcical errors while trying to help people and engages in a spectacular Cranberries sing-along at one family gathering. But the show never loses sight of how vulnerable Áine is, and how her openness and empathy are strengths, even if they make everyday life that much harder.

Watch it on: Hulu

Shows About the Joy of Before

Atlanta

Arguably no show does as much in as little space as Donald Glover’s whimsical, brilliant series about a Princeton dropout named Earn who’s trying to live up to his name and master the hustle of modern life. Over two seasons (with a third coming in 2021), Atlanta has satirized the music industry, probed police brutality, created a fictional talk show complete with advertisements, and crafted a standalone work of horror about a former music star and his eerily controlling brother. Hiro Murai’s direction makes the series a visual feat, and Glover and his brother, Stephen, who co-writes, set Atlanta’s ambitions as a dazzling exploration of time and place.

Watch it on: FX and Hulu

GLOW

Basically everything that’s verboten right now is featured across GLOW’s three seasons—congregating in large groups, engaging in wanton physical contact with others, making a television show, Las Vegas. The pivotal themes of Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch’s ’80s-set series about a women’s wrestling league (inspired by the real-life Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), though, are timeless. Ever since Ruth (Alison Brie), a struggling actor, channeled her frustrated creativity into originating the role of “Zoya the Destroya” in Season 1, GLOW has used its spandexed, psychedelic setup to explore subjects from female friendship and identity to harassment in the entertainment industry and closeted sexuality. It’s (almost) always a blast.