It Gets Worse Is the Great Gen Z Comedy We’ve Been Waiting For
Time · Judy Berman ·
The British import, streaming in the U.S. on Paramount+, understands the plight of the 20-something—and knows how to laugh about it
Lena Dunham sits behind a desk in the glassy, millennial-pink offices of a tech startup, monologuing away like someone who has just devoured all of Lean In in a single sitting. “You need to advocate for yourself,” her character insists. “Women need to stop apologizing, especially at work.” A few minutes later, she’s quizzing a co-worker about her sexual practices.
This is not a scene from the recently announced Girls revival, though it certainly looks like it could be. Dunham is not the star of this British comedy, It Gets Worse, premiering Nov. 6 in the U.S. on Paramount+. She’s in just a handful of scenes as the casually inappropriate CEO of a girly-branded data broker. Her guest appearance functions as both a self-aware gesture from the quintessential millennial and an implicit passing of the messy-young-adult torch. We watch her offer an entry-level position on her company’s “people team” (which she describes as “a lot like HR, only you don’t need any training”) to an intern, Abi (Emily Fairn). This is no dream job. It’s not even the job you endure in hopes of working your way up to something remunerative and fulfilling. But for Abi, one of the bleakly humorous series’ main characters, it’s an achievement worth celebrating—because she is an overeducated young London transplant in 2026. Welcome to contemporary 20-something life, as seen through the already weary eyes of an actual 20-something: creator and star Leo Reich. The latest in a flood of Gen Z hangout comedies, it’s TV’s sharpest portrait of the generation yet.
The series spends half of its six-episode first season introducing each of its three leads in turn, best friends from college who are being evicted from their shared flat and must scatter to temporary lodgings for the few weeks it will take to get their new place ready. Reich’s Ethan is a lightly spoiled, reflexively self-deprecating gay man whose search for love and direction is hampered by his aversion to seriousness and the fact that he has no idea what he wants. The voiceover narration—from Zadie Smith, what a flex—that frames the characters’ misadventures in ruminative yet unsparing fashion notes that he has “one of the easiest lives in recorded human history.” Abi is the conventional one, diligently striving in the white-collar world for mundane material comforts. A big part of that image is her boyfriend, Tom (Sean Delaney), a possessive, friendless but well-meaning guy in his 30s who musters more enthusiasm for cooking miso lamb chops than for sex. Finally, there’s Sam (Olive Gray). An aspiring writer who tutors rich kids to pay the bills, she radiates maturity. But when she takes a makeshift room at the anarchist coop where her ex-girlfriend (India Mullen) lives, the proximity tests her cool.