If a TV show is made with enough self-awareness, it can both anticipate viewers’ reactions and work to pre-emptively counter them. “It Gets Worse,” from the British comedian Leo Reich, does that from the start.
The new series, now available to stream on Paramount+, opens on Ethan (Reich) wandering through London. A narrator (voiced by the writer Zadie Smith) sets the scene with a declaration: “Ethan had one of the easiest lives in recorded human history.” He has good friends and halfway decent sex. He’s even cutting down on his screen time. (If you don’t count his laptop or his television.)
Ethan, Smith’s narration concludes with a disarming warmth, has “much to feel grateful for.” Still, he can’t shake the feeling that he should have something, anything, more.
It’s a classically annoying trait for a character in his early 20s. Reich, who wrote all six episodes, is clever to acknowledge Ethan’s aimlessness outright. As with any story about the growing pains of one’s 20s, the frustration of feeling perpetually dissatisfied is the point.
Ethan and his best friends, Abi (Emily Fairn) and Sam (Olive Gray), spend their days grasping for meaning between corporate gigs and uninspiring partners. Their nights out are full of potential, but rarely deliver. They have plenty of sex, but it’s either too degrading or not degrading enough.
Sam is a writer who fancies herself the most emotionally mature member of the group; that “maturity” usually manifests as a stubborn refusal to take her own messy feelings seriously. Abi knows exactly what she wants — or at least, says the narrator, that “it’s important to know what you want.” Unfortunately, she can’t decide if that’s an Instagram-official life with her dependable (if condescending) boyfriend, Tom (Sean Delaney), or the shaggier chaos that Ethan and Sam represent.
The trio’s friendship is ostensibly the heart of the show, and Reich clearly believes their dynamic is special. So it’s strange that he immediately splits them up. The first episode starts with them getting kicked out of their shared apartment, and they spend the rest of the brief season mostly stranded on their own islands, trying to navigate life without the others.
Sam moves to a loft overflowing with new roommates — including her alluring, exasperating ex-girlfriend Zara (India Mullen). Abi moves in with Tom, more of an inconvenience than a partner, and befriends her awkward new co-worker, Louise (Emmeline Downie, a comic highlight in her debut role). Ethan spends most of his time (metaphorically) putting his foot in his mouth or asking men to do worse (literally).
With every new unfiltered argument and awkward sex scene, the influence of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” becomes only more undeniable. Reich’s writing is similarly confessional, surprising and unabashedly unflattering to his most beloved characters. If “Girls” had a voice-over, it’s easy to imagine it including lines like, “She knew conflict was not the same as abuse (apart from when it was),” or “He had never imagined things would be easy, but he had imagined more interesting difficulties …”
Ethan contains so much of Dunham’s confidently oblivious Hannah Horvath that he might as well be her London-based cousin. (An early example: Him spilling his most myopic thoughts to a very bored, very handsome therapist, played by Andrew Scott.) The only thing complicating the theory that “It Gets Worse” might exist in the “Girls” universe, in fact, is Dunham herself guest-starring as Abi’s nightmare millennial #girlboss.
As much as the shows share tonally and thematically, “It Gets Worse” at least sets itself apart visually. The series, directed entirely by Mounia Akl, moves with an intimate elasticity that makes each 20ish-minute episode fly by. She zooms in on the most awkward moments, capturing every face twitch.
This proves especially useful during an episode about Sam’s pretentious new roommate throwing a sex party for the sole purpose of making an even more pretentious docuseries about it. Akl swerves nimbly between her own established aesthetic and the sloppy footage of the pseudo documentary.
As much as I admire the work of Akl, Reich and the supporting cast, though, the star of “It Gets Worse” may be Smith as the narrator.
It is deceptively tricky to weave voice-over into the fabric of a show with enough elegance to justify it. But the unlikely combination of Smith’s voice of authority with Reich’s prickly words of insight turns the narration into the series’s most unusual asset. (Without spoiling anything, it also ends up serving an unexpected purpose that only makes it more essential.)
It wasn’t long before I was jotting down line after perceptive line as if I was taking notes in the margins of a manuscript. “It Gets Worse” is a pretty good TV show, but much to my surprise, I left it thinking that it could have been an even better book.
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