If you are searching for shows like The Comeback, chances are you are not simply looking for another comedy. You are looking for that rare, deliciously uncomfortable mix of satire, vulnerability, secondhand embarrassment, and emotional truth that made Valerie Cherish impossible to forget. The Comeback was never just about Hollywood. It was about ambition, image, aging, relevance, and the painfully human desire to be loved even while performing a version of yourself for the room.
That is why finding the right follow-up matters. A lot of series are funny. Fewer are brave enough to let their characters be needy, self-sabotaging, and sincere all at once. The best alternatives capture that same backstage tension: people desperate to stay visible, protect their ego, and hold on to some version of who they think they are.
I have always thought the magic of The Comeback lies in how it makes you laugh and cringe in the same breath. One moment you are wincing at a social disaster; the next, you feel genuine heartbreak for someone trying too hard in a world that rewards cool detachment. If that particular tone is what you miss, the series below are your best next watches.
What Makes a Show Feel Like The Comeback?
Before jumping into the list, it helps to pinpoint why shows like The Comeback stand out. They usually blend mockumentary or observational comedy with an unusually sharp understanding of performance, status, and humiliation. These are not comfort shows in the usual sense. They are funny because they are painfully precise.
- Cringe comedy: awkward encounters, social misfires, and painfully extended silences.
- Show business satire: entertainment industries, fame, branding, casting, or public image.
- Complicated leads: ambitious characters who are not always likable, but always compelling.
- Emotional undertow: beneath the comedy, there is loneliness, insecurity, or longing.
- Sharp ensemble work: assistants, rivals, producers, and family members who make the chaos richer.
With that in mind, here are 10 series that scratch the same itch in different ways.
10 Best Shows Like The Comeback
1. Hacks
If you want the closest modern equivalent to The Comeback, start with Hacks. The series follows legendary comedian Deborah Vance as she tries to stay relevant in a changing entertainment landscape, while clashing with a much younger comedy writer brought in to refresh her act. Like Valerie Cherish, Deborah is deeply invested in her image, highly skilled at performance, and vulnerable in ways she would rather not admit.
What makes Hacks such a smart companion watch is its layered understanding of fame and aging. It knows how brutal the industry can be toward women once they are no longer considered the newest thing in the room. At the same time, it never turns Deborah into a saint. She is difficult, proud, funny, and often emotionally reckless. That complexity feels very much in the spirit of Valerie.
If you loved the way The Comeback balanced cruelty with compassion, Hacks delivers that same blend with razor-sharp dialogue.
2. Episodes
Episodes is one of the most underrated choices for viewers craving TV shows like The Comeback. It follows a British writing couple who travel to Hollywood to adapt their successful series for American television, only to watch the system distort everything they created. Matt LeBlanc plays a heightened, hilariously self-absorbed version of himself, and the show thrives on insider absurdity.
This is a great pick if your favorite part of The Comeback was the entertainment-industry satire. It captures the indignity of development meetings, creative compromise, ego management, and public relations spin. More importantly, it understands that show business is often powered by people trying to remain graceful while their dignity quietly evaporates.
There is a special pleasure in watching smart people realize they are completely outmatched by Hollywood nonsense, and Episodes mines that feeling brilliantly.
3. Curb Your Enthusiasm
While Curb Your Enthusiasm is structurally different, it absolutely belongs on any list of shows like The Comeback. Larry David turns minor social friction into epic catastrophe, pushing awkwardness to a level that can make even seasoned cringe-comedy fans pause the episode and recover. If Valerie Cherish makes you squirm because she wants approval too badly, Larry makes you squirm because he wants honesty too much.
What links the two shows is their fearless commitment to discomfort. Both trust the audience to sit in embarrassment longer than most sitcoms would dare. Both also blur the line between public persona and performance, using entertainment-world contexts to expose pettiness, insecurity, and self-protection.
This is the recommendation for viewers who want the cringe factor dialed all the way up.
4. Getting On
Getting On is not about Hollywood, but it shares the same tonal sophistication that makes The Comeback so memorable. Set in a hospital's geriatric wing, the series turns bureaucracy, ego, and institutional absurdity into bleakly funny storytelling. It is drier and more subdued than Valerie Cherish's world, yet just as observant about people trying to preserve their self-image under pressure.
The show excels at finding comedy in systems that quietly humiliate everyone inside them. Its characters are trying to look competent, caring, and composed, even as everything around them suggests otherwise. That tension between presentation and reality is at the heart of The Comeback too.
If you appreciate comedy that trusts the audience to catch subtle emotional damage under the jokes, this one is a standout.
5. Veep
Veep trades Hollywood for politics, but the DNA is familiar: vanity, desperation, image control, and public embarrassment at a world-class level. Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives one of television's all-time great performances as Selina Meyer, a woman who is always chasing power and always one badly timed mistake away from humiliation.
Fans of shows like The Comeback will recognize that same fascination with performance. Every handshake, interview, apology, and strategic alliance in Veep feels like a piece of theater. The difference is that the dialogue is faster, meaner, and more openly ruthless. Still, beneath the acid wit is a similar insight: the people who need status most are often the least secure.
Watch this if you want your cringe comedy to move at machine-gun speed.
6. The Other Two
The Other Two is one of the smartest comedies about fame in recent years. The premise is irresistible: two struggling adult siblings are forced to navigate the sudden stardom of their much younger brother, a teen pop sensation. What follows is a hilarious and often painfully accurate look at branding, entertainment culture, and the emotional weirdness of being adjacent to celebrity.
This show earns a place among the best series like The Comeback because it understands how humiliating ambition can be. The central siblings are not untalented, but they are often a little behind, a little needy, and a little too aware of what success is supposed to look like. That emotional territory feels very Valerie Cherish.
It is also sneakily moving. The series knows that behind every polished image is a family trying to survive the distortion fame creates.
7. Enlightened
Enlightened is a less obvious choice, but a deeply rewarding one. Laura Dern plays Amy Jellicoe, a woman trying to rebuild her life after a breakdown, armed with a fierce desire for personal growth and absolutely no talent for low-drama reintegration into normal society. Like Valerie, Amy can be inspiring, exhausting, sympathetic, and mortifying in the same episode.
What connects this show to The Comeback is its compassion for a woman who keeps colliding with the limits of her own self-awareness. Amy sincerely wants to do better, but sincerity does not protect her from making scenes, misreading people, or chasing validation in counterproductive ways.
For viewers who loved the sadness beneath Valerie's optimism, Enlightened offers a richer, more introspective variation on that emotional experience.
8. BoJack Horseman
At first glance, an animated series about a washed-up sitcom star might seem like an unusual recommendation. But BoJack Horseman is one of the best answers to the question of what to watch after The Comeback. It explores failed reinvention, celebrity self-mythology, public image, and the wreckage left by unresolved insecurity.
BoJack and Valerie are different kinds of characters, but both are trapped by the stories they tell themselves about relevance and worth. Both perform constantly. Both desperately want to be understood. And both reveal how fame can preserve a person in a state of emotional adolescence.
If you liked The Comeback because it saw past the spectacle and into the ache underneath, BoJack Horseman hits that same nerve, often with surprising force.
9. Extras
Extras, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, follows a background actor trying to climb into something better while being repeatedly exposed to the indifference and absurdity of the entertainment industry. It is often brutal, sometimes tender, and very precise about the humiliation built into chasing recognition.
This is one of the strongest picks for fans who specifically want shows about Hollywood satire and cringe comedy. The cameos are excellent, the writing is sharp, and the emotional stakes are stronger than they first appear. Like The Comeback, it understands that being visible is not the same as being respected.
There is also something deeply relatable in the show's portrait of a person who wants just enough success to stop feeling small, only to discover that success does not cure the feeling.
10. I'm Sorry
I'm Sorry is a more domestic and grounded recommendation, but it captures the same awkward, unfiltered comedic energy that makes The Comeback so addictive. Andrea Savage plays a fictionalized version of herself: a comedy writer, wife, and mother whose daily life is punctuated by social disasters, overthinking, and impulsive honesty.
What makes it a satisfying final entry on this list is its willingness to let a female lead be messy without sanding down her edges. That matters. One of the reasons The Comeback remains so beloved is that it gave us a woman who was ambitious, embarrassing, image-conscious, and emotionally exposed without reducing her to a punchline. I'm Sorry carries some of that spirit into a different setting.
It is ideal if you want something lighter, but still sharply observant about how adults embarrass themselves while trying to seem fine.
How to Choose Your Next Watch
If you are still deciding where to begin, the best next series depends on what you loved most about The Comeback.
- For industry satire: start with Hacks, Episodes, or Extras.
- For maximum cringe: go with Curb Your Enthusiasm or I'm Sorry.
- For emotional depth: try Enlightened or BoJack Horseman.
- For power and image obsession: watch Veep.
- For modern fame culture: choose The Other Two.
My personal recommendation? Start with Hacks if you want the most direct emotional and thematic successor. Then move to Episodes for a lighter industry skewering, and save Enlightened for when you want something a little more soulful and quietly devastating.
Why The Comeback Still Feels So Unique
Even with all these excellent alternatives, The Comeback remains unusually hard to match. Part of that comes down to Lisa Kudrow's astonishing control of tone. Valerie Cherish is funny because she is trying so hard to hold herself together, but she is unforgettable because the show refuses to mock her from a distance. It stays close enough to reveal the pain under the performance.
That is the standard the best shows like The Comeback must meet. They cannot just be awkward. They need to understand why awkwardness hurts. They need to recognize ambition as both comic fuel and emotional vulnerability. And they need to treat their characters as people, not just delivery systems for uncomfortable jokes.
The series on this list all do that in different ways. Some are harsher, some are warmer, some are more openly satirical. But each one shares that crucial insight: watching someone manage their public self while their private panic leaks out can be one of television's funniest and most revealing experiences.
Conclusion
If you have been hunting for the best shows like The Comeback, the good news is that television has produced several brilliant companions, even if none copy its exact magic. Hacks, Episodes, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Getting On, Veep, The Other Two, Enlightened, BoJack Horseman, Extras, and I'm Sorry all offer their own version of cringe, satire, and emotional exposure.
The best part is that each series opens a slightly different door into what made Valerie Cherish so compelling in the first place: the performance of confidence, the fear of irrelevance, and the stubborn hope that one more chance might finally make everything click.
If your ideal comedy leaves you laughing, wincing, and unexpectedly feeling a little tender toward its most chaotic characters, start with one of the titles above and see where the discomfort takes you. And if you are building the perfect watchlist, this is the kind of corner of television worth exploring in full.
Ready for your next binge? Queue up your first pick, compare tones, and keep following the shows that are brave enough to be awkward, sharp, and deeply human.
