Nathan Fielder Has Built the Funniest Nightmare on Television

There is a particular kind of television that asks you to “sit with discomfort,” as if discomfort were a puppy you agreed to dogsit. Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal does not ask. It locks discomfort in a replica apartment, gives it a speaking role, and hires three child actors to portray its emotional consequences.

This is my official position: The Rehearsal is the funniest show on television because it understands that modern life is already a bizarre performance. Dating, parenting, work, friendship — we are all improvising badly while pretending there is a script. Fielder simply adds a fake restaurant, a research team, and an alarming number of identical couches.

Benny’s Picks

The Rehearsal — Max: Start with the first season if you somehow missed it, then continue into the new episodes with your expectations lowered and your moral compass safely stored in a drawer. It is hilarious, deeply strange, and occasionally so psychologically invasive that you may need to pause and stare at a wall. That is a compliment.

Severance — Apple TV+: If you like your workplace satire served with fluorescent lighting, corporate cults, and the sensation that your soul has been misplaced, this is the one. The show’s central idea is clever, but its real achievement is making office carpeting feel like a threat.

Hundreds of Beavers — rent or buy digitally: A nearly wordless black-and-white slapstick epic about a man battling an army of increasingly organized beavers. Yes, it sounds like a dare. No, you are not above it. This is what happens when silent comedy, video games, and a fever dream share a production budget.

Colin From Accounts — Paramount+: A wounded dog brings two emotionally damaged adults together, and somehow the result is not sentimental mush. It is rude, warm, genuinely funny, and powered by people making the worst possible choice one second before making the right one.

Skip It

Love Is Blind — Netflix: The pods were a fun social experiment for about twelve minutes. Now it is mostly people with perfect teeth explaining that they “don’t do drama” immediately before manufacturing enough drama to power a small country.

Sleeper Pick

Joe Pera Talks With You — Adult Swim and streaming platforms: Joe Pera’s soft-spoken comedy looks like it was assembled by a librarian during a snow day, but underneath the gentle jokes is some of the sharpest writing on television. It is proof that quiet can be hilarious — and that a man discussing grocery-store jazz can defeat your entire nervous system.