Channel 4 and A24 have given Leo Reich considerable company for his account of young adulthood, including a narrator qualified to dispute it. Voiced by Zadie Smith, the commentary on It Gets Worse identifies the historical comfort of Ethan’s existence while he attends to its apparently endless injuries.
Reich, who creates, writes and stars, gives his unemployed protagonist an external observer he cannot sweet-talk. The arrangement lets the series inhabit Ethan’s complaints while reserving the right to question their scale. Television has brought in a novelist to check its leading man’s account of himself.
The sharper corrections, however, come from people who have to deal with him. Ethan presents returning to his parents as a prospect clouded by homophobia; his friends identify parental irritation with his laziness and entitlement. He answers by recasting their objections as a damaging stereotype about white gay men.
The joke catches him converting the language of discrimination into protection against ordinary criticism. It also makes the narration’s warning useful: his advantages become visible through the explanations he invents to avoid acknowledging them. Reich permits a queer protagonist to be ridiculous without making queerness the explanation for his failings.
The practical test arrives with a landlord’s decision to sell the house Ethan shares with university friends Abi and Sam. Ethan has drilled a substantial hole in a wall and displays remarkably little urgency about repairing it, placing their deposits at risk. Here, the comedy gives his self-absorption a cost that somebody else might have to pay. His parents’ home remains available, whatever account he gives of its emotional atmosphere. Abi moves in with her boyfriend; Sam enters a communal household. Their separation gives the six-episode series a useful structure: a shared address has concealed differences in what each can afford to refuse.
Abi, played by Emily Fairn, pursues stability through HR work and domestic partnership. Neither offers quite the security its respectable appearance promises. Her boyfriend Tom, played by Sean Delaney, provides a version of settled life with little sexual intimacy. At the data-mining startup where she works, Lena Dunham’s chief executive wraps inadequate compensation in declarations of female empowerment.
The target is precise enough to survive the familiarity of the corporate caricature. An employer can celebrate women’s independence while limiting the wages that might purchase it. Abi’s desire for an orderly life becomes understandable when both her workplace and relationship require her to accept disappointing terms.
Olive Gray’s Sam encounters a different collision between principles and earning. An aspiring writer tutors a misogynistic teenager, accepting work that brings personal convictions into direct contact with a paying client. Meanwhile, the communal household’s expectation of a contribution to its Mubi subscription gives cultural belonging an amusingly specific price.
The shared taste matters because it produces an obligation. Between Abi’s employer and Sam’s living arrangement, the series finds institutions fluent in the language of liberation and perfectly capable of presenting a bill. These details do useful social work without requiring either friend to become an exemplary victim of the economy.
That precision becomes less reliable when the script reaches for topical recognition. ChatGPT, Andrew Tate and fashionable drinks help locate the characters, but their presence does not automatically develop the world around them. The Mubi subscription tells us how a group polices membership; a familiar name can simply announce that the dialogue knows the same internet as its audience.
This distinction matters for a production so equipped with cultural credentials. The casting of Smith and Dunham supplies recognizable authority, yet the series earns its observations through the small exchanges about money and obligation. Its distinguished collaborators cannot do that work on its behalf.
Andrew Scott’s appearance as Brian does earn its place. An encounter with Ethan allows therapeutic concern to intrude into sexual talk, making the vocabulary of emotional care awkwardly inseparable from desire. Ethan then invokes the AIDS era in a way that provokes Brian’s objection to the age being assigned to him.
Queer history becomes another resource Ethan deploys without considering the person in front of him. The scene is funny because his attempt at perspective creates a fresh failure of attention. Scott’s character can interrupt Ethan’s preferred account of the encounter, giving the guest role a function beyond the pleasure of recognizing its occupant.
The other relationships complicate any easy distinction between sexual freedom and conventional disappointment. Sam’s attachment to an ex persists alongside the aspiration to appear comfortably non-monogamous. Abi has the coupledom Sam might regard as restrictive and remains frustrated within it.
Ethan’s pursuit of the elusive Aaron, played by Dane Williams, leaves him dependent on somebody whose attention he cannot secure. These are particular mismatches between an adopted identity and an emotional need. The series gives its queer characters room for dependency and vanity, avoiding the burden of having to demonstrate that their arrangements are enlightened or successful.
A group sexual gathering is less productive, serving chiefly to generate further friction between the friends. The setting promises a fresh examination of their professed openness, but familiar tensions occupy much of that space. The housing split supplies stronger pressure because it changes the conditions under which the friends must tolerate one another.
Those changed conditions also make their judgments less comfortable. Sam challenges Abi’s wish to perform adulthood; Abi replies by identifying Sam’s investment in remaining a child. The exchange makes their friendship briefly inhospitable to both self-descriptions.
Abi’s domestic ambitions can contain surrender, while Sam’s rejection of convention can preserve an avoidance of responsibility. Neither friend has to become the designated adult to see the other clearly. Having lost the house that held them together, they must now negotiate a friendship in which each person’s chosen life is available for the others to criticize.
It Gets Worse premiered on Channel 4 and Crave on October 22, 2026, with all episodes available for streaming on Channel 4 and Crave. Created, written by, and starring comedian Leo Reich alongside directors Mounia Akl, the A24-produced sitcom follows three post-grad best friends in London who get evicted from their apartment and find their lives scattering in chaotic, hilarious directions.
Where to Watch It Gets Worse Online
Full Credits
Title: It Gets Worse
Distributor: Channel 4, Crave, A24
Release date: October 22, 2026
Rating: TV-MA
Running time: 30 minutes per episode (6 episodes)
Director: Mounia Akl
Writers: Leo Reich
Producers and Executive Producers: Sam Pinnell, Rose Garnett, Piers Wenger, Harpa Manku, Leo Reich
Cast: Leo Reich, Emily Fairn, Olive Gray, Sean Delaney, Dane Williams, India Mullen, Safia Oakley-Green, John Tothill, Lena Dunham, Andrew Scott, Amelia Dimoldenberg
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Matthew Lewis
Editors: Josh Mallalieu, Christopher Watson
The Review
It Gets Worse
It Gets Worse earns its social bite through endangered deposits, underpaid work and friendships strained by unequal options. Channel 4 and A24’s comedy is sharpest when its characters’ progressive vocabulary collides with obligations they would rather avoid. Its queer protagonists have welcome permission to be selfish and confused. Topical references sometimes substitute for insight, and the sexual gathering generates familiar friction rather than fresh understanding. The housing split gives this portrait of young adulthood its strongest dramatic pressure.
PROS
- Class differences emerge through concrete financial stakes.
- Precise satire of workplace empowerment rhetoric.
- Queer characterization allows flaws and contradictions.
- Guest roles contribute to the social argument.
CONS
- Topical references sometimes offer recognition without development.
- The sexual gathering adds little fresh relational insight.
