Comedian Leo Reich describes his new Channel 4 sitcom as a mix of Girls and Peep Show, a shorthand pitch that captures the show's blend of candid hangout comedy and British bleakness. Titled It Gets Worse, the series follows a group of twentysomethings floundering both personally and professionally in the big city. While previous iconic comedies chronicled the travails of millennials and generation X, Reich's new project serves as a contemporary look at young adults today, though the 28-year-old creator remains skeptical of generational labels and broad unifying trends.
We are first introduced to Ethan, played by Reich as a middle-class loser gay man, along with his friends Sam and Abi as they pack up their London flatshare following a steep rent hike. Rather than serving as a heavy-handed meditation on the cost-of-living crisis, the show focuses primarily on messy, flawed individuals rather than a grand conceptual framework. Since the pandemic, Reich has established himself as a rising force in comedy, beginning with his Cambridge Footlights stint and lockdown TikTok videos, followed by his acclaimed 2022 Edinburgh Fringe debut, Literally, Who Cares?! That breakout show featured a heightened parody of a self-involved and cynical zoomer, earning widespread praise and a rare HBO special for a fledgling British comic.
On the south-east London set of It Gets Worse, a former spice warehouse doubles as the squat where Sam has relocated. Reich participates in scenes while frequently checking monitors and occasionally ad-libbing small talk for his character Ethan. Operating as a hands-on creator and joke warden, he encourages improvisation to match the show's themes of messiness and delusion, while remaining protective of specific comedic rhythms and cadence in the script.
While Reich shrugs off any suggestion that he is the voice of a generation, the sitcom captures a very specific contemporary mood. The main trio features a campy gay man, an uptight northern woman, and a mixed-race artist—identities that historically might have been relegated to supporting roles. Furthermore, the show taps into the profound existential anxiety of young adults coming of age during a period of widespread financial, political, and ecological precarity, where traditional milestones like career ladders and marriage feel increasingly out of reach.
Reich himself has enjoyed a rapid career ascent, including an appearance in Lena Dunham’s Netflix series Too Much, with Dunham returning the favor by making a cameo alongside other high-profile names such as Andrew Scott and Zadie Smith. Despite his personal success, Reich maintains that the sitcom is not an issue-led drama but rather an attempt to capture an existential feeling of being lost and uncertain about the future. In the series, the three main characters exhibit radically different responses to this broader anxiety, with Ethan adopting a live-for-the-moment philosophy to avoid planning for an uncertain tomorrow.