30 Shows That Capture Every Shade Of Loss, Grief And Healing

Go On

Matthew Perry stars as a sportscaster forced into group therapy after his wife’s death. What begins as denial becomes connection, as each character learns to grieve, and yes, laugh, together. Go On is heartfelt and funny. The lesson here is: community can be grief’s best antidote.

Tiny Beautiful Things

Based on Cheryl Strayed’s essays, this miniseries stars Kathryn Hahn as a struggling advice columnist grappling with the loss of her mother. It’s tender, bittersweet, and terrifically acted—a reminder that healing isn’t about fixing pain, but learning to live beside it.

This Is Us

Very few shows have made audiences cry quite like This Is Us. Through generations of the Pearson family, it explores how grief echoes through time. What we witness is how mourning someone can shape choices, relationships, and identity. It’s a heartfelt, sometimes devastating reminder that family stories are built on both loss and love.

Shrinking

In Shrinking, Jason Segel stars as a therapist spiraling after his wife’s death. He starts breaking every rule just to cope. Funny yet honest, the show blends sharp humor with heartfelt introspection, showing that healing isn’t linear. Sometimes, laughing through the heartache is the first real step toward recovery.

Fleabag

Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s masterpiece is grief disguised as comedy. Behind Fleabag’s witty monologues and chaotic hookups lies a woman broken by loss. Soon, we realise her journey is about guilt, loneliness, and clawing her way toward self-forgiveness. Well, even the funniest stories can stem from the deepest pain.

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist


When Zoey gains the ability to hear people’s inner thoughts as songs, her gift becomes a way to connect with her dying father. The show beautifully transforms grief into musical catharsis. This is where raw emotions are set to familiar pop tunes. Maybe, even sorrow can find harmony in unexpected places.

After Life

Yes, this is a dark comedy. We meet Ricky Gervais’ Tony, a man who loses his wife and nearly himself in the aftermath. The show is blunt, biting, and deeply humane, as it captures the cruel absurdity of living on when the person who made life meaningful is gone. It’s basically heartbreak with a wicked sense of humor.

The Haunting of Hill House

Mike Flanagan’s gothic horror isn’t just about ghosts; it’s about how grief haunts us. Each sibling in this story adapted from Shirley Jackson’s book carries their trauma differently, blurring the line between the supernatural and the psychological. By the end, it’s not a horror story, but a meditation on love that refuses to die.

Six Feet Under

The Fisher family runs a funeral home, so obviously, death is both their business and their constant companion. Each episode of Six Feet Under begins with a death, forcing the characters—and in turn, us viewers— to confront mortality head-on. It’s darkly funny, poetic, and remains one of TV’s most profound studies of loss and life.

Severance


At first glance, Severance might seem like a sci-fi mystery about work-life balance. Beneath the surface though, it’s a haunting allegory for grief—literally severing emotional pain to survive. Adam Scott’s quiet anguish anchors a story about what happens when you refuse to feel, and how reclaiming sorrow can be freedom.

Dead to Me

Here is a friendship born in grief and lies, but it turns into one of TV’s most chaotic emotional journeys. Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini’s chemistry drives this dark comedy about loss, guilt, and female rage. It’s an undeniable proof that mourning can be messy, funny, and wildly cathartic all at once.

I Know This Much Is True

Mark Ruffalo delivers a gut-wrenching dual performance as twin brothers haunted by family trauma and tragedy in I Know This Much Is True. The series is a slow, painful dive into grief, guilt, and generational pain. The takeaway? Forgiveness, especially of oneself, can be the hardest form of love.

WandaVision

Marvel’s most emotional (and honestly, the best) series hides a grief story inside a superhero fantasy. Wanda creates a perfect suburban world to live with the love she lost, but reality and pain eventually break through. Every fan knows it’s a visually captivating meditation on denial, love, and the price of holding on too tight.

Dying for Sex

Based on a true story, this poignant miniseries follows Molly, a woman with terminal cancer who embarks on a sexual awakening after her diagnosis. If it sounds weird and funny, it absolutely is… But it’s also life-affirming. Molly’s raw feelings about friendship and family hit hard. The story is basically an exploration of autonomy, intimacy, and what it means to die on your own terms.

The Bear

Behind the kitchen chaos and creative tension of the critical hit, The Beat, lies a story about grief. Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto inherits his late brother’s failing restaurant and the emotional wreckage that comes with it. The show deftly captures the disorienting rhythm of mourning—a place where love, guilt, and obsession blend into survival.

The Good Place

Death is just the beginning in The Good Place. This clever Netflix comedy turns the afterlife into a philosophical playground—a place where morality, regret, and redemption come hard and fast. Beneath the laughs and twists lies a gentle truth: grief and growth are inseparable parts of being human.

Virgin River

Mel moves to a small town seeking escape from her husband Mark’s death and the loss of the family they were planning together. But grief follows her. Virgin River mixes romance with emotional healing, showing that love after loss is possible…even when the heart still aches for what’s gone.

The Leftovers

When 2% of the world’s population suddenly disappears, those left behind are consumed by unanswered grief. The Leftovers isn’t about the event itself, but the emptiness it leaves behind—faith shaken, families fractured, meaning lost. Mysterious, spiritual, and devastatingly human, the show captures the quiet ache of learning to live with the unexplainable.

Pivoting

When their best friend dies unexpectedly, three women reevaluate everything—careers, relationships, and motherhood. Pivoting finds humor in grief, letting us viewers know that sometimes the best way to honor the dead is to start living boldly. It’s warm, witty, and surprisingly uplifting.

A Million Little Things

When a friend’s suicide shocks a close-knit group, every member is forced to reevaluate their own lives. A Million Little Things blends ensemble drama with emotional honesty, exploring how grief brings people together, and ultimately, how friendship can be the bridge between despair and hope.

Upload

In the near future, the dead can “upload” their consciousness into a digital afterlife. Equal parts sci-fi satire and love story, Upload explores mourning in a tech-driven world. You know, how we all cling to what’s lost and what it means to really move on.

The End

This darkly funny Australian-British series tackles death, assisted dying, and the messy in-between phase people go through with honesty and wit. Three generations wrestle with what it means to live well…or to stop living. The End finds strange comfort in humor, even when the subject is euthanasia. After all, laughter often lives beside grief.

Never Have I Ever

Devi Vishwakumar’s teenage drama, Never Have I Ever, is laced with loss—the death of her father. Her grief shows up in rage, bad decisions, and denial. The Netflix show balances humor with heartache, proving that mourning as a teenager is just as messy as adulthood.

Somebody Somewhere

Bridget Everett’s soulful dramedy captures quiet grief and unexpected community. Sam returns to her Kansas hometown after her sister’s death and slowly rebuilds her life through humor and music. The treatment of the story is gentle, authentic, and filled with the kind of hope that sneaks up on you.

Sorry for Your Loss

Elizabeth Olsen delivers one of her best performances as a young widow piecing her life back together in Sorry for Your Loss. The show captures grief’s smallest, rawest moments…the silence, the memories, the guilt. It’s quietly devastating and impossibly real.

A Beginner’s Guide to Grief

This darkly comic Australian gem follows Harriet, who must handle her estranged parents’ deaths and her own emotional chaos. Irreverent and touching, it shows that grief can be ugly, awkward, and weirdly funny…and that healing often starts with bad decisions and brutal honesty.

Life & Beth

Amy Schumer’s Life & Beth finds humor in emotional excavation. When a sudden death forces Beth to reevaluate her life, she confronts buried childhood trauma. It’s both funny and quietly devastating. In essence, the show is about how loss can spark the courage to finally grow up.

Olive Kitteridge

This quiet, beautifully acted miniseries examines decades in the life of a prickly New England woman coping with depression, marriage, and death. Based on Elizabeth Strout’s book, Olive Kitteridge doesn’t dramatize grief. Instead, it lets it sit, albeit uncomfortably, and quite truthfully, revealing how sorrow becomes part of ordinary existence.

From Scratch


Inspired by a true story, From Scratch follows Zoe Saldaña’s Amy as she falls in love, marries, and then loses her husband to illness. It’s a sweeping portrait of love’s endurance—how food, memory, and family help keep someone alive long after they’re gone.


Everything’s Gonna Be Okay

This is a heartfelt comedy about siblings navigating life after their father’s death. The show balances awkward humor with genuine emotion. You can expect Everything’s Gonna Be Okay to be quirky, tender, and hopeful. The message? Even when you’re lost, love (and a bit of chaos) can guide you through the darkness.