Leo Reich’s new Channel 4 sitcom is “Girls meets Peep Show. That’s always my favourite part of pitching anything: choose two really good things and say it’s a mix of those!” says the comedian with a slight smirk. Still, it’s a fair summary: It Gets Worse is a bracingly candid, occasionally provocative hangout comedy about twentysomethings floundering professionally and personally in the big city that comes accompanied by a strong stench of British bleakness (see: the title, for a start). Yet it does fail to flag one key aspect. While Girls and Peep Show covered the travails of millennials and gen X respectively, It Gets Worse is happening now – making it the UK’s first true gen Z sitcom.
Or not. “I’m sceptical of the idea that generations have any real unifying features across the board, so I don’t want it to be like: this is a gen Z sitcom!” says the 28-year-old. In fact, it soon becomes clear that It Gets Worse is deliberately USP-less. We first meet Reich’s Ethan – “a middle-class loser gay guy” – and his pals Sam and Abi as they’re packing up their London flatshare, having been forced out because of a rent hike. But this isn’t the start of a meditation on the cost of living crisis – or anything else. “The point isn’t there’s some big concept where everyone’s a superhero, it’s: these are some people dot dot dot.” When I ask how closely the final show resembles his original idea, Reich looks askance. “The idea, I would say, was quite broad …”
