A Beginner’s Guide to Grief
This bitesize Australian series (six 10-minute episodes) is a must-watch gem. Harriet (‘Harry’) loses her terminally ill parents within a week of each other. Luckily, her mum left her a box of tapes on grief to guide her. Making her way through each of grief’s five stages, Harry feels suffocated by her religious community and grapples with how to honour her dad’s surprising dying wish. Full of love, laughter and bitter truth, writer and creator Anna Lindner plays Harry with force: the story’s based on her own experience.
A Beginner’s Guide to Grief is now streaming . It is available with subtitles in , , , and .
Good Grief
Sisters Ellie and Gwen (played by real-life sisters and writers of the show, Eve and Grace Palmer), inherit their grandfather’s funeral home after he dies, along with the three eccentric employees who are not keen on their new bosses. While Ellie is eager to uphold their grandfather’s legacy and spend more time with her sister, Gwen is busting to get out of New Zealand and be a DJ in Bali. By staring death in the face everyday, they begin to confront the realities of their own life, and what they want to make of it. They will eventually discover that, while at times confronting, being able to help families cope with loss is also a heart-warming opportunity.
The Casketeers
This award-winning series is the heart-warming reality TV you need, set in a family business you wouldn’t expect. The series follows husband and wife Francis and Kaiora Tipene who own and run Tipene Funerals. With their team, they guide us through previously unseen elements of tangihanga (a traditional Māori funeral rite held on a marae) and continue to lift the veil on death in a rare mix of sorrow and joy. The Casketeers continues to prove there is never a dull moment in life, or in death.
Adam Ruins Everything: Death
Adam Conover finds a refreshing new approach to debunking myths and demystifying Big concepts like, well, death, in the funny and informative Adam Ruins Everything. An original blend of infotainment and sketch comedy, every episode sees Adam sets to work on a mission to 'ruin' anything and literally anything. In this memorable episode, he ruins the mystery of death by exploring its inevitability. He shows the fantasy behind immortality, and the exploitation behind the funeral industry.
Adam Ruins Everything is streaing as a
Sorry For Your Loss
Emmy-nominee Elizabeth Olsen (WandaVision) stars as young widow Leigh who is struggling after her husband’s unexpected death. Her grief upends everything, transforming every one of her relationships including with her sister Jules (Kelly Marie Tran, The Rise of Skywalker) and mother Amy (Janet McTeer, Ozark). Praised by as “so fully formed, so funny and candid and wrenching right from the start, that you almost question the emotional propriety of it all,” the series is an exploration of how much we really know someone and how grief demands to find a home in our physical body.
The Dry
From the producers of Normal People and Conversations with Friends comes this darkly funny and irreverent Irish comedy drama. When 35-year-old Shiv (Roisin Gallagher) arrives home for her grandmother’s funeral, no one expects her to stay. She’s six months sober, and her presence back in Dublin forces her whole family to confront their demons. Who wants to do that?! This moving 8-part series also stars Siobhán Cullen, Pom Boyd and Oscar nominee Ciarán Hinds.
The Pact
This thoughtful NZ drama considers the ramifications of a terminally ill woman's desire to end her life, upon her family members. When their fundamentally different beliefs threaten to blow the family apart, the series contemplates whether they they will be be able to come together before it’s too late.
Season 1 of The Pact is now streaming
After Love (Movie)
For a tonal shift but a nonetheless layered and thoughtful take on grief, look no further than this wonderfully rich British thriller featuring Joanna Scanlon in a career best performance as a widow, Mary, who uncovers an agonising secret life led her late husband, Ahmed. To reveal more would be to spoil, but read here if you
After Love is now streaming at SBS On Demand
