Show Like Pen15

[Manlio Chowdhury]

Isit possible to look back on our tweenhood years and not cringe? If you've watched Hulu's new show Pen15, the answer is a resounding yes. The show is created by, and stars, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle as their thirteen-year-old selves, while their peers are portrayed by real middle schoolers, and the results are just as hilarious and poignant as they are awkward.

Pen15 captures universal adolescent moments like your first kiss, body issues, and... let's just say, "self-satisfaction." It's also a time capsule to the early 2000s, complete with dial-up internet, and love notes handwritten in gel pen. If you're like us and have already binge-watched the whole season, you need your next fix of nostalgia and awkwardness. Here are 10 Shows To Watch If You Liked Pen15.

Derry Girls is a Netflix show set in Belfast at the height of the Troubles. This may sound depressing, but the show is hilarious. The political climate is a mere backdrop to the lives of Erin and her friends as they navigate high school. Bomb threats are inconveniences when it comes to attending concerts or going on dates...for those lucky enough to get one at all.

Like Pen15, Derry Girls features a tongue-tied Erin trying to flirt with her crush. A million thoughts swim in her head, but she's only able to string together a sentence that is half-English, half-Gibberish. Painfully, this is something we can all relate to.

The name says it all. Teenage life can be Awkward. We want to discover our identity and sometimes our peers can make that very challenging by slapping an wanted label on us. In Pen15, an unfortunate haircut earns Maya "UGIS" ("ugliest girl in school") status. Awkward has protagonist Jenna being tossed into the rumor mill when an honest accident looks like a suicide attempt.

If nostalgia's what you want, this criminally short-lived Netflix series is just the ticket. While Pen15 is all about the Y2K, Everything Sucks! is totally nineties. Columbia House, Tamagotchis, and slap bracelets are present and accounted for. So are themes similar to Pen15's, particularly sexuality.

Both shows are on streaming platforms, giving them some freedom to explore mature topics. Pen15 and Everything Sucks! both do exquisite jobs of tastefully portraying teen sexuality. They capture the thrill of erotic discovery and stimulation...and the subsequent awkwardness of trying to have some "alone time" when your mom is calling you for dinner.

Imagine the girls of Pen15 all grown up...er, imagine them playing women their actual age. That's Broad City. Besties Ilana and Abbi bumble their way through self discovery in New York City. The Big Apple, as seen on TV, can seem like high school to millenials. Everyone's always Instagramming some party we're not invited to, the best jobs are seemingly reserved for those with "connections", and we live in apartments so small, it's like we've been stuffed in a locker.

Stranger Things is known for being a sci-fi show but it's also a stellar coming-of-age story. Mike and the gang are the same age as the Pen15 girls and, in between running from monsters, they have lots in common. For the first time in their lives, they're dealing with romance and lust. The opposite sex, though desired, is every bit as scary as a Demogorgon.

While Pen15's Maya and Anna get picked on for playing with dolls, Mike and friends are the butt of a joke when they're the only kids who show up to school on Halloween wearing costumes. Sometimes everybody gets a memo on what childhood rituals are yesterday's news... except for you. Pen15 and Stranger Things capture this perfectly.

As teens, sex can seem like a scary unknown...unless you're Otis on Netflix's Sex Education. His mom is a sexual therapist, and Otis has been bombarded with TMI his whole life. The result is...the idea of sex makes him uncomfortable. However, with his unusual perspective, Otis finds himself as his school's unofficial sex guru, and his "clients" come to him with issues similar to those on Pen15.

This cult show, full of eighties nostalgia, is the perfect reflection of adolescence. Freaks and Geeks offers gut-busting laughs as we vicariously re-live our youth through these complex characters. In both Freaks and Pen15, getting picked last, whether it's for gym class or Seven Minutes in Heaven, is as painful as a stab in the chest.

Netflix's Big Mouth completely captures the grittiness of a horny, every-changing teen body. Whereas Pen15 uses adult leads for its more mature situations, Big Mouth is animated, so the sky is the limit for what they can depict. This freedom allows these shows to be two of the most accurate portrayals of adolescence ever.

The reality is, growing up is awkward. First kisses aren't accompanied by a trendy soundtrack and soft backlighting; they're sloppy, sometimes sweaty, and super-awkward. The same can be said for Big Mouth and Pen15...and that's why we love them.

The show was created by comedians Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, both of whom have been popping up on other people's TV comedies for years, and Sam Zvibleman, who directed and produced some of the run of the very good series Take My Wife. The conceit is a little convoluted, and in the telling it borders on gimmicky, but: Erskine and Konkle play 13-year-old girls, best friends also named Maya and Anna. All the kids around them, their friends and frenemies, are played by actual kids. This could have been completely distracting, particularly with the tall Konkle towering over the real young teenage boys she's playing opposite. But both actresses read quite young, and both have such a firm handle on the versions of themselves they're playing that the gimmick recedes within an installment or two, and it leaves behind the story.

They both like boys, but they like them in the almost theoretical way that middle school encourages, where getting a boyfriend or a girlfriend can seem like the most important thing in the entire world, but once you have one, you don't necessarily want to see them all that much, except when you're broadcasting your status to everyone else or working your way through whatever your interest in sex happens to be. (There's a brilliant sequence that captures how kids get together to watch movies they know have sex in them, only to realize they don't really know what to do with the awkwardness of watching sex with a group of friends.)

The girls both make terrible mistakes, both in their handling of their friendship and otherwise. And while some of those mistakes do end in cringing and in vicarious embarrassment so unsettling that it feels like a bug crawling up your back, some of them end with simple hurt feelings. And when they do, PEN15 does the one thing a good show about adolescence must do: It recognizes that the substance of these conflicts may seem ridiculous with the benefit of hindsight, but the feelings that are involved are entirely genuine. An obstacle you might be able to peek around fairly quickly in adulthood can blot out the sun when you're 13, and respecting those feelings is the difference between plausibility and authenticity in a show like this. It's plausible that a kid will sob her eyes out because someone left a note on her locker; the story only feels authentic when the show treats that pain as important and deserving of attention.

Wondering what to watch after PEN15? If the cringe comedy of the series has you hungry for more teen comedies, you're in luck! Since the public fascination with high school life is not ceasing any time soon, there are loads of other movies and TV shows like PEN15 ready for you to start bingeing.

For fans of PEN15 looking for good movie recommendations, Booksmart is an excellent film that follows two high school seniors looking to party before graduation. Other good movies and shows featured on this list include On My Block, Sex Education, and Superbad.

For decades, however, that representation was glaringly one-sided. TV shows and movies focused mostly on the experiences of adolescent boys, and while they were given the freedom to be raunchy and angsty and address humiliations like ill-timed boners, the girls existed mostly as pristine objects of their affection, Winnie Cooper types who never sprouted a unsightly zit or had a hair out of place, and who sure as hell never had to spend a school day walking around with sweatshirts tied around their waists to cover up period mishaps.

Pen15 is an American comedy television series, created by Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle, and Sam Zvibleman, that premiered on February 8, 2019, on Hulu. The series stars Erskine and Konkle, who also serve as executive producers alongside Zvibleman, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Becky Sloviter, Marc Provissiero, Brooke Pobjoy, Debbie Liebling, and Gabe Liedman.

In May 2019, Hulu renewed the series for a second season of fourteen episodes, the first half of which premiered on September 18, 2020. In November 2021, it was reported that the series' second season would be its last.[4]

On April 19, 2018, Hulu announced that it had given the production a series order for a first season consisting of ten episodes.[6] Erskine and Konkle were also expected to write for the series and Zvibleman was set to direct multiple episodes. Production companies involved with the series were slated to consist of The Lonely Island, Party Over Here, Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment, and AwesomenessTV.[11][12][13] On November 19, 2018, it was announced that the series would premiere on February 8, 2019.[14] Alongside the announcement of the series order, it was confirmed that Erskine and Konkle would star in the series as well.[6] Erskine and Konkle also served as co-showrunners;[15] Zvibleman and Gabe Liedman were also co-showrunners for the first season.[16][4] On May 1, 2019, it was reported that Hulu renewed the series for a second season, of which the first seven episodes were released on September 18, 2020.[17][18] The first episode from the second set of seven episodes premiered on August 27, 2021. Originally intended to run for three seasons, the filming of the second season was severely delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and by the conclusion both Erskine and Konkle had new acting roles, as well as parental responsibilities. On November 29, 2021, it was reported that the series' second season would be its final season.[4]

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