15 Best Shows Like BoJack Horseman

“BoJack Horseman,” created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, may have talking animals and copious puns, but it’s also a dark reflection of addiction and the pursuit of fame. The best “BoJack Horseman” episodes know how to masterfully maneuver between comedy and drama, and the show refuses to give its audience any easy answers. BoJack (Will Arnett) is not a good individual, as his self-destructive tendencies often cause him to push any friends he has away. This often gets juxtaposed with whatever silly adventure his roommate Todd (Aaron Paul) gets into, like joining an improv-based cult.

Fans likely tuned into “BoJack Horseman” expecting some silly cartoons revolving around a satirical Hollywood, but it was so much more than that, becoming one of the most profound shows of the 21st century. The show got six seasons to wrap up its story, but you may still feel a horse-shaped void in your heart. Fortunately, there are many shows like “BoJack Horseman” you should try out because you’ll never know if you’ll bust up laughing or find yourself questioning the meaning of existence. 

It’s easy to see how “Tuca and Bertie” has the most “BoJack Horseman” DNA of the bunch. The show was created by Lisa Hanawalt, a producer and production designer on “BoJack Horseman.” “Tuca and Bertie” is an animated series with plenty of talking animals who get into silly shenanigans while also confronting dark truths about life. Tuca (Tiffany Haddish) and Bertie (Ali Wong) are two young birds trying to make their way through life, balancing careers with personal dreams, all while confronting issues like alcoholism and mental health. It’s like “Broad City” but with a toucan.

“Tuca and Bertie” is the kind of show young people can undoubtedly relate to, and it’s a testament to the power of animation. The main characters might be birds, but they struggle with figuring out what they’re meant to do in life like anyone else. Netflix cancelled the series after one season, but Adult Swim picked it up for two more. At least we got a little bit more time to see these characters get fleshed out before saying goodbye for good. 

“The Midnight Gospel” is one of the most surreal shows to come out in recent memory. There’s really nothing else like it, as it sees a spacecaster (read: podcaster) Clancy Gilroy (Duncan Trussell) traveling to different worlds on the brink of destruction to interview residents before everything they know is lost forever. Clancy then needs to escape the world before it meets the apocalypse.

Outside of the wildly colorful animation, “The Midnight Gospel” also stands apart from its contemporaries by incorporating real podcast interviews from “The Duncan Trussell Family Hour” within its audio. The podcast primarily focused on religious and spirituality, and the series has an existential thread running through it about how we’re meant to spend what little time we have with life. There are many ways people derive meaning out of life, but it’s up to us to find it. Netflix cancelled the show after one season, which is a shame, because there were literally limitless possibilities of worlds for Clancy to visit.

“Rick and Morty” mostly focuses on wacky space adventures. The titular duo might find themselves trapped in an ever-expanding alien simulation or need to re-enact “The Purge” on an alien world. Rick (Justin Roiland, then Ian Cardoni starting in season 7) turned himself into a pickle at one point, and it became the funniest thing on the internet for a while. 

The show’s hilarious, but it often gets ignored how sad and profound it can be. The first season sees Morty (Roiland, then Harry Belden starting in season 7), who’s from a different reality than the family he’s with, talk to his sister Summer (Spencer Grammer) about how life is meaningless: “Nobody exists on purpose. Nobody belongs anywhere. We’re all going to die. Come watch TV.” With the multiverse, everything can start to feel empty. What are the stakes if Rick is basically immortal and can heal anything with Morty? The series leans into these absurdities and makes them the point. Nothing matters, so you have to decide where that meaning comes from, even if it’s just watching some “Interdimensional Cable” or partaking in some clip show parodies.

With only 12 episodes total, “Fleabag” did more with its short runtime than some TV shows get with double-digit seasons. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who plays the titular Fleabag, has stated she has no plans for a third season, as she wanted to go out on a high saying goodbye to this character. It’s ultimately a character study as Fleabag appears like just a very funny woman at first, but as the episodes go on, the audience sees how she’s holding onto a lot of pain and anger. 

“Fleabag” has many similarities to “BoJack Horseman” in that it’s not afraid to get into dark themes like coping with the loss of a loved one. However, this gets juxtaposed with Fleabag’s frequent breaking of the fourth wall. This generally occurs when she’s bored or wants to get away from a situation to demonstrate how she wants to get away from life. But there’s no escaping reality at the end of the day. We all have to confront our mistakes and subsequent consequences, no matter how much we want life to be a ball all the time. 

Talking animals don’t have to exclusively exist within the medium of animation. “Wilfred” explores this concept, albeit with a man in a dog suit. The show sees Ryan (Elijah Wood) dealing with depression and feeling aimless in life. That’s when he forms a unique bond with his neighbor’s dog, Wilfred (Jason Gann), whom he sees as a man speaking to him. Wilfred is simultaneously a thorn in Ryan’s side, often getting him into trouble, but he also pushes Ryan outside of his comfort zone so that he doesn’t allow his depressive thoughts to get the better of him. 

The show gets plenty of mileage out of having one character being a guy dressed as a dog. He’ll hump stuffed animals and yell at other (real) dogs. Amid all this, the show tackles mental health head on. The thing about all of these shows like “BoJack Horseman” is that they never really offer answers. They just show how important it is to have some kind of connection in life and to laugh once in a while. 

“Undone” is one of the best Prime Video original series, but it’s also one that may have flown under the radar for some. “BoJack Horseman” fans shouldn’t ignore it, as it’s co-created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, but it takes a very different approach to delivering its existential messaging. There are no anthropomorphic animals here, as the show follows Alma (Rosa Salazar) after she’s involved in a car wreck. She soon discovers she now possesses the ability to move through time, which she uses after her deceased father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk) enlists her to investigate his death from beyond the confines of time and space.

One aspect that makes “Undone” stand out from others of its ilk is its use of rotoscoping, which is an animation technique where live-action footage is traced over to appear more cartoon-like. It’s not just a gimmick though, as rotoscoping gives the story a more ethereal air, especially as Alma revisits memories that begin to distort. The show explores ideas related to what’s real and what’s manufactured or misremembered, as like many protagonists on this list, Alma has plenty of personal foibles to overcome.

At first, “Moral Orel” comes across as a send-up of “Davey and Goliath.” Orel (Carolyn Lawrence) is a young Christian trying his best to live by the Bible. The problem is that all the adults in his life don’t seem to care all that much about religion or at least distort it to meet their own ends, like Orel’s abusive father, Clay (Scott Adsit). 

But the show morphs into something even more twisted in its third and final season. While it’s initially satirizing fundamentalist Christian beliefs as a dark comedy, the final season becomes something more akin to a psychological drama. The laughs become fewer and further between, as the show becomes more interested in exploring how trauma can follow a person throughout their life long after it’s ended. 

Tragi-comedies like “BoJack Horseman” are commonplace these days, making “Moral Orel” something of an outlier in the 2000s. Perhaps that’s why it was met a swift end. Audiences might not have been ready for something so devastating, especially with a claymation veneer.

John DiMaggio may not have understood much about “Adventure Time,” but fans quickly caught on. The long-running Cartoon Network series involves Finn the human (Jeremy Shada) and Jake the dog (DiMaggio) getting into all kinds of adventures in a surreal, magical world. It’s one of those shows that tows the line between offering fun stories for kids while being thematically rich enough for adults to get plenty out of it, too. 

But it wasn’t all a barrel of laughs. “Adventure Time” knew when to hone in on the inherently dark reality present in its world. The show’s set in a post-apocalyptic world, and an episode like “I Remember You” gets into the rich backstory of the Ice King (Tom Kenny) and Marceline the Vampire (Olivia Olson). They knew each other from the Mushroom War, but the Ice King doesn’t remember anything. It’s a harrowing metaphor for Alzheimer’s and how someone you love can become someone you don’t recognize. “Adventure Time” will hit you right in the feels before going back to Finn and Jake getting way too into playing a card game. 

“Six Feet Under” has rightfully earned a ton of acclaim both during its run and in the years since it ended. This might be due to the fact that “Six Feet Under” arguably has one of the best TV series finales of all time. It’s a genuinely rare feat for a TV series to stick the landing, and it’s appropriate that a show all about death would know how to bid farewell to its viewers.

The HBO show follows a family running a funeral home. They all have various things going on in their lives, from relationship issues to struggles with religion. However, all of this gets filtered through the lens of death. It’s common for an episode to begin with someone’s death, and characters view whatever hardships they’re going through what they’re experiencing with the deceased. Many relationship squabbles seem insignificant when considering the fact that both of you will die one day. You might as well either put it in the past or move toward happier ventures. 

“BoJack Horseman” might’ve tackled a lot of daunting topics, but it’s easy to forget it was also a killer satire on Hollywood and the entertainment industry. If that’s more your jam, then you owe it to yourself to watch “The Other Two.” When 13-year-old ChaseDreams (Case Walker) becomes a viral, overnight sensation, it causes a lot of conflicting emotions in his older siblings, Brooke (Heléne Yorke) and Cary (Drew Tarver). They also want to find their places in the industry and the world at large, which typically finds them piggy-backing off Chase’s success to hilarious results. 

The show’s ridiculous in the best way, but it also points to a haunting truth about how the worlds of film and music are more than happy to chew up and spit out rising young talent. But what makes the show stellar is how Brooke and Cary never get overly jealous of Chase. They genuinely want what’s best for him, including making sure he has time to just be a kid. Though the show got caught up in some controversy from behind the scenes as it ended, it’s still worth your time.

Speaking of making it big in entertainment, “Baskets” follows Chip Baskets (Zach Galifianakis), who fails at earning a degree at a renowned Parisian clown school and must settle for being a rodeo clown in Bakersfield, California. Much of the humor stems from Chip failing to realize his clown schtick doesn’t work in that setting, as he’ll engage in high-falutin clown antics at a rodeo when the audience just wants to see a clown acting silly.

Galifianakis perfectly embodies the awkward clown, and it’s made even better when he’s paired up with insurance agent Martha (Martha Kelly), who’s somehow even more wooden than him. The series also features one of Louie Anderson’s best performances, as he plays Chip’s mother, Christine. Galifianakis embodies the sad clown archetype, and his passion is what makes the show works so well. He wants to do something he loves even if everyone around him largely hates it. It might feel like the world has moved on from what Chip has to offer, and the question is whether he’ll find happiness elsewhere or continue down a self-destructive path. 

For being set in the 1970s, “F is for Family” feels like a particularly timely show. It initially comes across as a standard family-centric sitcom where Frank (Bill Burr) tries to earn a living and raise a family. He’s quick to fly into a temper, making him reminiscent of sitcom protagonists from the days of old, like Ralph Kramden from “The Honeymooners.” 

However, “F is for Family” is very much a postmodern sitcom that uses its distance from its setting to comment on the degradation of the American Dream. Frank’s the kind of guy who expected everything to be handed on him. He works hard, so he believes everything should come easy. But that’s simply not the case. It feels appropriate to the 2020s where an increasing number of people feel as though they too are having a difficult time making a living even though they’ve done everything “right” by getting an education and being a valuable employee. 

If there’s any kind of emotional through line between all these shows like “BoJack Horseman,” it’s that existential ennui is inevitable when a person feels like they’ve been denied a chance at greatness. 

“Common Side Effects” is a newer Adult Swim series that’s basically the anti-“The Last of Us.” In this show, fungi aren’t something to be feared, but instead they have great potential in curing humanity’s illnesses. There’s certainly humor to be found, but it’s also equal parts drama and thriller, as Marshall Cuso (Dave King) goes on the run to protect an all-powerful mushroom before it falls in the hands of someone who’s solely interested in turning a profit.

What sets “Common Side Effects” apart from other anti-Big Pharma media is how it dabbles in nuance. It’s easy to want to share a catch-all cure with everyone on the planet, but there are logistics you can’t circumvent with good intentions. How will Marshall mass-produce the mushroom? Is testing needed to ensure there are no harmful side effects? Marshall’s intentions are certainly better than those in positions of power who want to destroy all evidence of the fungus, but as is so often the case in life, it’s hard to come by anything easy. 

Hank Moody (David Duchovny) on “Californication” almost feels like the prototype for BoJack Horseman. He’s a novelist who’s in a rut, as he can’t get past chronic writer’s block. His alcoholism and penchant for destructive behavior don’t help either, which only spiral more out of control within the show’s setting of Los Angeles. Hollywood almost represents the antithesis of the American Dream, as it might have a glossy veneer, but if you don’t watch out, you can lose yourself within the excess. 

“Californication” shares many themes with “BoJack Horseman” too. Both series demonstrate how it’s easy to get caught up in short-term pleasures like sex and drugs. But there has to be more to life than that. Hank has a family, but he finds it increasingly difficult to connect with them as he pursues other avenues to give himself meaning. Even when someone realizes the harm they’re causing themselves and others, it’s tremendously difficult to break out of the cycle.

Daria (Tracy Grandstaff) is more or less the antithesis to BoJack Horseman and many of the protagonists found on this list. She’s notably not a toxic person, although she does make mistakes like anyone else. She’s very much aware of the pitfalls and follies of those around her, and she approaches virtually anything with a healthy mix of cynicism. There’s a level of self-awareness with her actions compared to BoJack who does terrible things but refuses to fix himself because he wants to believe he’s a good person deep down. 

“Daria” has aged incredibly well since the 1990s. In fact, it makes for a fascinating time capsule of that era in terms of fashion and what was going on in pop culture. The show’s funny while commenting on how artificial so much of modern life has become. While it’s definitely more of an episodic series compared to something like “BoJack Horseman,” you can still track characters’ growth as the show goes on.