---
title: "Somebody Somewhere"
year: 2022
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/somebody-somewhere"
fi1m_score: 85
critics_score: 85
critics_reviews: 8
published: "2026-09-17T04:28:36.203287+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T04:28:36.668707+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Somebody Somewhere (2022)

Created by Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen · MPA NR · Comedy, Drama

**Fi1m score: 85** · Critics 85 from 8 reviews

*In a sentence:* A woman who has given up on herself gets dragged to a church cabaret by a man in a cardigan, and we wept

> Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller make a small, foul-mouthed comedy about grief and friendship in a Kansas town, and it is among the best things made for television in years. It is also slow, short and almost entirely without plot, and it means to be.

## Synopsis

Manhattan, Kansas. Sam Miller (Bridget Everett) is in her forties and back in the town she grew up in and left, living in her late sister’s house and marking standardised tests for a living. Her father Ed Miller (Mike Hagerty) farms and says little; her surviving sister Tricia Miller (Mary Catherine Garrison) runs a gift shop with her husband Rick (Danny McCarthy) and does not approve of her; her mother Mary Jo Miller (Jane Brody) drinks. At work, Joel (Jeff Hiller) remembers Sam from school show choir, though she does not remember him, and invites her to what he calls choir practice: an after-hours cabaret in a shopping-centre church run by Fred Rococo (Murray Hill). Sam, who used to sing and stopped, is handed a microphone.

## Review

Sam Miller (Bridget Everett) is in her forties, back in Manhattan, Kansas, the town she grew up in and left, sleeping in her dead sister’s house and marking standardised tests for a living. Paul Thureen and Hannah Bos have built a comedy around a woman who has decided, well in advance, that nothing much is going to happen to her. Over three seasons of seven episodes the series sets about proving her wrong, gently, and it is one of the best things made for television in recent years. That is our verdict. The caveat is that it is slow, small and short, and if you need a plot you will be waiting some time.

The engine is Joel (Jeff Hiller), a colleague from the test-marking floor who remembers Sam from school show choir when she does not remember him. He invites her to choir practice, which turns out to be a cabaret night held after hours in a shopping-centre church, run by Fred Rococo (Murray Hill) and attended by people the town has not found much use for. Sam, who used to sing and stopped, sings. The first episode ends there, and we were in tears. It was not the song, which is good, so much as Hiller’s face while she does it: a man watching a friend remember she is alive.

Everett wrote on the series as well as leading it, and it is built to her measure. She is a cabaret singer with a big voice and she uses it perhaps three times a season, which is the right number. The rest of the time she plays a woman who has learned to get in first with the joke about herself before anyone else can. Hiller is even better. Joel is devout, tidy, hopeful and a little lonely, and Hiller never once asks you to find him adorable. The two of them talk the way friends do, over each other and about nothing, and the series will happily spend five minutes on a conversation in a parked car.

Around them, the family. Mike Hagerty plays Ed, Sam’s father, a farmer of few words who is kind to his daughter in a way nobody else in the house manages, and Hagerty does most of it with a nod and a coffee cup. Mary Catherine Garrison’s Tricia is brittle, churchgoing and married to Rick (Danny McCarthy), and the writers give her a whole life rather than a list of faults. Jane Brody’s Mary Jo drinks, and the show is honest about how tedious that is for everyone around her. Jon Hudson Odom’s Michael and Ora Jones’s Pastor Deb fill out a town that feels as though it carries on when the camera leaves.

Jay Duplass, Robert Cohen and Lennon Parham share the directing, and they have agreed on a look: flat Midwestern light, long takes, big skies, kitchens shot from the doorway. Nobody is lit to look better than they do, and Everett in particular is filmed as she is, which remains rarer than it should be. The cutting lets a joke land and then stays for the awkward second afterwards, which is where most of the laughs are. The certificate is 18, chiefly for language, and the language is the funniest thing in it.

The series has almost no interest in incident. There are episodes, mostly in the second season, where a week passes and the only event is a barbecue, and we felt once or twice that Thureen, Bos and their writers were so fond of everyone that they could not bear to let anything go wrong. Seven episodes a season is not many. The third and final season closes the thing before it has quite finished with Sam, and we would have taken another year.

Set against the run of American half-hour comedies about sad people, it stands apart for what it will not do. It never reaches for swelling music. When somebody cries, it is over something small, and the camera does not move in. Most critics have been as warm as we are, and for once we have no quarrel with them.

Watch it two episodes at a time, in the evening, with someone you can sit in silence next to. It is not a series to get through. It is one to keep company with.

*Fi1m score 85, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are unanimous in their approval. Most critics describe a gentle, small-scale comedy about grief and small-town life that never tips into sentimentality, and nearly all of them put Bridget Everett’s performance as Sam at the centre of the praise, admiring how much she does with restraint before her singing lets something bigger out. Jeff Hiller is named almost as often, and the friendship between Sam and Joel is repeatedly picked out as the reason the show works: honest, warm and funny without straining for it.

There is little to report on the other side. The spread is narrow, running from an enthusiastic A to a solid B, and no review is mixed or negative. The coolest notice, from The AV Club on the third and final series, still calls it big-hearted; its reservation is one of degree rather than kind. Reviews of the later series suggest the show holds its quality, with Paste finding the second series answers larger questions through small moments.

### Reviews we read (8)

- **IndieWire**, Kristen Lopez (A): The critic calls the HBO series a heartfelt delight led by Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller's performances. It skillfully depicts Sam's organic emotional growth and captures the quiet connections of everyday life and new friendships. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/2022/01/somebody-somewhere-review-hbo-series-brilliant-cast-1234688762/)
- **Variety**, Daniel D'Addario (85/100, inferred): The series challenges the protagonist Sam's cynical outlook by suggesting that believing improvement is impossible is itself an easy way out. It highlights Bridget Everett's restrained performance and the power of her singing as she builds community among outsiders in small-town Kansas. [Read](https://variety.com/2022/tv/reviews/bridget-everett-hbo-somebody-somewhere-1235141514/)
- **Vulture** (85/100, inferred): The critic finds it a confident story about an unconfident woman, full of pleasure and tentative uncertainty in new adult friendships. Everett gives a fantastic, tender performance that makes the show live and die by her subtle portrayal of the lead. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/bridget-everett-somebody-somewhere-review.html)
- **The Guardian** (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the series a stealthy, beautiful comedy about grief, small-town life and found family that avoids easy sentimentality. The central friendship between Sam and Joel is singled out as honest and warm, with the show praised for its truthful, affectionate take on ordinary lives. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/mar/01/somebody-somewhere-review-a-warm-honest-and-surprisingly-beautiful-tv-comedy)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, Angie Han (80/100, inferred): The gentle dramedy is a low-key delight with an eye for detail, laid-back humor, and compassion that occasionally bursts into exuberance. It praises the vivid characterizations, especially the chemistry between leads and supporting players, and the rare focus on a fat middle-aged woman carving out space in her hometown. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/somebody-somewhere-tv-review-1235070794/)
- **The AV Club**, Tim Lowery (B): The big-hearted dramedy’s third and final season gives a heady dose of the feels. The show is refreshing for its soft spot for humanity that feels neither cloying nor reductive, packaged with a confident indie-film aesthetic. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/somebody-somewhere-season-3-review)
- **Collider**, Taylor Gates (9/10): The critic calls the final season a stunning swan song for the series, praising its grounded, authentic storytelling that feels refreshing amid flashy production trends. Bridget Everett delivers a tour de force performance as Sam, with the season digging deeper into characters and balancing humor and poignancy. [Read](https://collider.com/somebody-somewhere-season-3-review/)
- **Paste**, Michael Savio (8.9/10): The review highlights how the second season uses small moments to ask big questions while solidifying the show's status as one of modern TV’s best-kept secrets. It singles out the unmatched, good-humored chemistry between Sam and Joel as central to the series' appeal. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/hbo/somebody-somewhere-season-2-review)

## Details

- **Created by:** Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen
- **Creator:** Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen
- **Director:** Robert Cohen, Jay Duplass, Lennon Parham, Robert Cohen
- **Writer:** Hannah Bos, Paul Thureen, Bridget Everett, Lisa Kron, Patricia Breen, Rachel Axler, Lennon Parham
- **Producer:** Shuli Harel
- **Cast:** Bridget Everett as Sam Miller; Mike Hagerty as Ed Miller; Jeff Hiller as Joel; Mary Catherine Garrison as Tricia Miller; Danny McCarthy as Rick; Murray Hill as Fred Rococo; Jane Brody as Mary Jo Miller; Jon Hudson Odom as Michael
- **Certificate (MPA):** NR
- **Release (the US):** 16 January 2022
- **Genres:** Comedy, Drama

## Where to watch in the US

- HBO Max: streaming
- Amazon Prime Video: add-on
- The Roku Channel: add-on, hd
- Hulu: add-on, hd

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IS, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Detectorists* (2014), Fi1m 87: Two men, a field and a friendship; the English cousin of this one. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/detectorists.md)
- *Please Like Me* (2013): Australian comedy about family, illness and being kind badly, without a wasted line.
- *Mum* (2016): Lesley Manville grieves in a Hertfordshire kitchen and it is funnier than it sounds.
- *Enlightened* (2011), Fi1m 84: Laura Dern tries to be a better person and nobody wants her to. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/enlightened.md)
- *Nebraska* (2013), Fi1m 82: Black-and-white Midwest, a difficult father, and a road trip that goes nowhere much. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/nebraska.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/somebody-somewhere