--- title: "The Rehearsal" year: 2022 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-rehearsal" fi1m_score: 84 critics_score: 79 critics_reviews: 10 published: "2026-09-17T04:15:58.290699+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T04:16:09.554146+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." --- # The Rehearsal (2022) Created by Nathan Fielder · MPA TV-MA · Comedy, Documentary **Fi1m score: 84** · Critics 79 from 10 reviews *In a sentence:* He builds an exact copy of a bar so a client can practise telling the truth, and it works, which is the frightening part > Nathan Fielder’s series about rehearsing life is funny, meticulous and more unsettling than anything else on television, and the copies of rooms are only the start of it. Its one real weakness is that it slowly stops being about anyone but him. ## Synopsis Nathan Fielder offers ordinary people a service: whatever difficult conversation they are dreading, he will help them rehearse it, on an exact copy of the place it will happen, with actors playing the other side, as many times as they need. His first client, Kor, has a hard conversation ahead of him with Tricia, a teammate from his weekly bar quiz. Fielder’s crew rebuilds the bar in a warehouse, casts a Fake Tricia (Gigi Burgdorf), a Fake Trivia Host (Tony Nation) and a Fake Bartender (Vilma Ortiz Donovan), and maps every way the evening could go. Fielder rehearses his own meetings too, opposite a Fake Kor (K. Todd Freeman). What begins as a service for other people does not stay that way. ## Review Nathan Fielder’s *Nathan for You* helped small businesses in ways they had not asked for. *The Rehearsal* offers something people might actually want. Anyone with a hard conversation ahead of them can practise it first, on an exact copy of the place it will happen in, opposite an actor playing the person they are afraid of, until they have tried every version. Fielder directs, writes with Carrie Kemper, Eric Notarnicola and Adam Locke-Norton, and appears as himself. Six episodes. It is the best thing he has made and one of the strangest things we have watched, and we recommend it with a caveat we will come to: by the middle of the run the client has changed, and the new client is Fielder. The first episode is the purest statement of the idea. Kor has something to tell Tricia, who plays on his quiz team, and he has been putting it off. Fielder’s crew rebuilds their bar inside a warehouse, and Schuyler Telleen and Rosie Sanders’ production design goes down to the taps, the stools and the chalk on the trivia board. Tony Nation runs the quiz as Fake Trivia Host; Gigi Burgdorf plays Fake Tricia; K. Todd Freeman plays Fake Kor, because Fielder has rehearsed his first meeting with Kor before having it. At one point Fielder produces a flowchart of every direction the conversation might take. We laughed at it, and then we stopped laughing, because we had drawn something like it in our heads before phoning our own relatives. Marco Cordero shoots the copies exactly as he shoots the originals, flat and even, so that a cut from the bar to the replica of the bar barely registers. That is the whole trick and it is disturbing every time. Locke-Norton and Andrew Fitzgerald edit so that we are sometimes a full scene into a rehearsal before we realise it is one, and they never point it out. Briana Jorgenson dresses the stand-ins in the real people’s clothes and keeps Fielder in the same zipped jacket throughout, as though he too were a costume. Fielder’s narration is level, polite and faintly sorry about everything, and the sorrier it sounds the funnier it gets. After the first episode the series goes somewhere we will not describe. What we can say is that the builds get larger and the man in the zipped jacket is increasingly the one being rehearsed for. This is where the series stops being a comedy with a sad edge and becomes a sad thing with comedy at the edges. The show knows this. Knowing it is not the same as being easy about it, and it stayed with us for days. The caveat is one most critics noticed and waved through. Fielder’s need to control every outcome becomes the story, and for a stretch in the middle the joke is that nothing is happening, which plays, on a sofa, as nothing happening. The volunteers thin out. Those who remain are real people with real beliefs, and there are scenes where the show seems unsure whether it is listening to them or waiting for them to say something usable. We felt, once or twice, that we were watching a very expensive way for one man to avoid a phone call. Against Fielder’s own earlier work this is braver and less funny, and the trade is worth it. *Nathan for You* had marks; here the marks are volunteers and the cruelty is turned inward, on the man with the flowchart. Against the genre of reality television it has the courage to build the machinery in full view and then walk into it. Watch one episode a night, two at most. Seen in a run, the replicas start to blur into the originals, which may be the point but is not pleasant. *Fi1m score 84, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics are won over. Nine of the ten reviews are positive, and the praise clusters around the scale of the idea: painstaking replicas of real places for volunteers to practise difficult conversations, and a structure that keeps folding back on Nathan Fielder himself. Several call it his most ambitious work, stranger and funnier than Nathan for You and unexpectedly moving under the discomfort. Its dissection of reality television and its power dynamics is repeatedly named as what the series does best. The spread is wide. Even admirers note that the series turns inward, spending more time on Fielder’s own anxieties and need for control than on the people it is meant to help, so that the melancholy overtakes the comedy. Variety, the one negative review, pushes this further: the constant attention to the creator drains the show of whimsy and leaves a general bad feeling where his earlier work had a sharper target. The Ringer raises the same worry more gently. ### Reviews we read (10) - **IndieWire**, Ben Travers (A): The critic finds the series finale rewarding and affirms that the rehearsals serve Nathan as much as the participants, yet the journey itself is the point. It singles out the ethical complexities and the show's dissection of reality TV and gamified life for praise. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/2022/08/the-rehearsal-episode-6-review-nathan-fielder-finale-spoilers-1234753964/) - **Vulture** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the series a dazzling yet horrifying display of scale and social experimentation that disorients viewers while exposing the mechanics of reality TV. It singles out the production's meticulous recreations and the unsettling power dynamics for both praise and discomfort. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/article/nathan-fielder-the-rehearsal-hbo-comedy-review.html) - **The i Paper**, Emily Baker (80/100, inferred): The series is a bold, original thought experiment that raises questions about relationships, self-importance and the pressures placed on others. It serves as a reminder to stop sweating the small stuff, since life is not a rehearsal. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/the-rehearsal-nathan-fielder-review-uk-sky-comedy-now-real-life-no-practice-runs-1813947) - **The Hollywood Reporter**, Daniel Fienberg (70/100, inferred): The series is uncomfortable, funny and unexpectedly poignant, with impressive ambition and meta twistiness that captures contemporary unease. It feels more real than its predecessor despite greater contrivance and offers stealthy provocation. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/the-rehearsal-nathan-fielder-1235178614/) - **Variety**, Daniel D'Addario (30/100, inferred): The show makes uncomfortable art from mockery with great self-awareness and imagination, but its endless focus on the creator himself results in paralyzingly little whimsy. It lacks the clarifying contempt of Fielder's prior work and settles for generalized bad vibes. [Read](https://variety.com/2022/tv/reviews/nathan-fielder-the-rehearsal-review-hbo-1235310807/) - **Collider**, Ross Bonaime (A): The critic calls the series Fielder's most ambitious and hysterical project yet, proving him a potential genius. They highlight the elaborate rehearsal concept blending reality and simulation as a standout achievement. [Read](https://collider.com/the-rehearsal-tv-show-review-nathan-fielder-hbo/) - **Consequence** (A): The critic hails the series as confirmation of Fielder as a comic visionary, blending help for real people with his own existential reflections. They praise the outrageous lengths of the rehearsals and the show's beating heart amid the comedy. [Read](https://consequence.net/2022/07/the-rehearsal-nathan-fielder-review-hbo/) - **Paste**, Reuben Baron (9.0): The critic finds the series mind-blowingly weird and fascinating, noting its scripted layers of rehearsal and meta tension between creator and character. They single out the paradoxical emotional insight amid the convoluted planning. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/comedy/nathan-fielder/nathan-fielder-the-rehearsal-review) - **/Film**, Lex Briscuso (80/100, inferred): The critic describes the series as surreal genius that reinvents reality TV with cringe, heart, and introspection. They praise how it turns comedy into something meaningful beyond mere entertainment. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/923280/the-rehearsal-review-nathan-fielder-continues-to-reinvent-the-reality-tv-wheel-with-beautifully-cringe-results/) - **The Ringer**, Alison Herman (75/100, inferred): Fielder extends his rehearsal concept from Nathan for You into a full series where volunteers prepare for difficult life moments, but the show increasingly centers on Fielder's own social anxieties and need for control. The critic notes that it inverts the prior ratio of comedy to tragedy, making the existential melancholy the focus rather than an ironic accent. [Read](https://www.theringer.com/2022/07/15/tv/the-rehearsal-nathan-fielder-review-hbo-nathan-for-you) ## Details - **Created by:** Nathan Fielder - **Creator:** Nathan Fielder - **Director:** Nathan Fielder - **Writer:** Nathan Fielder, Carrie Kemper, Eric Notarnicola, Adam Locke-Norton - **Cinematography:** Marco Cordero - **Editor:** Adam Locke-Norton, Andrew Fitzgerald - **Production design:** Schuyler Telleen, Rosie Sanders - **Costume design:** Briana Jorgenson - **Producer:** Amanda Schulz, David Allen Cress, Regina Heyman - **Cast:** Nathan Fielder as Self; Gigi Burgdorf as Fake Tricia; K. Todd Freeman as Fake Kor; Tony Nation as Fake Trivia Host; Vilma Ortiz Donovan as Fake Bartender; Joshua Benard as Adam Age 15; Thomas McNamara as Thomas (uncredited); Sophia California Rain as Self - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 15 July 2022 - **Genres:** Comedy, Documentary - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fjPFt8cpic ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Apple TV: buy, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy, 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, 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 - *Nathan for You* (2013): Fielder’s earlier show, where the marks were businesses and the jokes were sharper - *Synecdoche, New York* (2008), Fi1m 84: A theatre director builds a copy of his life and gets lost in it — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/synecdoche-new-york.md) - *Close-Up* (1990), Fi1m 92: Kiarostami has a real impostor re-enact his own fraud on camera — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/close-up.md) - *How To with John Wilson* (2020): Fielder-produced, gentler and stranger, and just as lonely underneath - *The Act of Killing* (2012), Fi1m 88: Perpetrators restage their crimes as film scenes; re-enactment as reckoning — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-act-of-killing.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/the-rehearsal