Dramas like
Mr. Plankton

A prickly young man with nothing to lose, parked inside a hospice, being useful against his will. Same emotional trade as Mr. Plankton: terminal illness handled through errands and jokes rather than speeches, and a lead who is rude because being loved is harder than being difficult. The found family here does the work the road trip is supposed to do. Difference: it commits to the warmth instead of steering you into a cry at the end.

Slow start Episode 3, once the hospice wish-granting team is fully assembled.

Friends managing a death on a deadline. If the last two episodes of Mr. Plankton are what you actually came for, this is twelve episodes of that register, with the dying person allowed to be furious, practical and funny about it. The friendship is the love story. Difference: it is a melodrama and it knows it, so there is no comedy to hide behind when it turns.

Slow start Episode 3, once the diagnosis is out in the open. It stops being a hangout show.

A man near the end of his life doing the one thing he refused to do earlier. Both shows are about somebody with a countdown deciding what the remaining time is for, and both put the answer in a partnership with someone much younger and much angrier. Twelve episodes and no wasted ones. Difference: it is gentle throughout and never engineers a twist out of a diagnosis.

Hooks early Episode 2, the first proper lesson. It is a two-hander from there.

Death as a job rather than a plot device. Mr. Plankton keeps circling the question of who cleans up after you, and this is the show that answers it: each episode enters a life after it has ended and reassembles the person from what they left. Spare, unsentimental, devastating in the right places. Difference: the tone is steady from the first hour, so there is no comedy whiplash.

Hooks early Episode 1 already tells you exactly what the show is.

Time as the thing being spent, not the thing being travelled. The Mr. Plankton conceit that a life can be lived out of order and still add up is the whole architecture here. Twelve episodes, romance kept to the side. Difference: it is formally much stranger, and it asks you to hold the structure in your head while you watch.

Slow start Episode 4. Sit with the confusion, it is doing work.

Two people orbiting a loss they will not name. Slow, cold, adult, and built on the same withheld conversation Mr. Plankton keeps postponing, except here the withholding is the point rather than a way to reach episode ten. Difference: almost nothing happens for long stretches, and the comedy relief simply is not there.

Slow start Episode 4, once the revenge plan stops being a plan and becomes a habit of seeing each other.