The Big C (Seasons 1–4)

The Big C (2010–2013) is a Showtime tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. Cathy Jamison, a buttoned-up suburban schoolteacher and mother, learns she has late-stage melanoma — and decides, for now, to tell no one.

Instead of falling apart, she starts living the way she always meant to. She builds a pool in the backyard, picks fights with her man-child husband, claws her way toward her sullen teenage son, and reconnects with her homeless brother, who preaches a gospel of owning nothing. The diagnosis stops being a sentence and becomes a strange permission to be honest. Laura Linney carries the whole show and won a Golden Globe for it, with Oliver Platt, Gabourey Sidibe and John Benjamin Hickey alongside her.

Across four seasons the series walks the line between mean comedy and gathering grief without tipping into either tears or cheap jokes. It's really about a person who quits saving life for later. Stream every season of The Big C online on iFILM.