‘Sorry For Your Loss’ Is Good Enough To Figure Out What Facebook Watch Is

Facebook Watch is the latest streaming service making a play for your precious eyeballs, and their most ambitious move yet came with this week’s release of Sorry For Your Loss. I know what you’re thinking: oh great, another streaming service to keep up with? Yeah, except that this one’s free and you probably already have it, even if you haven’t logged into it in months.

The new half-hour drama stars Elizabeth Olsen as Leigh, a recent widow who is slowly but surely accepting and processing her grief over the loss of her husband. With help from her mom (Janet McTeer), sister Jules (Kelly Marie Tran), and the support group she most appreciates for the free donuts (can’t blame her for that one), the series is an honest and compelling look at exactly how difficult it is to pick up the pieces of your life and mash back them together into a new reality.

I know, a drama about grief on Facebook maybe doesn’t sound like the ultimate binge, but there’s something about this series that had me eagerly awaiting the next episode — and luckily four of them dropped this week, with two additional episodes (of the 10 total) premiering each Tuesday at 6pm PT/9pm ET on the platform. Perhaps for the same reason we are obsessed with true crime shows, a grief show can also hook us: so we learn, and even take notes on, how others process this terrible life event. And there’s a lot to observe here. Olsen is fantastic, so happy in flashback moments that will set your heart on fire, and so genuine in the present that will break your heart to match hers. She gives even more truthfulness and vulnerability then the role calls for, and is one of the main reasons that you’ll want to watch more and more of the show. She’s also surrounded by a cast of wonderful actors, with Tran proving she’s no one hit wonder, even if that one hit was Star Wars, Mamoudou Athie making Matt shine in his throwback scenes, and Jovan Adepo, as Matt’s brother Danny, bringing a whole other, yet very valid, side to grief.

Written and created by playwright Kit Steinkellner, with James Ponsoldt serving as executive producer and director on a handful of episodes, Sorry For Your Loss feels like it understands and cares for the situation it’s portraying. Almost as if the show isn’t just made for entertainment, but is also striving to be more like a PSA/hug for those (probably most of us) that can relate. It’s wise that the drama is in the half-hour format, to both serve the ADD-style of most Facebook users, if we’re being honest, but also because it keeps the show from becoming entirely too depressing. Each episode is packed with just enough, just enough story and just enough emotion, to keep you interested in how Leigh will manage to get through the next day.

So how exactly do you watch this show? While Sorry For Your Loss is very much worth watching, it may also serve as many viewers first introduction to Facebook Watch. You can find all that the Facebook streaming platform has to offer for content if you look in the left column of your homepage while on a computer, and if you’re on the app, check out the TV icon on the bottom of the screen to take you there. It’s also easiest to just search the name of the show, and then be sure to Follow it so that you get notifications when new episodes arrive.

Sorry For Your Loss is sad, yes, but in the best kind of way: the real, interesting, and even uplifting way that will have you feeling and rooting for Leigh and her family, so much so that you’ll want to become friends with these people. Now if only there were a website to do that…

Where to stream Sorry For Your Loss