Paul Rudd stars in Netflix’s Living With Yourself, a high-concept sci-fi dramedy about a copywriter, a difficult marriage, and an illegal clone that forces two versions of Miles Elliot to confront what their lives have become. After six years with no renewal,
When Paul Rudd’s Miles Elliot first meets the idea of a “fix” for his life, it doesn’t arrive with fireworks. It arrives like an uneasy moment you can’t unthink—especially after the strain in his marriage has become impossible to ignore.
Miles. a copywriter. is trying to hold it together with his wife. Kate (Aisling Bea). while the couple struggles to conceive a child. Their relationship is already under pressure: Kate. an interior architect. is described as more successful and more fulfilled. and Miles is stung by criticism that he isn’t present enough. Then. after an unusual encounter with a co-worker. Miles learns that a cloned version of himself has been created—and the series pivots on the unsettling premise that both versions may end up sharing the same life.
Living With Yourself understands how messy clone stories can get. The setup isn’t just sci-fi spectacle; it’s a moral and emotional puzzle. Eventually. only one version of Miles will have complete control. which turns the question from “what would you do with a second chance?” into something far sharper: who gets to live with the consequences. and what happens to the other.
The show gives Miles two competing paths at once. One thread tracks Miles as he tries—slowly. painfully—to recognize how much of his life he’s let pass him by. The other thread has his clone starting to desire a life of its own. The irony is front and center: it takes the presence of someone trying to impose on Miles’s days for him to begin taking responsibility for his own.
That push-and-pull runs throughout the series, even as the chemistry between Rudd and Bea carries the emotional weight. The relationship between Miles and Kate plays as love strained by time and distance: they still care about one another. but they “do not feel that they have the same passion that they shared when they first met.” With a sparse extended cast. it’s Rudd’s charisma that keeps the pacing moving and makes the concept feel grounded in character rather than gimmick.
As the story digs deeper, Rudd gets the kind of dramatic freedom that doesn’t always follow him. Miles’s frustration with the clone is tied to his own self-hatred—he sees the twin’s success as proof he didn’t live up to his potential. Rudd also leans into the show’s physical-comedy strengths. including a hilarious fight scene in which both versions of Miles brawl with one another. The performance isn’t just about being funny, though. It’s about showing a middle-aged man’s insecurities underneath the jokes.
The series also adds an uncomfortable realism to the ethical chaos. Living With Yourself takes a nuanced approach to what cloning might mean for identity. A clone, the story stresses, doesn’t have a backstory or past they can lean on. The clone is made to embody someone whose life they can’t fully have. On top of that. Miles is not entirely aware of what he is signed up for. and he has no means of contacting authorities because of the illegal nature of the scientific experiment.
There’s no clean villain, either. Both versions of Miles are described as having both virtues and flaws, which makes it harder to reduce the conflict to a simple good-versus-evil showdown.
What makes the series feel especially vulnerable—almost tailor-made for its time—is how it’s positioned within Netflix’s willingness to greenlight high-concept projects with limited commercial viability. The show’s sensibility depends on serialization and binge viewing. It’s also difficult to imagine it existing on a network, given the production budget and explicit content. At the same time. it’s equally hard to picture it working as a feature film. because too many nuances and misadventures fill the space between the major plot points.
By the end of the run, the drama still hangs in the air. Living With Yourself isn’t technically classified as a miniseries. and there was no renewal after six years. a detail that points to the reality that Rudd likely won’t get the chance to play Miles again. The show’s ambiguity—described as dramedy. but “not a sitcom”—may be the reason it lingers in the mind rather than settling into a comfortable category.
For viewers who missed it the first time. or watched it once and moved on. the case is straightforward: Living With Yourself is the kind of experimental series that asks for re-assessment. It’s entertaining. It’s thought-provoking. And it’s begging to be rediscovered and judged with fresh eyes, even now.
Paul Rudd Living With Yourself Netflix sci-fi clone Aisling Bea Miles Elliot sci-fi series dramedy