Humans are very funny creatures, and not just because we do stupid things like yawn just because someone near us is yawning (it’s not a competition, man bellowing next to me on the 7.09am train!). We’re funny in how resistant we are to friendships that are arranged for us. It’s a type of matchmaking predicated on one person being friends with a person/couple and thinking that it’s only natural that their own partner is also friends with that couple. The easy thing would be to go with the flow. The easy thing doesn’t make for good television.

It’s a diabolical situation that has played out recently on both HBO’s luxe murder mystery The White Lotus on Binge and Hulu’s divorce dramedy Fleishman Is in Trouble on Disney+. These shows aren’t exclusively about friendship in adulthood, but the resentment at forced friendships powers them. Forget murder: being made to holiday with people you hate is the genuine horror here.

The second season of The White Lotus has returned with deliciously ostentatious Sicilian beaches and looming Baroque mansions, filled with people having a very bad holiday. The show is ordered around extremely awkward meals – either on gorgeous balconies overlooking the crystalline Mediterranean Sea or vast, warmly lit dining rooms with a piano tinkling away in the background – with people who should be having the time of their lives. Instead, families are criticising each other over plates of cannoli and couples are breaking up between mouthfuls of bucatini.

Sitting at the most excruciating table are couples Ethan (a recently-rich tech wiz) and Harper (a recently-rich tech wiz and lawyer), played by Ethan Sharpe and Aubrey Plaza, and Cameron and Daphne (Ethan’s finance bro college roommate and his perpetually sunny wife; Theo James and Meghann Fahy). Harper thinks the couple is fake, is perplexed that they don’t watch the news and decides that they “probably cheat on each other” (to be fair, a few episodes later, Cameron does happily declare to Ethan “everyone cheats!”). The forced friendship is agonising in big, nightmarish ways (like when Daphne tells Harper they’re going on a girls’ day trip in the country, only to reveal that they’re actually staying overnight when they arrive) and smaller relatable ways (Harper settles down to a relaxing breakfast alone with her book, only to glance up and see Cameron and Daphne maniacally waving her over to join them). Suddenly, the problem is Harper. Why can’t she just act happy for these current affair-avoiding, Aperol Spritz-slurping people?

Fleishman Is in Trouble, adapted from the brilliant 2019 novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, presents a quagmire in which both partners in a couple – doctor Toby (Jesse Eisenberg) and his entertainment agent wife Rachel (Claire Danes) – are resistant to each other’s friendship matchmaking attempts. Toby resents the circles that Rachel wants to move in: women who wear athletic singlets that say “wine o’clock!” and men who almost compulsively discuss the price of their designer watches and question Toby as to why he stays in such a low-paying job (he only earns $300k, which is humiliating).

Meanwhile, Rachel resents Toby’s university friends Seth (Adam Brody) and Libby (Lizzy Caplan), who throw dress-up parties and can’t say anything without putting on funny ironic voices. When Rachel and Toby get divorced, their conflicting friendship groups seem to illustrate the chasm between them: the frustration of jamming two incorrect puzzle pieces together again and again.

Why do we smash two couples together and expect their brain synapses to fire the same way? In both shows, at least one party brings ambivalence to the forced friendship arrangement and insists that the new friends aren’t “our people”. But maybe it’s actually nothing to do with the other couple, and more about what they represent: what am I really like? Does White Lotus’ Harper really hate the bubbly Cameron and Daphne? Or does she hate the idea that Ethan might be changing now that he has money – and that she might be changing too, without having realised it? Does Fleishman’s Toby resent he and Rachel’s affluent, watch-kinked school group friends, or is he scared that he and his wife appear to have different dreams? Does Rachel despise Toby’s uni friends, or do they represent a freer version of herself that she had to sacrifice in her pursuit of career and motherhood?

One of the other similarities of the shows is how sudden wealth can drastically alter your social circles and plop you with people who you used to mock, but who are now your peers. In White Lotus, Harper insists to Daphne that being rich hasn’t changed Ethan – while Ethan is back at the resort drinking champagne and popping MDMA with Cameron, who quite literally tells his “friend”: “the most ambitious guys, they were always the horniest. Like you and me, baby!” In Fleishman, Toby admonishes Rachel for placing too high a value on material things. “Money doesn’t buy you happiness!” he yells from the ensuite of their multimillion-dollar Manhattan apartment. “Oh Toby, of course it does!” Rachel yells back in exasperation, slipping her stilettos off on their snowy white rug.