In the olden days everyone had different jobs – woodcutter, chimney sweep, blacksmith, regional sales executive for an electronics conglomerate, clown, hangman, technical writer, lutist. (I think that’s all of the jobs.) But nowadays everyone has the same job – computering.
We all sit at a computer computering away for the computerboss (Mark Zuckerberg? Jesus? Megatron? I can’t remember) for reasons that are usually too abstract and beyond our pay grade to fully understand. Look, I’m not certain what it is we’re all doing, but I’m sure it’s very important.
This is why Severance (Apple TV+), Dan Erickson’s stylish dystopian drama, is so relatable. In that show Mark (the excellent Adam Scott) and Helly (the fantastic Britt Lower) and their colleagues churn through surreally abstract numbers while receiving occasional treats – dance parties, a watermelon carved into the shape of a beloved colleague’s head, office away days, occasional goat sacrifices – and also being trapped in a labyrinthine business-casual nightmare forever. The company is clearly Accenture or possibly KPMG or the Irish Independent.
Luckily, when the employees go home in the evening they remember nothing at all of their day, because they have a special implant that severs their personalities in two. I’m pretty sure I have the same implant, which is why I blank my colleagues on the street, don’t reply to emails or pleasantries after 5pm and respond to questions about my day with a slightly dazed expression.
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Here are my other favourite workplace TV shows.
Succession (Sky)
This is The Irish Times, so I know a lot of you work for your fathers’ firms alongside your worst enemies, your siblings. Those losers are not serious people. And so you watch Jesse Armstrong’s Succession and are able to laugh in sad recognition at all the culturally incisive barbs as the characters shuttle between sterile hotel lounges, boardrooms and private jets wallowing in the unhappiness only the truly wealthy can understand.
You are also well used to people being vague about what’s in the will. On the other hand, whenever Succession’s patriarch, Logan Roy (Brian Cox), growls a trademark “F**k off!” you have to hide a tear. Oh, if only your father was so generously open with his emotions. Sadly, he’s from Cavan, and “Sure there you are” is the most emotion you’ve ever got from him. What you wouldn’t give for just one surly “f**k off!” Perhaps then you could feel something.
The White Lotus (Sky)
The White Lotus resort is a wonderful place to work, whether it be the Hawaiian, Italian or Thai branches (as featured in series one to three, respectively, of Mike White’s darkly funny drama). Look at the beautiful sights, the calming music, the excellent food and the compelling character actors laid out in visually pleasing and allegorically significant tableaux across the resort.
People often complain on TripAdvisor about the murders at the White Lotus resort, but do you know what? I’m okay with them. After several decades holidaying in two-star hotels I’m ready to work in a luxury one, even one that lays bare the class struggle inherent in end-stage capitalism, and I’m fine with the odd corpse floating by. (I call that last sentence “western civilisation today”.)
The Office (BBC)
The workplace comedy ur-text, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s series, set in the Wernham Hogg paper company, mines the tedium of office life via the self-aggrandising buffoonery of office manager David Brent. A warning, however: if you can’t spot the David Brent in your office, you are the David Brent of your office. I think Sigmund Freud said that first. Which is ironic, as he’s the David Brent of psychoanalysis.
The Dropout (Disney+)
Sometimes the workplace is an extension of the brain of a genius entrepreneur and ideas person. I am an entrepreneur and ideas person myself. I’m great at coming up with ideas. Here’s an idea I have just had: a cure for cancer. Now that I have imagined this idea in my imaginarium (my brain) I’m going to ask you, a scientist, to come on board and do all the nitty-gritty science stuff. I’ll give you 50 per cent of the many $$$ we make curing cancer. But remember it was my idea.
The Dropout is the true story of Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried) another visionary like myself. She had a simple idea: a simple blood test for all illness. Smaller minds (scientists) said that it wasn’t possible and that she should focus on something useful, like an app that soaks up the data of teenagers in return for giving them mental-health problems (aka the rest of the tech industry). But did she listen?
Pshaw! She did not, and Theranos, her company, turned this simple idea into a $10 billion corporation in which everyone was cowed and terrified by her visionary brilliance and totally unencumbered by boring old “facts”. And that’s the difference between Elizabeth Holmes and a lumpen wage slave like yourself. That and the fact she’s now in prison. (I probably should have said “spoiler alert”).
Superstore (Netflix)
A hilarious ensemble romp about blue-collar retail jobs that slowly evolves into a hilarious ensemble romp about the importance of unions in the face of casual corporate cruelty? Hook it to my veins (alongside the Theranos extraction needles and my severance chip)!
The Sopranos (Now)
A thrifty waste-management company run from the headquarters of another business (a strip club) pursues an aggressive expansion policy. I see no reason to believe lovable rogue Tony Soprano is lying about being in the waste-management business, and I’m not going to fall into lazy Italian-American stereotypes just to be “cool”, like the other television columnists. Snobby Meadow Soprano, meanwhile, struggles with the fact that her old man’s a dustman and wears a dustman’s hat. It’s basically a remake of Steptoe and Son.
Cheers (Paramount+)
“Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name,” Gary Portnoy sang on the theme song to Cheers. In reality, if “everybody knows your name” in a bar it’s probably time for an intervention. (The exception being the Dáil bar, where “if everybody knows your name” you’re destined for great triumph and/or disgrace.) Nonetheless, Cheers is good fun. It launched the careers of Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson and is possibly the best workplace TV property ever made about a mind-altering drug (if you don’t count The Wire).
Paw Patrol (Netflix)
“Let me just say, I really appreciate this opportunity to work with Adventure Bay’s emergency services department. I like how well-resourced the operation is given that it is, essentially, a small municipal department funded by council taxes. I mean, you seem to have some sort of huge techno watchtower/home overlooking the area, a mass surveillance system and a series of tiny vehicles that emerge from a militarised superbus. And it’s all run by a 10-year-old child? How delightfully unorthodox! Do I have any questions? Well, I’m sure this isn’t going to come up, but I am deathly allergic to dogs.”
