Work – like love – is all around.
No longer restricted to offices and factory floors, it’s everywhere I go (to butcher the lyrics of the song).
Yes, work follows me on my phone with nagging emails, but it is also seeping into my valuable leisure time spent slumped on the sofa. For this is the era of Peak Workplace TV.
This was highlighted in last week’s Emmy Awards, which garlanded The Studio, a comedy about the entertainment world, featuring a cinephile (Seth Rogen) trying to keep his studio afloat in a hyper-competitive dumb industry; another comedy, Hacks, focuses on the relationship between a boomer comedian Deborah Vance (played brilliantly by Jean Smart) and her Gen Z writer, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder); while Severance picked up eight awards for its exploration of the work-home divide, and five went to hospital drama The Pitt.
And what is Slow Horses (winner of one Emmy), the wry drama based on Mick Herron’s books, if not about work?
Yes, it’s a story of spooks and villains, but it also shows a cohort of MI5 rejects banding together. Indeed, Jackson Lamb, the leader of this team of misfits, played by Gary Oldman, has been hailed as a model boss, despite the flatulence, by no less than Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who wrote: “He’s incredibly capable and takes his work seriously.”
LinkedIn is littered with Lamb’s leadership lessons. One Medium post praises his “radical candour” and lack of interest in micromanaging, such as: “I really don’t need to know the ins and outs of a cat’s a*se.”
Workplace dramas and comedies are hardly new. Before The Pitt, which is yet to arrive in the UK, there was ER, which also starred Noah Wyle. The mockumentary style of The Office paved the way for The Paper (made by the same team behind the US version), as well as Abbott Elementary. The settings are different, but the quashed ambition and tone-deaf managers are much the same.
Such emotions explain the workplace’s allure to TV creators. Where else can you find such disparate characters who fall in love, clash, strive and lose?
[ When to start thinking about work-life balanceOpens in new window ]
Yet the new intensification of this TV trend reflects a culture grappling with work (also, increasingly, a feature of novels, such as Drayton and Mackenzie, Moderation and Green Dot, to name but a few). It is evidence of a so-called “work society”, says Sam Waterman, assistant professor of English at Northeastern University, that is, “work as socially rather than just economically compulsory”.
It is partly driven by work’s intrusiveness as technology makes it harder to switch off, and insecurity about economic uncertainty and artificial intelligence.
Work has also become part of a social media culture, where TikTokers invite viewers to #GRWM (get ready with me) for a day at the office, explain their working day and share previously private moments, including quitting their jobs in a wave of #QuitTok.
Dan Kaplan, a senior partner at recruiters Korn Ferry, has said there is “a near fantasy-like fascination with big companies and more importantly, larger-than-life leaders”, fuelled by the ubiquity of CEOs on social media, interviewing each other on video and podcasts. Elsewhere, the US is run by a president who models Government on the art of the deal and valorises long hours and business.
This age of Peak Workplace TV explores essential issues. Waterman points to a theme of The Studio: can you have “a humane and creative workplace that is also commercially successful”? So too in The Bear, which focuses on the intense, toxic world of restaurant kitchens.
Meanwhile, Hacks examines generational tensions, a topic I’ve heard many business leaders express concern over, and the show is also acute on the spiritual toll of ambition. It is not, however, depressing. Like other series, it depicts the warmth, as well as the hostility, that can develop between colleagues, even bosses and employees.
I often think of the scene where Smart’s charismatic character steps in to save a lacklustre funeral service for her mentee’s father. “Everybody’s uncomfortable because they think nobody has anything nice to say about this man,” she says. “And I know that you do, not because I knew him – I didn’t – but I know his daughter. I know he had to be a very special person to raise someone like her.”
It’s a reminder that bonds formed through work, occasionally and unexpectedly, may be profound. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
