When the 2023 Emmy nominations were revealed last week, one of the big surprises was the presence of Amazon Freevee’s hybrid reality/scripted comedy Jury Duty, which placed in four categories including best comedy series.
Whether or not the series – a Truman Show-like experiment about a staged civil court trial in which only the foreperson is unaware of the ruse – ends up bringing home any gold, its prevalence among the other contenders – including the past awards mainstays Ted Lasso, Abbott Elementary, The Marvelous Miss Maisel and Only Murders in the Building; critical darlings Barry and The Bear; and Netflix’s cultural juggernaut Wednesday – counts as a victory lap for the underdog hit.
On paper, that description may not seem appropriate. After all, Jury Duty was produced by Amazon, created by two alumni of The Office (Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg), and stars James Marsden, an actor who, if not quite a household name before now, was still a popular and recognizable figure with a number of blockbusters on his CV.
But this pedigree doesn’t tell the whole story. Filmed in secret over 17 days in 2022 (at a real courthouse in Los Angeles), the show debuted in April to zero buzz. Early reviews were middling-to-poor. Even more daunting to the show’s prospects was the fact that it initially aired not on Amazon Prime, but Amazon Freevee, the conglomerate’s little-known, ad-supported streaming platform. Among a sea of content, Jury Duty seemed doomed to drown in obscurity.
But then came the TikTokers. Clips from the show started making the rounds on that app, racking up millions of views. Users were particularly smitten with the show’s lead, Ronald Gladden, a 29-year-old solar contractor from San Diego. Gladden, who answered a Craigslist ad for what he thought was a real documentary about jury duty, proved a once-in-a-lifetime find: an aloof, but intelligent and charming everyman who not only tolerated all of the insanity the showrunners and actors threw at him, but, through his innate kindness and empathy, transformed what would probably have been an experiment in cringe comedy into one about the transformative power of makeshift family. (In this, it mirrors the long-term arc of The Office.)
After Jury Duty went viral, Amazon made the wise decision to move it over to Prime, where, by May, it shot to the top of the streaming rankings. Compare this to the reception of what was meant to be Prime’s crown jewel: Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The most expensive show ever produced, it only managed to retain 37% of viewers from its first episode to its finale. In this light, Jury Duty’s success becomes even more impressive.
But what, exactly, accounts for that success? Why did audiences – first that coveted Zoomer demographic on TikTok, and later those of all ages – take to the show so strongly?
On the one hand, its appeal is obvious: it’s what used to be referred to as water-cooler television, with the kind of high-concept premise that cuts through the glut of streaming content and makes it stand out among all the other shows. At the same time, all of its disparate elements are comfortably familiar: the workplace comedy, the reality TV hothouse, the courtroom TV and true crime docudrama, the hidden camera prank show.
Certainly, the cast of characters that populate Jury Duty – including Marsden’s exaggerated version himself (his ability and willingness to make himself a petty and pretentious narcissist, while still coming off as likable, is undeniably awards-worthy), Mekki Leeper’s lovesick virgin nerd, Edy Modica’s smitten sexpot, David Brown’s transhumanist weirdo, and Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola’s deadpan bailiff – are the types of lovable losers essential to any situational sitcom’s popularity.
More than that, Jury Duty scratches a particular itch left behind, fittingly, and perhaps obviously, by The Office, which seems to have only grown more popular since it aired its final episode one full decade ago.
Stupnitsky and Eisenberg have said as much in interviews, describing their initial idea as simply The Office in court. Granted, in the years since the American version of that show debuted, any number of sitcoms have adopted its mockumentary framing and style of awkward, yet heartfelt humor to great success, key among them Parks and Recreation, Modern Family and the current Emmy staple Abbott Elementary. But Jury Duty feels like The Office’s true heir, particularly in its deployment of the reaction shot punchline – the difference here being that most of said reaction shots are unscripted and real, which does add some extra oomph when they land.
The reality element is another key component to Jury Duty’s appeal, although it is not without precedents. Along with The Office, the show it most brings to mind is HBO and Nathan Fielder’s dizzyingly meta The Rehearsal. While that series garnered its share of attention and discourse last year, its chillier, far more cerebral and darker sensibilities kept it from being a crossover hit. Unsurprisingly, it was snubbed by the Emmys.
As was the case with The Rehearsal, Jury Duty’s very existence brings up interesting ethical quandaries, although unlike Fielder’s show, it never once addresses them. In fact, the final episode, in which the hoax is revealed to Gladden (before he’s then gifted $100,000) goes out of its way to elide any such considerations, signing off with an unambiguous happy ending drenched in the type of oppressive positivity that’s come to define modern comedy series (see: Ted Lasso and Abbott Elementary).
It’s interesting to consider what the runaway success of Jury Duty entails for the future of original programming. It’s not hard to envision a deluge of hidden-camera sitcoms flooding the market in the coming years. But it seems unlikely that any of them will be able to capture the same lightning-in-a-bottle magic.
Still, the path charted by Jury Duty does prove that TV comedy has some life left in it yet, even if it has to reach into real life to get it.
