What do you get when you mix The Truman Show, The Office and The Rehearsal? Amazon's absolutely bananas new series Jury Duty.
The mockumentary follows the ins and outs of a civil trial that quickly goes off the rails, featuring some bad lawyering, absurd testimony, poorly rendered re-enactments, an embarrassing situation with a blocked toilet, and jurors getting jiggy with it.
ABC RN's Stop Everything presenter Benjamin Law describes it as "a comedy like no other". No wonder it's set the internet aflame.
Alright alright alright, order in the court! Is Jury Duty real?
No.
While protagonist Ronald Gladden thought he was signing up for a documentary series about what it's like to serve on a jury, instead he was the one real person amongst an enormous cast of actors playing his fellow jurors, the judge, the bailiff, the witnesses, the lawyers and the litigants in a fake case.
What we are watching is Ronald's real reactions to a totally fabricated and mostly scripted scenario.
What is this case and how is Ronald involved?
Ronald — or juror number six — ends up being selected as the jury foreperson, charged with keeping his unruly jurors in line (and awake in some cases) and helping them reach a verdict.
The general gist of the frankly confusing case is: A fancy lady plaintiff, Jacquiline Hilgrove (but call her 'Jacquis', pronounced Jack-qwees), claims that products from her organic fashion line, and her reputation, have been destroyed by the behaviour of a dodgy defecating employee, the defendant Trevor Morris.
How did the producers pull this elaborate ruse off?
First, they placed an ad on American website Craigslist looking for someone to participate in jury duty and be filmed.
They received thousands of applications, but as co-creator and executive producer Lee Eisenberg told Vulture: "When we saw Ronald's tape, we couldn't believe it. He's such a nice guy. He's funny, he's charming, he's witty."
The production then assembled an impressive cast of essentially unknown actors — including some former lawyers — who had to follow scripts and improvise around Ronald.
Alongside these winning screen newcomers, there's Hollywood star James Marsden (Hairspray; X-Men; Westworld), who is desperately trying to avoid jury duty as he has a very important TOP SECRET audition to get to, but ends up being an alternate juror forced to observe the entire court case. That's gotta hurt.
Stop Everything! presenter Beverley Wang says: "This must be an actor's dream; you're basically in this immersive environment all the time. I'm wondering how they are not breaking and laughing because it is ridiculous."
The jury also ends up sequestered for three weeks, forced to live in hotels and cut off from communicating with the outside world for the entirety of the case — which means those actors have to stay in character pretty much around the clock.
Law says: "[They're] actually living in a hotel together, playing video games with Ronald Gladden … I think it's a delight to see actors maintain such joyful discipline."
Is this ethical and fair to Ronald?
Good question!
One wonders how cool it is to, in the words of Law, "essentially gaslight one person at the potential expense of their mental health, because everyone is literally in on a joke except [Ronald]".
But as Wang points out: "The person who makes the show work — and it's such a tightrope walk, and he does it without realising he is doing it — is Ronald himself.
"The reason why it doesn't make us feel so icky is … he's not the butt of the joke. He's an observer to the ridiculousness."
Importantly: Ronald responds with bemused patience and understanding to everything that is thrown at him.
Though Wang concedes: "In the interest of not being accused of being unethical, the show has got to do its best to give him [Ronald] the best edit possible."
Spoiler alert: Skip the next section if you wish to enter this show with a pristine mind.
How does Ronald feel about it?
When Ronald finds out that this was all a dream *cough* ruse, he is surprisingly chill about the whole thing.
He told Variety this week: "There was never a moment when I was truthfully angry about it, no, because on the day of the reveal, it was so much to process, like I couldn't be mad about it."
Two years after filming wrapped and with some time to process, he still isn't angry and says "truthfully, the only reason I would have been mad was if I found out those relationships I had forged with people were completely forced".
Where do the comparisons to The Office come from?
Eisenberg and fellow co-creator Gene Stupnitsky wrote on several seasons of the beloved workplace sitcom, which is why some of Jury Duty's pacing, camera work and gags feel uncannily familiar.
Wang says: "What I have come to conclude is that with Ronald, those producers have found the real-life Jim [Halpert, the lovable everyman played by John Krasinski]."
"They won the lottery when they found that tall, quite handsome, kind, considerate, thoughtful young man; they struck gold."
So is that why the internet is horny for Ronald?
Well, yes — just as the good netizens of the world have long crushed on Jim, they have turned their lusty loins on Ronald, a 30-year-old Californian solar panel installer and father to a corgi named Meatball.
Okay enough with the Ronald relish, we need to talk about James Marsden.
Fine.
While there are several breakout performances, including from Rashida Olayiwola (bailiff Nikki) and Edy Modica (juror Jeannie), Marsden goes all out playing a heightened, totally jerky version of himself. Bless him.
What's the verdict: Is it any good?
Critics have been divided over the show (The Guardian's critic writes, "their all-in commitment on making this odd experiment work often supersedes the cause of being funny") but the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is 98 per cent.
Law says: "What I think is beautiful about this show is yes, the premise is essentially at its base level a very elaborate Candid Camera … [But] Ronald himself is so decent.
"Think of America in 2023, it's an incredibly fractious society where people don't necessarily think the best of each other … Whereas something like jury duty actually pulls you together and asks you to cooperate, and this is what the show is asking of Ronald — and he passes."
Wang points out that while The Rehearsal was dark, Jury Duty "redeems our faith in the goodness of humans".
This writer will go on the record to say that, while the first few episodes are delightful and the gags are tight, the concept wears a little thin by the end.
Hold up: What ever happened to good ol' fashioned reality TV?
Long gone are the days of The Real World, with Wang wondering: "Is this what we need TV to do these days? You either have to survive in the wilderness or you have to live inside a house of mirrors, Truman Show-style; unless it's that level of un-pull-off-able TV, are we even interested in reality TV anymore?"
This is worth deliberating over, but perhaps beyond the scope of this investigation. So let us bang the gavel and push on.
This sounds appeal-ing, how do I watch Jury Duty in Australia?
All eight episodes are available to stream on Amazon Prime.
Will there be a Jury Duty season two?
While showrunner Cody Heller told Variety that they won't be able to set another season in a court, they hope to make a season two in "a whole different universe". Let's hope that the universe somehow involves the beautiful, perhaps slightly less naive Ronald.
