Trying to wind down after a hard day's work? Don't turn on your TV
Wait, is work like that? TV certainly seems to be telling us so.
When you consider the most talked about shows of the recent years – Severance, The Pitt, The Bear, Hacks and Industry, for instance – many of them seem to revolve around the idea that the modern workplace is a hellscape.
Hacks paints comedy (and making art) as a pursuit poisoned by money and personal betrayal. The Bear – particularly the most recent season – lets us know that hospitality is a game of Russian roulette, where the talented and kind burn out and the corrupt thrive. Industry tells viewers from its very first episode that working in finance kills your heart metaphorically and, sometimes, quite literally.
Whether you loved or loathed the second season of Severance, the reason it initially stuck to people's brains was the dark exploration that a home self and work self could exist at odds with each other; that bringing your personal baggage to work was detrimental to your tasks (even if those tasks were monotonous and nonsensical).
Does severing your home self and work self protect your soul? How much meaning should you find in work? You might argue that when Severance became less concerned with work boundaries and selfhood, and more concerned with goats and innie-outie love triangles, it lost its spiciest subject matter.
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The workplace as TV fodder isn't new, obviously. Mary Tyler Moore getting up to hijinks as a TV producer in the 1970s was probably the first workplace comedy – suddenly, a domestic setting wasn't the only way to tell stories. Legal and medical procedurals have dominated television for decades, with the Law and Order franchise, ER and Grey's Anatomy providing season after season of such rhythmic storytelling that audiences found (and still find) comfort in the familiar formula.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps opens in cinemas on July 24. Read the full interviews in Stellar on Friday, in today's papers. The latest issue of Stellar is out on Sunday via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (Victoria), The Sunday Mail (Queensland) and Sunday Mail (SA). Originally published as 'You feel that responsibility': How Ebon Moss-Bachrach juggled The Bear and Marvel's Fantastic Four
