Stay Tuned: Workplace Shows Are the New Hits

For years, it’s been doctors, cops, and lawyers—and the situations they encounter on the job—who’ve dominated TV shows and streaming services. Who could ever have predicted the current vogue for shows about business leaders and office workers reckoning with such “hot” topics as succession, work-life balance, and generational differences?

Welcome to the new, if not odd, trend in entertainment. Over the last few years, workplace-related dramas have taken over the pop-culture zeitgeist, with shows like Succession, Industry, and Severance generating massive audiences, along with critical acclaim for the streaming services that produce them. During its four-year run, Succession—a drama about a media mogul’s children vying for control of the family business—won 19 Emmy Awards. Severance, which revolves around characters who have undergone brain surgery to separate their work and personal selves, ranked among the top ten most-streamed original series. During its second-season premiere week in January, Severance’s  viewers collectively watched Severance a total of 600 million minutes, including both its newest episode and its older ones. While ratings are not yet in, another new show, The Z-Suite, features a group of Gen-Z employees at an ad agency who oust their Gen-X leaders.

Lorraine Hack, a former executive at entertainment conglomerate Viacom and current senior client partner in Korn Ferry’s Technology/Digital and Consumer practices, says the popularity of these shows underscores how business and leadership issues are permeating every aspect of culture. “It used to be that business issues were only interesting to people in the stock market,” she says. “But now everyone is talking about them.”

One reason for this: Nowadays, the biggest and most profitable companies in the world—think big tech—don’t operate in one industry or vertical, but instead touch every part of our lives, says Dan Kaplan, a senior client partner in the CHRO practice at Korn Ferry. And whereas most CEOs used to operate in virtual anonymity, he says, today many of them are actively using social media to raise their profiles and get closer to consumers. “It’s fueled a near fantasy-like fascination with big companies and, more importantly, their larger-than-life leaders,” says Kaplan.

Setting television shows or movies in the workplace is nothing new, of course. What separates the latest crop, however, is their darker, more cynical tone, say experts. To be sure, some of the most popular workplace shows over the last two decades include cringe comedies like The Office, eerily realistic satires such as Silicon Valley, and dark and edgy dramas like Mad Men.

William Simon, global sector leader of the Media and Entertainment practice at Korn Ferry, sees this evolution in tone as an outgrowth of how social media has amplified employees’ voices, empowering them to talk openly about various issues—for instance, about a lack of loyalty from employers, or about older workers who block promotions and advancement by staying in roles too long. Hack agrees, noting that the younger writers and showrunners on the entertainment side and the newest generations of employees on the business side are both seeking the same things: authenticity, purpose, and transparency from their work and their leaders. She says that high levels of mistrust and disengagement among employees—as well as battles with leaders over issues like remote work, pay equality, diversity and inclusion, and more—serve as the subtext of many workplace-related shows. “In large part, a lot of these shows are about peeling back the veneer of business to expose what is really going on,” she says. 

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