We Love to Watch People Work

According to a BBC article titled “How the workplace became the star of TV,” there are two main reasons audiences are tuning into these types of television shows. The first is escapism. A TV show with a workplace-centric entertainment gives people a glimpse of how others live, or rather work, whether it's realistic or not. 

After working all day, people don’t want to come home and watch themselves on TV. They want to watch others live stressful or dramatic lives that have nothing to do with their own. People want to separate their personal lives from work. 

However, some people like watching these workplace shows because they dissolve boundaries between daily life and work. Although we like to separate personal life from work, most people’s careers take up the majority of their lives. So, it makes sense that people would want that to be validated through shows that focus on people at work, doing a job they are passionate about, even if it’s stressful and unBEARable at times. Get it? The Bear. 

The Bear is a great example of a show that people in that industry can’t watch, and those not in the industry are obsessed with. I read an article published on Bon Appétit by Genevieve Yam titled, “I Worked in Michelin-Starred Kitchens. The Bear’s Depiction of Trauma is Painfully Real.” 

In this article, Yam wrote that she couldn’t get through The Bear, not because it was bad, but because it was too realistic for her to watch. She wrote: “It was so accurate that it was triggering.” 

She also wrote: “Exactly like Carmy, I’d make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I got home and I’d lie on the couch, falling asleep with my hand in a bag of chips…Like Carmy, I had nightmares about expediting food to the wrong table, burning my mise en place, and our produce order not showing up on time. And like Carmy, I ignored the real problems in my life by throwing myself into my work.” 

Yam explained that movies and shows often glamorize professional cooking, whereas The Bear did the exact opposite. It revealed all the ugly truths about what it’s really like to work in a high-pressure, stressful environment. 

What I Like to Watch People Do for Work

I’m obsessed with Max’s newest medical drama, The Pitt. Which is strange for me because medical dramas are not my thing, like ever. I hate anything that has to do with doctors or surgery or anything medical at all. I don’t go to the doctor in real life, I don’t want to watch someone else go to the doctor on TV. 

So when I became obsessed with The Pitt, I was truly surprised. I loved the seriousness of it all, without it being so dramatic to the point where it was unrealistic and tacky. Sorry, Grey’s Anatomy. The lack of music and each episode being one hour of the shift makes it so realistic, I feel like I can’t breathe for that entire hour. 

Isa Briones, who plays Dr. Trinity Santos on The Pitt, did an exclusive interview with Us Weekly where she revealed there was a medical bootcamp for two weeks before they started filming. She explained, “The bootcamp was so helpful because it’s not like they can teach us to be a doctor in two weeks, obviously. But it gave us the tools and gave us the language of the right questions to ask when we are actually choreographing something like that.” 

She goes on to explain that she could understand and repeat her lines, but the boot camp was helpful in teaching her where to look when she read a patient's chart or explained a medical issue. 

She explained that the actors learned how to suture and how to intubate, among many other crazy medical procedures. They also have people who are playing nurses on the show who are nurses in real life. The show’s co-executive producer, Joe Sachs, is also a medical doctor who has worked with the show’s creator R. Scott Gemmill on ER.

While filming, the show had emergency physicians on site to watch for discrepancies, help choreograph medical activity, and correct medical pronunciations. The show also had medical technical advisors and medical consultants supply writers with the technical details of medical stories.

Vulture published an interview with Dr. Lukas Ramcharran of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who is a fan of the show and serves as an attending physician and assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins. He’s real-life Dr. Robby, and Vulture interviewed him to see how accurate the show is. This interview was published on April 10, 2025, right before The Pitt’s eighth episode premiered. 

Dr. Ramcharran agreed with the sentiment that The Pitt is the most realistic depiction of emergency medicine on TV. He got into the show because of the accuracy and educational side of things. EM:RAP endorsed the show, which is a national education platform for emergency medicine that creates a lot of content doctors use for learning the specialty.  

When asked about what stands out about the show, he explained that it’s a lot less dramatic and more realistic. He says, “Dr. Robby is constantly jumping around, and that’s really close to what being an attending physician is like. You’re trying to do the medicine, but you’re also there for the education of your medical residents. He’s constantly dropping into things, seeing where he can help out a learner, giving them a little bit of autonomy, giving them some leash, trusting his senior residents, and empowering them to take on the next stage of their career. 

That’s really wonderful to watch, but you also see aspects where he’s human. You see the full system: the support staff, the people up front being triaged in the waiting room, and the people handling the waiting room. You have the social worker, who’s probably one of my favorite characters; they are the unsung heroes in many ways.” 

I loved this show because it’s not just about the medicine. It shows all aspects of the emergency room from the angry patients filling the waiting room to the social workers identifying victims and notifying families. 

If I talk about The Pitt, I feel like I have to talk about ER since that was also created by R. Scott Gemmill, and we would not have The Pitt if it weren’t for Gemmill and Dr. Sachs wanting to reboot ER. 

ER follows what happens in, you guessed it, an emergency room in Chicago. The show first aired in September 1994 and continued to run for 15 seasons. During the 1996 to 1997 season, the show was at its peak with approximately 30 million viewers per week. The show featured many famous actors, including Noah Wyle, who plays Dr. Robby on The Pitt. 

I’ve already said this, but I hate medical dramas, so I don’t know much about ER. I also don’t know much about the other iconic medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy, which has been on forever. I’m not kidding, I can’t remember a time when Grey’s Anatomy wasn’t on television. 

The first episode premiered on March 27, 2005, and the show is currently on its 21st season. There are over 400 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, and I think I’ve seen half an episode. Never-ending Grey’s Anatomy is almost on par with any series in the Law & Order universe. 

Those shows will never end. They will end when the sun explodes. I wasn’t sure whether or not to include the Law & Order franchise in this episode because while it’s technically a workplace series, it’s also a copoganda/cop drama series that falls into its own category. When I think of a workplace series, I think of an office, a hospital, a school, not a bunch of cops. That’s a different type of show, in my opinion. 

The Office is probably one of the most popular workplace shows of all time. Not only was it popular when it was first airing, but it has remained one of the most-streamed TV shows in the past years. In 2020, Americans streamed more than 57 billion minutes of The Office. It remained the most-streamed show until 2023, when Suits took over with 57.7 billion viewing minutes. Another office series, but this time they are lawyers. 

Hate to admit it, but I like Parks and Recreation over The Office. I think it’s because the men in The Office annoy me way more than the men in Parks and Rec, and I believe that’s because they are supposed to be annoying, but I don’t like to watch a show with annoying men. I barely like to watch a show with men at all. Don’t make them annoying too.

Other honorable mentions I really should mention in the workplace show episode are Superstore, 30 Rock, Veep, Scrubs, 2 Broke Girls, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which I do NOT count as copaganda), Scandal, Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, kinda. 

Not to mention all the reality tv shows that follow a bunch of people doing a job: Deadliest Catch or any fishing show ever, Below Deck and all it’s spin off shows, Bondi Rescue (I like watching clips of that show on TikTok), Selling Sunset, Million Dollar Listing, Dirty Jobs, Undercover Boss, and the first five seasons of Vanderpump Rules. 

Workplace shows have been around since the dawn of television, and there are workplace shows that are considered television classics such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Cheers. 

Currently, there is a workplace show that is going down in television history and turning into a classic right before our very eyes, and that’s Abbott Elementary. The show is not only hilarious and probably the funniest show in recent television history, but it also shines a light on the harsh reality many teachers face. 

Public schools are underfunded, and teachers do what they can to fill their classrooms with supplies, even if that means blackmailing a new golf course. The fights with the school board, the tension with charter schools are all real issues that teachers face every day. Quinta Brunson’s real-life sixth-grade teacher, Joyce Abbott, was the inspiration for the show, and she sat down with The Philadelphia Inquirer sat down for an interview a few years ago. 

In this interview, she touches on these very issues. Abbott explained that there is no reason why parents should have to pay for a private education because they live in the inner city. You should be able to come through these doors and get an education that’s the quality of any private school, if not better. People were having these conversations before the show premiered, don’t get me wrong, but the show brings this conversation into everyone’s homes. 

And whether or not you agree or disagree with charter schools is neither here nor there at this point, because at the end of the day, all children should have access to a high-quality education, and Abbott Elementary highlights the struggle to provide high-quality education when teachers aren’t given the resources to do so. 

We Will Continue to Watch People Work 

I love Abbott Elementary for many reasons, one of the main ones is that I love Quinta Brunson and have loved her since Vine and Buzzfeed. I specifically love how she writes realistic storylines for her characters, not just them as teachers, but their lives outside of their careers as well. 

Which is why it works. This workplace comedy combines the two things people want when they watch a workplace television show: to escape and see people be immersed in their careers while still having their personalities and hobbies outside of work. 

We will always watch people work because work is part of everyone’s lives. It feels like any audience can relate to any workplace show because any audience knows what it’s like to work with other people. You may not relate to the job, but you relate to having weird or obnoxious co-workers, or you relate to how someone approaches their job. 

You may be a go-getter and an eager, energetic worker like Jeanine or Leslie. You may have an attitude and be a little rough around the edges, like April or Melissa. You might know how to do your job without really doing your job, like Donna or Ava.