Jury Duty: He Didn't Know He Was Starring in Surreality TV, But He Was
By Liam Lacey
B-plus
The mockumentary sitcom, a television format which arose in the aughts along with reality television, is a waning phenomenon.
Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), the American version of The Office (2005-2013) Modern Family (2009-2020) and Trailer Park Boys (2001-2018), have all wrapped, though a few shows (Reno 911, What We Do In the Shadows, Abbott Elementary) carry on the talking-heads-and-shaky-cam tics of the genre.
More edgy and uncomfortable are shows where fictional and real life events are blended, like Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal or Sacha Baron Cohen’s ruthless TV shows and movies.
Jury Duty’s patsy Ronald Gladden and his “pal” James Marsden
The new eight-episode Prime Video series Jury Duty, created by The Office’s writer-producers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, just edges into this area. Essentially, it’s a feel-good sitcom with one weird difference: The main actor, real-life 29–year-old San Diego solar contractor installer Ronald Gladden, doesn’t know it’s all pretend.
The viewing audience is told in each episode’s opening credits that the entire civil trial is a staged fiction. The acerbic judge, the lawyers, the complainant — an heiress with a clothing company — and the defendant, a pot-smoking slacker who passed out on the job at the T-shirt printing machine — are all improv actors. So are court staff, security guards and the waiters and customers at a restaurant the jurors go to.
To bait this elaborate trap, the producers placed an ad, inviting participants to participate in a “documentary-style” film about the American judicial system and and Roland Gladden was picked, according to the credits, out of 2,500 applicants. Essentially, Gladden participated in a three-week long Candid Camera-style prank. Because the jury was sequestered in a hotel room, he had no access to the internet or friends or family during the shooting.
The jurors include one celebrity, actor James Marsden playing himself as a Hollywood prima donna who is desperate to get off jury duty to audition for his next movie.
But Gladden, soon befriends him as well as the other jurors, played by a diverse collection of unknown but talented improv actors.
The comedy arises from Gladden’s unflappably good-natured responses to their often bizarre behaviour. At times, he helps Marsden run lines for a part of a salt-of-the-earth everyman character. He bonds with a tech-obsessed nerd and helps bring him out of his shell. He even helps a nervous virgin get over being dumped by his girlfriend, and hooks him up with a Lady Gaga-like woman who has a thing for sexually inexperienced guys.
Sometimes, he seems to be subliminally aware that something about this jury is a bit hinky: In one straight- to-camera interview, Gladden observes: “This is literally like Reality TV.”
The ethics of this stunt are dubious but the producers are careful not to punch down on their unwitting star. In keeping with the upbeat tone of The Office, Jury Duty treats all the characters’ foibles and transgressions with sunny tolerance.
In the final episode, when the elaborate hoax is revealed to Gladden, the pretend judge softens the deceit by praising Gladden and giving him a hefty financial reward for his trouble. The producers take him, and the audience, on a backstage tour of the set-up, hidden cameras, the writers’ subplots and everyone’s rapid adjustments to Gladden’s choices along the way,
But clearly the coup here was the casting of Gladden (not a showbiz name, though it should be). His character feels like a throwback, with the easy all-American innocence of a pre-war Jimmy Stewart. And since the series dropped in the United States on Amazon Freevee on April 7, he has become an online star.
A more contentious individual might have sued the producers for perpetrating this blatant, life-changing deceit. That would have destroyed the sentimental vibe at the series’ end, though it could provide material for a second Jury Duty season.
Jury Duty. Created by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. Directed by Jake Szymanski. Starring Ronald Gladden, with Alan Barinholtz, Rashida Olayiwola, David Brown, Kirk Fox, Mekki Leeper, Edy Modica, Maria Russell and Ishmel Sahid. The first two episodes of Jury Duty are available on April 21 on Prime Video.