The most exciting TV shows usually have actors in exciting jobs: detectives, police officers, firefighters, lawyers, doctors, and more. But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, a show does something unexpected and features a character in a job that might usually be considered boring, yet somehow makes it thrilling. It’s the type of job you wouldn’t conventionally think is exciting, but somehow, these shows make it as intense and gripping as shows with characters who have jobs with typically higher stakes.
Severance
The office work is boring, but what’s behind it is anything but
Severance, one of the best sci-fi shows on Apple TV, is a unique case: the mundane office job Mark Scout (Adam Scott) and his colleagues do is so boring, it would put Office Space to shame. They sit at computers in a single cubicle located in a crisp white room with no furniture or décor, where cascading numbers continuously appear on screen, sorting them into digital bins. This Macrodata Refinement (MDR) job seems meaningless, and they don’t even understand the logic behind their sorting.
Yet the meaning behind this work and the story that frames the series is one of the most riveting, cerebral tales of the last decade. Mark undergoes a procedure to sever his memories, so when he leaves the office, he remembers nothing about it. When he arrives, he forgets who he is outside of the building. As Mark unearths the reality behind Lumon Industries’ project and unravels dark secrets, the series takes you on a deep, analytical ride through a psychologically driven sci-fi story.
Severance
- Release Date
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February 17, 2022
- Network
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Apple TV
- Showrunner
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Dan Erickson, Mark Friedman
- Directors
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Ben Stiller
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Tramell Tillman
Seth Milchick
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The Bear
It’s about a lot more than just the food
Anyone who has ever worked in a kitchen, or knows someone who has, understands that it’s a frantic atmosphere. There’s prep, then once service starts, it’s go, go, go until it ends with no chance to take a break. The Bear shows this dynamic beautifully and realistically, but it creates a different sense of drama than you’d expect from another show that highlights restaurant staff.
By tackling Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) intense need for perfection, the trauma that drives it, and the conflict between him and his childhood friend Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), along with the eclectic mix of personalities, it adds a whole new element. The Bear demonstrates the pressures of running a restaurant while also dealing with personal demons and ambitions in a way no other episodic show has. Oddly, while it has won numerous awards classified by a comedy, The Bear has far more drama than it does jokes.
The Bear
- Release Date
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2022 – 2026-00-00
- Network
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Hulu
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Jeremy Allen White
Carmen ‘Carmy’ Berzatto
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Ebon Moss-Bachrach
Richard ‘Richie’ Jerimovich
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Lionel Boyce
Marcus Brooks
Ozark
Who said being an accountant was boring?
Ozark is one of the best crime dramas of the 2020s, featuring a seemingly boring accountant thrust into the criminal drug underworld. Marry Byrde (Jason Bateman) is incredibly good at his job, and tired of working tirelessly with such skill for a middle-class paycheck, he decides to do some side work for a drug cartel. You know, just to make a few extra bucks on the side. The problem? Marty is a little too good at his job, and the cartel isn’t looking for a one-and-done job. They want Marty fully on board. Rather, they demand it.
Watching Marty relocate his family to the Ozarks and navigate managing an elaborate money laundering operation probably wasn’t on Marty’s bingo card when he decided to study to become an accountant. But this show turns what is often considered one of the most boring jobs, sitting at a desk and crunching numbers, into an exciting and highly dangerous one.
Ozark
- Release Date
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2017 – 2022
- Network
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Netflix
- Showrunner
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Chris Mundy
- Directors
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Alik Sakharov, Andrew Bernstein, Amanda Marsalis, Benjamin Semanoff, Daniel Sackheim, Ellen Kuras, Phil Abraham, Robin Wright, Cherien Dabis, Laura Linney
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Jason Bateman
Marty Byrde
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Sofia Hublitz
Charlotte Byrde
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Skylar Gaertner
Jonah Byrde
The Night Agent
He’s a glorified phone operator
Technically, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) does have an exciting job in theory: he trained to become an FBI agent. But instead of chasing down bad guys (in the beginning, at least), he’s hired to work as a Night Action telephone operator for a secret project at the White House. His job consists of sitting in a clammy room in the basement that resembles a prison cell. He has papers to go through and a single landline phone on the table. If it rings, he needs to answer and alert his boss. But it never does.
This part of Peter’s job is only covered in the first episode of the show, because the entire premise hinges on the phone finally ringing. The caller on the other end is a frantic young woman whose aunt and uncle were just killed and is trying to hide from the killer who might be after her, too. Everything escalates from there, and The Night Agent has come out of nowhere to compete with Netflix’s biggest shows. But the initial concept of Peter being a glorified phone operator turns into an exciting drama filled with action, political intrigue, and constant threats.
The Night Agent
- Release Date
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2023 – 2026-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Showrunner
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Shawn Ryan
- Directors
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Adam Arkin, Guy Ferland, Millicent Shelton, Ramaa Mosley
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Gabriel Basso
Peter Sutherland
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Luciane Buchanan
Rose Larkin
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Fola Evans-Akingbola
Chelsea Arrington
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Sarah Desjardins
Maddie Redfield
Chuck
You’ve never seen retail like this before
One of the best action comedy spy dramas of the mid 2000s, the title character Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi) works at a consumer electronics chain store called Buy More. It’s your typical retail job, adding an additional layer of boredom (for non-tech-savvy people, at least), as his job is as a computer service expert. The tables turn quickly when his former roommate Bryce (Matthew Bomer), who now works as a CIA agent, steals the merged database of the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) and destroys it. Only one copy remains, and it has somehow become embedded in Chuck’s brain when he opens an e-mail from Bryce containing the subliminal files.
Now Chuck is not just a computer expert helping customers recover lost passwords or get rid of computer viruses; he holds the key to national secrets and stopping terrorist threats, and he has become the CIA’s most valuable asset. The premise is so unique, the story so entertaining, that it’s no wonder Chuck lasted five seasons.
Chuck
- Release Date
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2007 – 2012-00-00
- Network
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NBC
- Showrunner
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Josh Schwartz
- Directors
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Jay Chandrasekhar
The Beast in Me
Writing a novel is far more exciting than you think
Most TV shows and movies portray novelists as quiet, introverted people. They are sitting in their homes, maybe on a remote island somewhere, furiously clacking away at the keyboard. They print drafts and toss them into the bin with disdain as they get over a case of writer’s block. The Beast in Me sort of does this with Aggie Wiggs (Claire Danes), an author who is completely stuck, unable to get over grief from a tragic loss and come up with a concept for her next big book. That is, until she meets Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys).
The seemingly boring job becomes thrilling and filled with psychological torment when Aggie decides she wants to write her next book about him. He’s the wealthy son of a real estate magnate who has just moved into her neighborhood. He’s getting away from his old life where he was accused of murdering his first wife. Did he do it? Seeing Aggie grapple with her desire to come up with good material, solve this case, and tiptoe around a man who might very well be a sadistic killer is thrilling. While Aggie isn’t the first writer to be thrust into a more exciting version of her career — that dates all the way back to Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) in Murder, She Wrote. But The Beast in Me puts a new spin on it, turning a job that’s typically considered very isolated and boring into a wild and dangerous ride.
The Beast in Me
- Release Date
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2025 – 2025-00-00
- Network
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Netflix
- Directors
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Tyne Rafaeli, Antonio Campos, Lila Neugebauer
- Writers
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C.A. Johnson, Gabe Rotter, Ali Liebegott, Daniel Pearle, Erika Sheffer, Howard Gordon, Mike Skerrett
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Claire Danes
Agatha ‘Aggie’ Wiggs
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Kate Burton
Mariah Ingram
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Tim Guinee
Rick ‘Wrecking Ball’ Jarvis