TL;DR – This is a delightfully eccentric look at a more than absurd scenario.  

Disclosure – I paid for the Amazon Prime service that viewed this series.

Jury Duty Review –

I have seen a lot of different setups for a tv show, but whenever I have watched a scenario where one of the participants is not in on the joke, it always falls flat. Which meant I came into this with a bit of trepidation. It is so easy to slip into cruelty when everyone knows what is being withheld. You are walking on a high wire perched precariously with disaster all around. That is why it is so much fun that it actually worked.

So to set the scene, an ad was put out there to join a documentary about jury duty, and Ronald Gladeen (Ronald Gladeen) signed up. He is told that he is part of Judge Alan Rosen’s (Alan Barinholtz) final court case recording. Trevor Morris (Ben Seaward) has been alleged to have passed out work and destroyed an order for boss Jacquiline Hilgrove (Whitney Rice). It is an exciting case even before we discover that one of the potential jurors is X-Men actor James Marsden (James Marsden). However, when the paparazzi arrive, all the jurors are sequestered away, and the short court case turns into a three-week slog. The only issue is that everyone, but Ronald, is an actor. Now from here, we will be looking at the series as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.    

Honestly, this was such a wild ride where you were watching this thing, waiting for it to fall apart at any moment, and it didn’t. You can see the twin wheels holding it all together throughout the show. The first is the preparation that the production team and actors went into making this insanity work, but they also lucked out with the perfect focus for the series in Ronald Gladeen. You can have all the plans in the world, but none of that matters if the focus of your series falls flat or, worse, catches on to the whole bit and the weeks of preparation are for naught.

Ronald is an honestly caring and supportive human being, you want to support him, and you feel bad when you feel the show going a touch too far in places. He is one of the reasons that I devoured this show in two days because you connected with his energy. This is supported by a cast that is here for what must have been a very difficult given how much work that much have gone into the show that never made it to screen. Every cast member is hilarious, and it is a delight to see them hit all their comedy beats in each episode. The MVP is probably James Marsden playing an arse version of himself, but there are no weak links. All of this is framed in a world without second takes if something falls apart.  

Looking at the series from the top down, I liked the structure they used to frame the absurd scenario. Having a film crew come in to record a documentary of the jury process and the last case of the sitting judge feels like a plausible scenario. It gives you the reason to have all the cutaways you would have in a show like this without peaking behind the curtain too far for it to fall apart. I have been called for jury duty several times, and the structures they put in place felt realistic. You have a good rapport with the court staff, the judges have this aura of aloof sternness, and it can be full of tedious boredom. It gives you that Hey Arnold meets 12 Angry Men moment that the show was after.

I know that each episode is squishing about three days of content into half an hour, so there is so much leg work that the entire team has to go through that never made it to the final product that was clearly necessary to make everything work. This is the one series I have watched in a while that I felt compelled to watch as much as the behind-the-scenes materials and commentaries just to see all the different techniques they used to pull it off. You have a great respect for the intersection of planning and improvisation that had to happen to make this work. I am not sure anyone got the more out of Pacific Rim Uprising than they did here.   

Where Jury Duty works where others that have delved into the territory have failed is that it understood that it needed a soft landing for both Ronald and the audience. You needed that cathartic release from both an emotional perspective, but also an exploration of just how everything worked. Without that deep cathartic release, it could have come off as mean or like it slammed against a wall narratively. When he asks if Officer Nikki Wilder (Rashida Olayiwola) is really a cop, was such a wonderful moment. I was expecting the comedy and the shenanigans, but I was not expecting the real emotion that followed.

In the end, do we recommend Jury Duty? Absolutely. This was a riot of joy and emotion. It worked as a comedy, as a documentary, and as a weird reality tv show. I enjoyed watching it, and I enjoyed rewatching it with the commentary. I am not sure they could ever strike lighting again like this, but I am glad we got what we did.     

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Jury Duty yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Jury Duty
Directed by – Jake Szymanski
Written by – Tanner Bean, Katrina Mathewson, Ese Shaw, Marcos Gonzalez, Andrew Weinberg, Mekki Leeper, Kerry O’Neill & Evan Williams 
Created by – Lee Eisenberg & Gene Stupnitsky
Production/Distribution Companies – Amazon Freevee, Amazon Studios & Amazon Prime
Starring – Ronald Gladeen with James Marsden, Mekki Leeper, Edy Modica, Ishmel Sahid, David Brown, Cassandra Blair, Maria Russell, Kirk Fox, Susan Berger, Ross Kimball, Pramode Kumar, Ron Song, Brandon Loeser, Alan Barinholtz, Rashida Olayiwola, Whitney Rice, Ben Seaward, Trisha LaFache, Evan Williams & Kerry O’Neill
Episodes Covered – Vor Dire, Opening Arguments, Foreperson, Field Trip, Ineffective Assistance, Closing Arguments, Deliberations & The Verdict