Coworking: the TV show
by Melissa Mesku | 1/27/2015
Did you know there’s a show about coworking? Well, now there are about to be two. Variety reported last week that NBC ordered a comedy pilot of Sharing, a show about “disparate groups of people who work side-by-side in a shared office space” in New York City. The show’s executive producers are Jimmy Fallon and Rick Schwartz, and the writer of the pilot, Jeremy Bronson. Damian Lanigan is a co-exec producer.
If it takes off, it will be the first network TV show about coworking. But it’s not the first series dedicated to the topic.
CoWORK, a web series with episodes available free on YouTube, started a little over a year ago and is the first scripted series explicitly about coworking.
The indie show is well produced and faithfully follows the reality TV genre, giving viewers a scripted, quote-unquote behind the scenes look into what goes on a coworking space.
What’s unique about the show is that it’s produced within the coworking community it depicts. The show is based inside HuB Sarasota, a coworking space in Florida, and the actors are actual coworking space members who work from HuB Sarasota and play themselves in the show.
“I think everyone wonders what it’s like being in a startup,” said Rich Swier, co-producer of CoWORK. “The culture of coworking has an interesting blend of people who are working day and night to make their idea happen, but there’s also a lot of sophomoric activity. We could literally be raising capital for a startup and in the next room there is a random baby running around. It writes itself.”
Lucas Colavecchio, co-creator and executive producer of CoWORK said, “The idea of programming based around coworking is just starting to get traction.”
The show’s recurring theme is the conflict between the traditional and non-traditional way of doing things at work. Following the conventions of the reality genre, the ensuing social gaffes and misunderstandings are highlighted and dramatized.
[Editor’s recommendation: check out Episode 4, just released in January 2015.]
[Update March 24, 2015: Scenes from the Sharing pilot are currently being shot around New York City and can be seen on Meerkat. The ensemble cast includes Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Superbad) as an office receptionist desperate for approval, Jack Carpenter (The Good Wife) as a nerdy tech guru, Greta Lee (New Girl) and Stephen Schneider (Broad City) as tech startup entrepreneurs, and Jerry Minor (Community, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) and Christine Taylor (Dodgeball) as co-owners of the (not real) coworking space the show is based around.]
For more on companies, organizations and projects created by people who cowork, check out our series Made by Coworking.
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