Newsable: The strange and enduring appeal of workplace TV shows

Newsable is brought to you by BNZ.

Listen to Newsable to find out what’s worth talking about today: Tova’s take on National’s ‘squeezed middle’ tax plan; a bleak outlook for the job market and retail sector; women are outperforming men in the surgery room, but we don’t really know why; and what’s with our obsession with workplace TV shows?

You know what’s weird?

Watching a whole season of The Office. Like, you wake up. You go to work. You come home. You switch on the TV. And you proceed to burn up hours, days of your life watching some fictional character go to work.

There is a bleak, snake-eating-its-tail irony to this in a certain light, but it’s undeniably true – we are kinda obsessed with workplace TV shows, aren’t we?

Think about it: House, M.D. Gray’s Anatomy. Parks and Recreation. Silicon Valley. The Wire. The Sopranos. Breaking Bad. The Bear. Law & Order. All smash hits. All, in their own way, workplace dramas.

What’s with this puzzling phenomenon? Is it simply narrow-mindedness? An insight into how the other 99 percent of people who have different jobs lives? Or is there something deeper?

These are the disarmingly esoteric questions we ponder with Stuff’s James Croot on today’s episode of Newsable – and if you’ve got a favourite workplace-based TV show we’ve missed, let us know what it is! Flick us an email, newsable@stuff.co.nz.

Also on today’s show: National released its tax plan yesterday, making a play for what it describes as ‘the squeezed middle’. What’s in the detail, and what are the fishhooks? Tova O’Brien’s in to dissect it all for us.

We also chat about a new piece of research which claims to prove women are better surgeons than men, and Mike Jones from BNZ gazes into his crystal ball and tells us what he’s predicting in the job and retail markets in the near future.

That’s your lot today! We’ll be back tomorrow at 6 – have a good one, be excellent to each other, and we’ll catch you then.

Emile

Newsable is Stuff’s daily news podcast, wrapping up what’s worth talking about in a short package every weekday morning. You can find new episodes and more detail on our stories here or in our newsletter. Make sure to like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts and across Instagram and TikTok.