Ronald Gladden, a solar energy contractor, answered a classified ad website to participate in a documentary about popular juries. The producers told him they had permission to record during a court proceeding, and Gladden appeared at the court they had directed him to see if he was fit to serve on a jury. He discovered that he did. On the jury was even the actor James Marsden, disgusted by being kidnapped by the judicial system. The catch was that Gladden was actually the unwitting victim of American television’s most innovative format. The room had been a courthouse that had been inactive for a decade, there was a control room in the same building, and everyone present were actors following the directions of writers and producers, except for Gladden, who spent three weeks isolated from society and focused on a case that was a lie. It’s Jury Duty, the revolutionary Emmy-nominated format for Best Comedy.
Creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky came up with one of the most elaborate jokes in living memory: a multimillion-budget, hundreds-of-staff production centered on an ordinary, ordinary citizen who was unaware he was in a sitcom. They couldn’t guarantee that Gladden would go three weeks without discovering the truth. “We thought that every week we would be discovered,” explained director Jake Szymanski on The Town podcast, and “we had alternative plans, like for example the series ended up being about how we couldn’t carry it out.” On the third day, in fact, Gladden told Marsden that he felt like he was on a reality TV show, and under the excuse of going to the bathroom, Marsden went to the control room to report that the subject was suspicious. That day it was time to lower the humor of the dialogues and give priority to the boredom of the judicial process.
Among the difficulties presented by the project were to pull off the joke without stumbling, that the actors could improvise interactions with the protagonist without spoiling it, force hilarious situations without raising suspicion, that the result was entertaining and, if they wanted the experiment to be positive, to get Gladden not to be angry when he discovered the truth. The result is a sitcom that straddles reality and fiction reminiscent of The office and Parks and recreation. The touch of The Truman Show, which is its essence, turns it into an unclassifiable treasure that also serves as a reflection on the figure of the straight man in comedy, this class of less histrionic characters who contribute to exalting others and anchor the tone. Amazon, which financed the madness, has not yet released the series in Spain, since in the United States it reserved the content for Freevee, its platform with advertising, not available from here.
