BC Business
Who was your favourite?
It was another great year on the small screen as TV just keeps getting better and better. And its characters—probably not coincidentally—keep getting more and more reprehensible. We thought we’d do an incredibly subjective recalling (after all, there is literally too much to watch these days) of the businesspeople we saw on TV shows this year. The three examples you’ll see below are from my top three TV shows of the year (not in any order). So it stands to reason that I think these shows and these characters are exceptionally written and performed.
If your favourite show and least favourite character didn’t make the cut, feel free to let us know.
Would I want to work at the Original Beef of Chicagoland? No, I would not. And I probably wouldn’t want to work under Carmy either, who seems like he’s teetering on the edge of being an actually nice person but the restaurant industry just won’t let him. As someone who used to work in the industry, that makes a lot of sense to me.
But would I want to eat at the Original Beef of Chicagoland? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Someone in Vancouver, please replicate this and let me spend $20 on it because I’m a fool.
I’m putting these two together because, minor spoiler alert, they’re essentially the same person at the end of the show. The White Lotus is fantastic, and there are more than a few characters I could put in this spot, including Lucia, Christopher from The Sopranos and the conglomerate that runs this branch of hotels. (When is some sort of governing body going to step in and put a stop to the random deaths that are happening at an insanely bougie hotel?)
But I went with Cameron and Ethan here, because they represent such on-the-nose depictions of the investor bro and the introvert tech dude who changes with money. The acting and writing here is so sharp and believable that it’s going to be hard to see Theo James and Will Sharpe in anything else.
Although it’s nearly impossible for me to pick a favourite out of these three shows, if a waffle party depended on it, I’d probably go with Severance.
The show has a monumental task ahead of it whenever its second season arrives, but I wouldn’t bet against Ben Stiller and co. The world that they created in the first season, which revolves around a fictional company called Lumon in which workers have the option to sever themselves from their personal and work lives, is simply unmatched.
Questions will have to be answered in Season 2, but we are very much ready to go back into the basement with these characters, one of whom—spoiler!—seems to be controlling things from the outside.