7 Of The Most Realistic Portrayals Of Professions In Film And TV
One thing that we all appreciate is the entertainment of people doing their jobs with amazing skill. In film and television, this often comes with a catch. The truth is, most of the day-to-day dynamics of jobs portrayed in film and TV are pretty dull (and often too complicated) in real life, making it difficult to derive entertainment from. With the help of experts, talented writers and directors can work their way around this to create something that’s satisfyingly realistic and utterly enthralling at the same time.
Better Call Saul
It’s difficult to find a realistic portrayal of the world of law in entertainment, since law is generally quite boring. Better Call Saul is the closest you’ll come to finding a realistic show about the law. Of course, it’s not perfect, but compared to shows like Suits and How To Get Away With Murder it does a pretty good job. Working with lawyers on the show, the creators nailed the meticulous detail to legal codes and the happenings between courtroom walls. That’s only when they actually do go to court in the show, because, like in real life, the show’s lawyers finish most of their cases behind the scenes with the opposing sides. We can’t get enough of Saul Goodman, but with his cheap legal tricks that gain unethical results, Kim Wexler is probably a better representation of a lawyer in the show. The struggles of her character are ones that many lawyers can relate to, like the strenuous exercise of having to spend several dull hours in doc review, or the strain of taking on a client alone.
👉 Watch Better Call Saul on Amazon Prime
👉 Buy Better Call Saul as DVD on Amazon
Veep
Embarrassingly, a satire is probably the closest thing you’ll get to a realistic portrayal of American politics. Many think that politics is like House Of Cards, with highly intelligent and power hungry narcissists prowling around in the White House. The people working in the White House in Veep certainly are power hungry and narcissistic, but they’re anything but highly intelligent. Vice president Selina Meyer struggles to maintain her patriotic image, the one her wildly incompetrent team built for her. With its unholy amount of swearing and the constant game of ego and image from the characters, Veep gives a good idea of what Washington is like. If you're still mourning the show’s end, there’s another way of getting that feeling of being unsure about whether to laugh or hopelessly cry - just tune into the political segments on the news.
Contagion
Contagion has recently been trending due to the film's fictional virus and the societal consequences that result from it being eerily similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. The film’s attention to detail of all the jobs that would come into action during a pandemic is equally realistic - so much so that the CDC allowed them to film on their main campus. As well as working with several consultants and epidemiologists, the team had Kate Winslet sit down with a CDC disease investigator to take notes. The agency even applauded the film for its realism during an advanced screening, and scheduled media interviews to discuss the film.
👉 Watch Contagion on Amazon Prime
👉 Buy Contagion as DVD on Amazon
Office Space
When Mike Judge’s Office Space hit cinemas, it was praised for its unapologetic portrayal of the monotonous work life for those in office jobs. This was certainly a common theme from the 90s and early 2000s, with films like American Beauty and Fight Club making people even more depressed about how boring their lives actually are. But with the sole attention on the farm of identical cubicles inhabited by robotic tech workers and Peter, who’s fed up with it, Office Space feels like a documentary to many. With ridiculous office memos, multiple bosses, and absurd deadlines, the characters in Office Space are sure to relate to many software engineers. Another thing that Office Space gets accurately are the cramped and crappy apartments the workers live in, compared to other Hollywood films, where low-wage workers live in five-bedroom houses in places like New York.
👉 Watch Office Space on Amazon Prime
👉 Buy Office Space as DVD Amazon Prime
Scrubs
One thing that irks medical professionals the most about hospital TV shows are the rare, complicated cases solved within minutes in each episode. Scrubs is often praised for portraying more straightforward cases that are realistic, and deriving the drama from how the doctors and nurses cope with the harrowing things they have to deal with. Scrubs hits the nail on its head with its portrayal of day-to-day life as a medical worker, focusing on all the medical departments that are needed on cases. In most shows set in hospitals, there’s usually about one or three doctors dealing with a patient all by themselves in comparison to Scrubs, where we realistically see multiple departments like terminology, radiology, physiology, plastic surgeons, and paediatricians helping on a case. The accuracy of the show comes as no surprise when you look at the amount of medical professionals that consulted on it.
👉 Watch Scrubs on Amazon Prime
Primer
Time travel doesn’t exist yet, so you might think that it doesn’t matter how films portray it. Primer will make you think again with its theoretical portrayal of time travelling backed by logic and science. Even more so, the work and dynamics of the engineers in the film have been praised for their accuracy. The characters speak in complex, techno jargon that could only be comprehended by engineers. Director Shane Carruth makes it clear that he sacrificed a film that’s easily understood by most audiences for authenticity. The garage set-up is another example often used to point out realistic engineers in movies, with its look staying true to real life early startups.
👉 Watch Primer on Amazon Prime
Mr. Robot
Mr. Robot is the closest you’ll get to a realistic show about hacking. There’s a lot of instances in the show that are unfeasible (such as the short timeline of many of the hacks), but in terms of the technology and types of hacks the characters do, there’s still plenty of realism. I’m sure we’ve all seen hackers in film and TV where they randomly type in a keyboard with a screen showing green, Matrix-style code. It goes without saying that this isn’t realistic at all, but a way to fulfil an archetype that looks cool. Mr. Robot avoids this throughout, showing authentic hacking strategies that would please any viewers interested in the subject.
