I think Mike Judge has finally made the sequel to Office Space. It is called Silicon Valley on HBO. The show follows a group of young programmers that want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg in the titular Silicon Valley.
The main character Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch) has created an awful music license checking website, but the backend lossless compression software, and an algorithm that can quickly search inside those compressed files, might be worth a fortune. Now it is up to him and his programmer buddies to try and become the next group of billionaires.
This show gets Silicon Valley so right, and it understands it so well that almost all of its jokes land. Plus it has Mike Judge doing office humor again, and that is always worth watching. I guess Judge’s first job was as a software programmer, and it shows. I can’t wait to see how he lampoons it all next week.
The group of actors they got together are all very believable nerds, and they play their roles so convincingly it seems like they must have been tech company interns at some point. Shows end up all being about the talent of their cast, and I think Silicon Valley has a great one. I mean it has Kumail Nanjiani in it, and I can’t even look at him without laughing.
Silicon Valley is off to a great start. It was thirty minutes of non-stop laughs, especially if you follow tech news at all. Since it is on right after Game of Thrones, there is almost no chance I will miss it. If you do not have HBO you can watch the first episode for free on YouTube.com, so there is no reason not to give it a shot.