Is Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (2026) better than the original?
In order to deceive their lovely volunteer, the team behind Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (2026) posed as being members of a hot sauce company called Rockin’ Grandma’s.
Photo courtesy of Own Isaw Company/Pexels
Just a few weeks ago, a new show was released on Amazon Prime Video—Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (2026)—which follows the same format of the previous show produced by the same company, Jury Duty (2023), and which I reviewed last week in The Lamron. For these unfamiliar with the format, the show is full of small-scale, unrecognizable actors and just one real person.
There is a loose script, but for the most part, these actors are doing improv based on what the one real person is saying or doing. In Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (2026), the one real person was Anthony Norman. He believed that he was applying for a temp job at a hot sauce company called Rockin’ Grandma’s to assist the head of the HR department as they take their annual company retreat. He is told while he is applying for the job that there is a low-budget documentary being made about the retreat, which explains why there are always cameras around.
The retreat takes place on a secluded property, which allows them to ensure that Anthony only interacts with actors and does not talk to anyone that would give away the illusion of what is going on. The large property also allows them to hide crew members on site and install hidden cameras ahead of time.
There are mixed opinions on the second season of this show; some people on social media suspect that Anthony figured out that everyone around him was an actor, which then influenced his behavior, but I think that he is just genuinely an extremely kind person who wanted to ensure that he helped the company he was working for in any way that he could.
There were thousands of people who applied for this fake job and the producers carefully handpicked Anthony because of his personality and how they believed he would react in certain situations. In one clip of the show, the writers showed the script that was written ahead of time and they had predicted how he would react to the situation in which they were placing him perfectly.
This is not because they were leading him in a certain direction, but instead because he was a kind employee and friend who was trying his best to make sure everyone on the retreat was having fun. There are a few final episodes of the show that I have not seen, including one where Anthony meets Ronald, the one person from the previous season that was not an actor.
I did watch the entirety of the plot, including the episode where it is revealed to him that it has all been a setup, and I cannot recommend watching this show enough. While I did find the first season to be more entertaining, this second season is still unlike all of the other shows on the market right now. The first season is better to me personally because the characters are all portraying strangers and do not have the additional task of pretending like they know the other actors while on camera.
Both seasons of this show are an incredible watch and full of hilarious scenes. It will likely be years before they can produce another season of the show, since so much planning goes into the production, but I hope the rumors are true and that we will be seeing a season three in 2030.