Indie Spotlight: ‘Get Social’ Is ‘The Office’ For The Digital Age

We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now.  Read previous installments here.

The Office is getting outsourced. Get Social, a new web series from Singapore, lifts the dry sensibility and buttoned-down setting from the popular workplace comedy and transplants them to a Singaporean startup specializing in new media marketing.

Get Social stars George Young as Leonard Lee, the David Brent/Michael Scott figure at ROFL, a social media marketing company. Like his British and American counterparts, Leonard is crass, rude, self-absorbed, and completely ignorant when it comes to running a business. Still, he is the boss, and his two co-workers must put up with his vain behavior.

The series is split into 20 five minute installments, which can be accessed through the Singapore-based xinmsn platform. There’s no embed available, but you can view the episodes here.

What makes Get Social more than just an Office clone is its smartly constructed 21st century setting. The main company in the series is an apt parody of the thousands of startups that exploit buzzwords like “viral”, a concept Leonard knows nothing about despite basing his company around it. ROFL’s name is constructed through a cockamamie contraction of its three employees’ names, with company second-in-command Sam noting that “we still need an F, though. Does your name start with F?” It’s a pinpoint satire of companies that attempt to substitute a flashy name for actual substance.

Get Social is more than just an international extrapolation of a national mainstay. It’s a clever send-up, one that is particularly notable for Office fans, who should see it as a worthy companion.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT:

• B-List. A Canadian web series about a down-on-his-luck actor who will do anything for a quick buck, even if it means dressing up as the tooth fairy.
• TeleviSean. A fairly somber web series about a dying man who aspires to go on a few more adventures with his friends before he kicks the bucket.
• 80/20. What does it mean to be a real man? That question is explored in this series about a man who is “20% gay.”
• Long Island Vroom Vroom. A mockumentary about three Long Island bros. It’s a parody of all those suburban douchebags you went to high school with.

Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here.