Indie Spotlight: ‘Business Time’ Is All In A Day’s Work

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. 

One of our favorite indie web series of 2014 was Business Work, which applied punny comedy to the workplace. The series featured in this week’s Indie Spotlight brings us back into the office, and like Business Work, it thrives on absurd situations. Alex Herrald and Kristopher Knight are the creative forces behind Business Time, a seven-episode series now available in its entirety.

The main characters of Business Time are Gene and Gene, a pair of office workers with abutting cubicles. In each episode, they banter back and forth while spewing vague business jargon at each other. What kind of businessmen are Gene and Gene? One of them has a framed photo of Ben Bernanke on his desk. The other one gets turned out by Excel spreadsheets. They both enjoy comments about the weather. Gene and Gene, you could say, are all business.

Eventually, the episodes manage to get a little weird, as good comedy is wont to do. In a Splitsider interview, Herrald notes Tim and Eric as an influence, and the sort of bizarre humor presented by that duo is certainly on display here.

Business Time doesn’t get too crazy, though; in the end, it appeals to a fairly wide audience. I only home that, if there is a season two, Herrald and Knight find some way to work in a Flight of the Concords reference.

OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT

• Beauty Shots. A trio of ladies get piss drunk and attempt to apply makeup in this boozy web series.
• A Black Man Acting. Actor Curtiss Cook delivers monologues that touch on social issues for people of color.
• Lilac. This audacious pilot about a bad-ass ten-year-old recently picked up a couple awards.
• Issues. Star Richelle Meiss leads the way in this comedy about an awkward young woman.

Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.