Can we handle the truth?

Borat changed everything. British comedian and provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen had first created the streetwise alter ego of Ali G-a selfproclaimed streetwise oaf borrowing heavily and obliviously from elements of black culture-but television had never been short on fools, or even foolish interviewers.

- RAJA SEN

It was with Borat Sagdiyev that Cohen found a truly universal character-a fictitious and ridiculously regressive Kazakhstani journalist-that allowed his satire to take aim at a society and not idiotic individuals. As Borat (in the 2006 film Borat) came to America fuelled by love for Baywatch actor Pamela Anderson, Cohen's freakish character interacted (mostly) with real, unsuspecting Americans who had no idea the joke was on them.

The tables are reversed in Jury Duty (Amazon Prime Video), a series where the man at the centre of a trial is a real person but everything and everyone around him from the suspects to his fellow jurors to the trial itself-is fictitious. Imagine if The Truman Show was a legal sitcom.

It's fascinating. Created by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky-both of whom worked on the US adaptation of The Office-the series gives us a detailed look into the minutiae of the jury system. We are seeing it all play out through the (often incredulous) eyes of Ronald Gladden, a young man thrust into a menagerie of actors, all playing characters, all engaged solemnly in a make-believe trial. At a time when reality TV often feels too scripted, a concept like this feels refreshingly clutter-breaking. Jury Duty is a comedy, sure, but it's also a social experiment where an everyman finds himself the centre of attention in a fabricated courtroom drama.