ICYMI: Prime Video’s Upload Is the Hilarious, Spiritual Sci-Fi Successor to The Office
Photo Courtesy of Prime Video TV Features What to Watch
Editor’s Note: Welcome to ICYMI! The strikes may be over, but we’re still highlighting some of the best shows you may have missed in the deluge of content from throughout the year. Join the Paste writers as we celebrate our underrated faves, the blink-and-you-missed-it series, and the perfect binges you need to make sure you see.
Prime Video is home to plenty of breakout streaming hits, with shows like The Boys, Reacher, and Good Omens. But it also has a whole lot of other stuff, including a high-concept sci-fi comedy heralding from one of the masterminds behind The Office that has slowly grown into one of the funniest—and most heartfelt—shows on TV.
That series is Upload, a near-future comedy about a virtual afterlife with some hilarious takes on consumerism and immortality. Yes, it’s a tough elevator pitch to get across in a sentence, but the show is unlike pretty much anything else on TV right now—and features some of the weird quick wit that fans of shows like The Office and The Good Place will fall in love with. The sci-fi comedy premiered in 2020 on Prime Video, and the third season just dropped.
To explain the concept with a bit more depth: Robbie Amell (The Tomorrow People, Code 8) stars as Nathan Brown, a 20-something tech entrepreneur who dies under mysterious circumstances and finds himself “uploaded” to the expensive virtual afterlife world of Lakeview. Basically, in this near-future world, death doesn’t have to be the end, so long as you can afford what comes next. Nathan’s rich girlfriend Ingrid (Allegra Edwards) covers the bill to get him into Lakeview, where you can essentially live on forever in a fully virtual world with your consciousness uploaded.
Nathan’s afterlife gets complicated by a tech murder plot into what exactly led to his death, but it never gets too heavy. He also falls for his tech support “angel” Nora, played by Andy Allo, which brings a hilarious and touching love triangle into the mix. The supporting cast is comedy gold, with Kevin Bigley playing Nathan’s afterlife pal Luke, Zainab Johnson as Lakeview employee Aleesha, and Owen Daniels (creator Greg Daniels’ son) in several roles as the hapless and incredibly weird A.I. assistant who populates Lakeview in every service role you could imagine.
As mentioned, the show was created by The Office (U.S.) alum Greg Daniels, and you can feel some of that workplace comedy DNA around the seams of Upload, as part of the story is framed around the nefarious yet silly tech firm that manages the virtual world of Lakeview. But the series doesn’t shy away from the big questions of existence and what exactly constitutes humanity in the first place. Then slices it all with a vision of the future filtered through a blurry Idiocracy lens because… well, the world is looking more like Idiocracy everyday, anyway, right?
The premise is a big swing, and it takes a few episodes to really get a grasp of this world and the tone. But once Upload finds it by the middle of Season 1, it’s off and running all the way through its new third season. But much like The Office, it’s the love story at the center that provides the through line. Instead of Jim and Pam, we have Nathan and Nora. It’s a love story literally across the divide of death itself. And instead of writing off Nathan’s original love interest Ingrid (pouring one out for Roy fans from The Office right here), Upload brings Ingrid along for the ride, giving her a story with nuance and empathy along the way, too. It also takes some surprising and fascinating turns with Ingrid’s story in Season 3, but no spoilers here.
The series does have a larger, serialized arc that holds it all together, but it’s never so heavy-handed that it loses grasp of the things that make this series so fun. Yes, they’re investigating a conspiracy and Nathan’s murder sometimes, but they’re also goofing around with cheat codes in Lakeview, and making the A.I. assistant do all kinds of weird and wacky things. Yes, it’s dealing with existential questions, but instead of asking those all the time, Nathan gets distracted by the fact his virtual body has a few more muscles than his flesh and blood version (hey, who doesn’t make a few tweaks to their online avatar?).
The bar napkin pitch of Upload might make for a harder point of entry for some potential viewers, but it shouldn’t. What could have become a niche sci-fi comedy is instead a series funny enough to appeal to all comedy fans, and fanatical and smart enough to get sci-fi fans locked in. It’s more than the sum of its parts, and has become one of the most delightful surprises buried a page or two deep on the streaming catalog. It easily could have crumbled under the weight of its concept along the way, but it hasn’t. The show is as good and funny as it’s ever been in Season 3, and here’s hoping we hear something soon from Prime Video about bringing it back for a fourth season (at least!).
As streaming services trim libraries and Hollywood reevaluates things in the wake of the recently-concluded dual strikes, it’s fair to say we’re likely past the era of Peak TV, but we’re still in an era where there’s more TV than any person could reasonably try to watch—and Upload has more than earned a spot on the list.
Trent Moore is a recovering print journalist, and freelance editor and writer with bylines at lots of places. He likes to find the sweet spot where pop culture crosses over with everything else. Follow him at @trentlmoore on Twitter.
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