Company Retreat on Amazon Prime: A Tongue in Cheek Look at Team Offsites (and How to Plan Yours)

When offsites go off the rails, we help you do them right.

There is a particular species of optimism that appears only in the weeks before a company retreat. It is the optimism that believes two nights in the countryside and a scheduled “values workshop” can make a product roadmap feel like a shared dream instead of a polite argument. It is the optimism that convinces competent adults to wear matching hoodies in public. It is the optimism that says, with a straight face, “This will be relaxing.”

Amazon Prime Video is about to bottle that optimism, shake it violently, and spray it across the screen.

The upcoming series is called Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat, and it takes the hidden camera premise that made the first season of Jury Duty such a strange delight and relocates it from the courtroom to the offsite. It premieres March 20, 2026, with eight episodes released in batches: three episodes on March 20, two on March 27, and a three episode finale on April 3.

The setup is simple in the way a mousetrap is simple. A temporary worker named Anthony believes he has been hired to help organise a corporate retreat for a family owned hot sauce company. Everyone around him is an actor. Every meeting, confession, bonding exercise, and late night “quick chat” has been choreographed. Anthony is the only person who does not know that he is the entertainment.

If you have ever planned an offsite, or attended one, this premise will land with the slightly haunted familiarity of hearing your own voice on a recording.

The offsite as a genre

The corporate retreat has always been a kind of theatre. It contains rituals. The arrival drink. The “light icebreaker” that feels suspiciously like a test. The moment someone uses the phrase “safe space” while standing in front of a flip chart. The group dinner where the introverts discover, too late, that they are seated beside the extrovert who has decided the retreat is also their personal redemption arc.

Company Retreat treats this theatre as literal theatre, with an ensemble cast playing colleagues who appear to have been engineered in a laboratory of office archetypes. The trailer hints at the particular corporate ecosystem we have all encountered at least once: a strange blend of big ambition and small business chaos, with power dynamics that can turn a casual breakfast into a board meeting.

Amazon’s own description frames the conflict as a clash between “big corporate ambitions and small business values,” with control of the company hanging in the balance. Which is, of course, exactly how many retreats feel even when no one says it out loud.

There is also something quietly perfect about setting this kind of show at an offsite. A retreat is the one place where adults who have mastered the art of appearing composed at work are asked to be human on a schedule. Vulnerability, but make it 10:30 a.m. Connection, but keep it under forty five minutes because lunch is at noon. When you add cameras and scripted colleagues, the whole thing becomes a mirror held at an angle that flatters no one.

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A loving roast of the thing we love

At Venue Retreat, we spend our lives trying to make retreats work in the real world. Which means we know the difference between a retreat that changes a team and a retreat that produces only a shared memory of bad logistics.

The funny part is that the show’s premise is built on the same truth we tell clients constantly: the venue and the environment do half the work. Put people somewhere unfamiliar, remove the usual routines, add a little structured time and a little unstructured time, and suddenly the quiet person speaks and the loud person listens. Or at least they try.

The show appears to understand another truth: most retreats are not ruined by a lack of intention. They are ruined by the moment intention meets reality. The transport that runs late. The agenda that runs long. The “optional” activity that becomes mandatory through the force of social pressure. The HR complaint that arrives at precisely the moment everyone has decided to “be open.” Entertainment Weekly’s recap of the trailer teases exactly that kind of chaos, including an HR complaint and a heady mix of absurd team building and corporate drama.

In other words, it looks like a documentary about the emotional life of the Slack thread.

What makes it worth watching

The first season of Jury Duty worked because it did not merely prank someone. It stumbled into sincerity. The mark at the centre of it all behaved with a decency that made the elaborate setup feel, strangely, like a tribute. Amazon notes that Ronald Gladden and James Marsden do not appear this season, though Marsden remains an executive producer.

The new season’s success will hinge on whether Anthony, the temp at the heart of this retreat, carries that same gravitational pull. Early write ups suggest he might, and that the show is again leaning on the odd sweetness that comes from watching one real person try to do the right thing in a room full of performative nonsense.

Which is, if we are honest, the experience of many team leads at many retreats.

A gentle warning for real life planners

If you are planning an offsite right now, you may find yourself watching this trailer with the same expression you wear when someone says, “We can just wing the agenda.” You will laugh, then you will feel a small twinge of professional concern.

Consider this your friendly reminder that the easiest way to avoid starring in your own accidental comedy is to do three unglamorous things:

First, choose a venue that supports the goals. Not just beautiful. Fit for purpose. Real meeting spaces. Good flow. Quiet corners. Enough rooms. A staff that understands groups.

Second, build an agenda that respects energy. People cannot do strategy for six hours and then become charming at dinner. Give them air.

Third, treat logistics like the main character. Transport, timing, dietary needs, rooming lists, and the little things that keep a team from turning on itself by day two.

In the show, the chaos is the point. In your retreat, it should be the thing you never notice because it never happens.

If you want your retreat to be the good kind of memorable

If Company Retreat makes you laugh and also makes you a little nervous, we get it. Our job is to help teams have the kind of retreat they talk about for the right reasons.

If you’re planning a company retreat or leadership offsite in 2026, get in touch with the Venue Retreat team. Tell us your dates, your headcount, and the vibe you want, and we’ll shortlist venues that are built for it.

No scripted colleagues required.

Trailer: Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat (Prime Video)