A Love Letter to the Overeducated and Underpaid

Read Time:5 Minute, 18 Second

TV PILOT SERIES REVIEW
Broadway Books
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Genre: Comedy
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 25m (pilot)
Director(s): Carianne King
Writer(s): Carianne King
Cast: Ruby McCollister, Lauren Servideo, Nick Naney, Eric Yates, Carlos Dengler, Rew Starr, Joe Apollonio
Where to Watch: limited in-person screenings on the fall bookstore tour (check here to find a screening near you: www.carianne.world)

RAVING REVIEW: In BROADWAY BOOKS: THE TIPPING POINT, writer-director Carianne King transforms the crumbling foundations of retail culture into the setting for one of the most self-aware and quietly hilarious pilots of the year. Set in a Manhattan bookstore caught between gentrification and extinction, it captures that unmistakable New York energy where hope and futility share the same shelf. It’s a series born from the trenches of part-time jobs, artistic compromise, and that singular mix of intellectual pride and exhaustion familiar to anyone who’s ever spent a paycheck on coffee and a book instead of rent.

A group of overeducated, underemployed bookstore employees scramble to keep their shop alive, culminating in a disastrous attempt to host a Malcolm Gladwell event. Within that setup, King crafts something that feels lived-in, layered, and sharper than its slacker-comedy surface suggests. There’s a precision to the chaos — a clear sense of character dynamics shaped by exhaustion and absurdity, mirroring the contradictions of a city that both celebrates and devours its independent spaces.

King, who once worked in the very bookstore where the episode was filmed, infuses the pilot with a sense of authenticity that can’t be faked. The dialogue feels drawn from real backroom conversations and street-corner arguments, where workers cling to art and irony as defense mechanisms. The show is built on improvisation and timing, leaning into awkward silences and failed pep talks with affection rather than cynicism. You can sense how the team’s friendship and dysfunction overlap, resulting in an ensemble that feels both self-aware and endearingly clueless.

Ruby McCollister and Lauren Servideo are perfectly cast as Laurel and Anya, two sides of the same literary coin — frenemies whose workplace debates could double as unpaid therapy. McCollister brings an effortless New York cool to her role, balancing detachment with a surprising tenderness, while Servideo’s performance highlights the fragility behind ironic affectation. Their chemistry anchors the show, turning bookstore burnout into something genuinely endearing. Supporting turns from Nick Naney and Eric Yates help round out the collective neurosis, and Carlos Dengler (yes, that Carlos Dengler of Interpol fame) is a small revelation as Cliff, the bookstore’s world-weary owner. There’s an understated comedy in seeing a former rock star embody the unglamorous side of creative life — someone running a cultural institution that can’t quite afford culture anymore.

The humor in BROADWAY BOOKS doesn’t rely on punchlines as much as it does on recognition. King understands that the funniest parts of working-class art culture often come from its contradictions: performing sincerity for customers you don’t respect, curating books you’ll never have time to read, and pretending the collapsing ceiling isn’t symbolic. It’s observational humor done with empathy — somewhere between a literary sitcom and an elegy for analog living. The inclusion of a clowncore influencer, Lord Giggles, only heightens the absurdity, bridging irony and sincerity.

Martin Courtney’s original score, his first for film or television, provides a delicate backbone for the tone. The score doesn’t draw attention to itself — it drifts, like overheard music from the next aisle, wrapping the show’s disillusionment in warmth. It’s an inspired pairing of indie sensibility and indie setting, completing the show’s microcosm of downtown creativity.

Shot on a shoestring budget and filmed overnight at the actual Book Culture on 112th Street, the production captures that claustrophobic intimacy of retail life. The visual storytelling mirrors the space itself — crowded, unevenly lit, and brimming with the energy of people too passionate to quit. There’s something tactile about the experience; the sets feel cramped but alive, as if the camera is another co-worker squeezing behind the register.

As a pilot, it functions like a perfectly self-contained short story while teasing a larger world of untapped stories (that I hope we get to see). There’s potential for future episodes to explore different literary or philosophical themes, each one reflecting on the absurd rituals of intellectual life. The show’s ability to balance wit with dejected lives hints at something deeper — a recognition that the death of print culture isn’t just a loss of business but a loss of community. (As someone who works in the book printing industry, I can’t root for this series to blossom enough!)

BROADWAY BOOKS is a clever, heartfelt, and slightly chaotic reflection on survival, art, and the stubborn people who refuse to go quietly. It’s a reminder that the best comedies don’t mock passion; they protect it. And in this fictional bookstore full of lost idealists, there’s something worth saving!

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[photo courtesy of MIRMADE PRODUCTIONS]

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