Sitcoms about office life, he says, are an opportunity for viewers to have a little fun at the expense of what can be the unfunny reality of their lives. “The situation in offices is kind of grim a lot of times. These kinds of shows are opportunities to present a satirical, fun look at what is often not a fun situation,” he says.

At the same time, tales of office life let people see that they are not alone with their problems. “It makes people realize that their complaints are universal,” says David Thorburn, a professor of literature and comparative media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Lately, there has been a subtle shift in the setup: Instead of using the workplace as simply a backdrop, it is now the main point of the story.

Books, movies, and TV are still focused on what the experts refer to as workplace families, where outsiders (and viewers) can find companionship and fulfillment—the Mary Tyler Moore Show model. But a growing number of shows, like The Office and the internet series Floaters (www.phoebeworks.com), go beyond the family dynamic, with its sibling rivalries and fatherly authority figures, to actually dramatize the work that employees do.

“We never even saw Ward Cleaver at work,” says Michael Abernethy, a columnist for PopMatters.com, a cultural news website. “Now we have characters whom we never see at home.”

Abernethy says a broad shift in cultural priorities may account for the change. “Work used to be the thing we did so we could have a nice home life,” he said. Now, “if we have a family and time with the spouse and kids, it’s a bonus.”

The internet and the always-on connectivity of cell phones and email are also important factors, says Fred Turner, an assistant professor of communication at Stanford University. “Everywhere is the office now,” he says.

But a coherent story requires boundaries. “By limiting the scene to an office,” he adds, “a TV show or book can create a limited narrative space in which to explore the diffusion of work into everyday life and the entangling of work and interpersonal relations.”

Lofty analyses of cultural trends aside, though, the fundamental reason for the appeal of the latest spate of office-related books and shows is no different than in decades past: They are entertaining.

Everyone can relate to being stuck with a boss who is bumbling, insensitive, or outright evil, Abernethy says. And everyone has had co-workers who were shy or gossipy, loud or tactless. “Invariably,” he says, “the setup for these office-related works—whether they be blogs, films, series, or books—contains an everyman or -woman, some average person trying to survive the insanity. A person we can point to and say, ‘That’s me!’ ”