--- title: "Silicon Valley" year: 2014 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/silicon-valley" fi1m_score: 82 critics_score: 87 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T02:49:35.540079+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T02:49:36.034809+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Silicon Valley (2014) Created by Dave Krinsky, Mike Judge, John Altschuler · 28m · MPA TV-MA · Comedy **Fi1m score: 82** · Critics 87 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* The best compression algorithm in the world, owned by five men who cannot agree on a logo > Mike Judge’s start-up comedy is the sharpest thing written about the tech industry, and Thomas Middleditch’s flinching Richard Hendricks holds it together for six years. It also has one plot and tells it every season, and the later runs feel it. ## Synopsis Palo Alto, the present day. Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch), a shy programmer at the tech giant Hooli, lives in a bungalow that Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller) runs as a start-up incubator, alongside coders Dinesh Chugtai (Kumail Nanjiani) and Bertram Gilfoyle (Martin Starr). Richard’s side project, a music app called Pied Piper, contains a compression algorithm far better than anything Hooli has. Hooli’s chief executive Gavin Belson (Matt Ross) offers to buy it outright; the eccentric investor Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch) offers a smaller sum for a stake, and sends his associate Monica Hall (Amanda Crew) to watch over the deal. Richard must choose between a fortune now and building his own company with four men who barely take him seriously. ## Review Mike Judge made [*Office Space*](https://film.one/film/office-space) about people who hated their jobs. Fifteen years on, with John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky, he made *Silicon Valley* about people who love theirs and are no happier for it. Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) writes code at Hooli, a firm of the Google sort, and has built a compression algorithm without noticing what he has done. Gavin Belson (Matt Ross), who runs Hooli, offers to buy it outright; Peter Gregory (Christopher Evan Welch), a venture capitalist who speaks as though each word were billed, offers far less for a stake. Richard takes the stake. It is a fine comedy and we recommend it, with the caveat that it has one story and tells it six times. Most of it happens in a Palo Alto bungalow that Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller) calls an incubator and everyone else calls a house. Richard Toyon’s production design gets it right: a pool nobody swims in, a monitor on every flat surface, server racks humming in the garage beside the recycling. The Hooli campus is glass, lawn and free bicycles. Jim Denault and Tim Suhrstedt shoot both in flat Californian daylight and never move the camera for a joke. Suzanne McCabe, Christina Mongini and Daniel Orlandi put the house in the fleeces of rich people who want you to know they do not think about clothes, and put Belson in collarless shirts that cost more than Richard’s car. Middleditch plays Richard as a man whose body objects to every decision his mind makes; he sweats, he stammers, he is sick in bins. Miller’s Erlich sold one company years ago and has been living off the sentence since. Kumail Nanjiani and Martin Starr, as Dinesh Chugtai and Bertram Gilfoyle, sit two feet apart for six years and despise each other with real dedication. Zach Woods’s Jared, who leaves Hooli to manage their business, is the only person in the house who has read a contract, and Woods plays him so eager to be useful that it is faintly frightening; his passing references to a dreadful childhood are the series’ best running joke. Welch, who does not last beyond the first season, makes Gregory a billionaire who thinks in silences, and Suzanne Cryer’s Laurie Bream, who takes over his firm, is if anything odder. The first season ends with a scene at a whiteboard, which we will not describe, in which the house applies proper mathematics to an indecent problem. We laughed until we were a little ashamed of ourselves, which is the effect Judge has been after since *Beavis and Butt-Head*. It works because Alec Berg and the writers take the maths seriously and nobody winks. The same goes for the language: every founder at every conference promises to make the world a better place, and the writers let the phrase fall flat by itself. The flaw is the shape. Every season Pied Piper is about to succeed, and every season it is humiliated, usually by its own founders. That works twice. By the fourth run we could feel the loop closing again, and we were tired, and being tired of something we liked made us cross. Miller leaves after the fourth season and the house is quieter without Erlich, though Jimmy O. Yang’s Jian-Yang, the incubator’s lodger, becomes the funniest person in the later years by refusing to do anything anyone asks. Amanda Crew’s Monica Hall is the one woman with a permanent chair, and she is given a job, worrying about Richard, where a character should be. Against Judge’s own standard, *Office Space* had one target and hit it in one film. This has a bigger target and fifty-three episodes, and the extra time goes on plot. What lasts is the observation: the terror of men who have won at maths and lost at everything else. The editors, Gina Sansom, Paul Zucker, Brian Merken and Tim Roche among them, keep each episode to 28 minutes and never let a scene explain itself twice. Watch the first two seasons straight through. Take the rest one at a time, as they were made, and stop when you find you know what is coming. The series ran from 2014 to 2019, and nothing it mocked has gone away. *Fi1m score 82, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews are unanimous in their approval. Most critics read Mike Judge’s comedy as a sharp, well-observed satire of start-up culture, and the praise clusters on the writing: dry, quick and thick with the jargon the show mocks rather than explains. The ensemble is singled out repeatedly, The Guardian in particular for TJ Miller, and several reviewers note how rarely this world has been put on screen at all, treating the setting itself as a strength. The spread is narrow, running from good to excellent, and the disagreement is about scale rather than quality. Collider’s A goes to a pilot judged close to a model episode; The AV Club and Den of Geek are warmer than they are certain, calling it solid groundwork that promises more than it yet delivers. Most of these are first-episode notices, so the question the consensus leaves open is whether the serialised plot holds across a season. ### Reviews we read (6) - **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): The critic finds Silicon Valley a beautifully observed and performed lampoon of the tech startup world, with strong writing and the finesse of an HBO production that makes it very funny. They single out the performances, especially TJ Miller, and the thorough satire of the competitive, jargon-filled valley culture. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/jul/17/silicon-valley-veep-review-mike-judge) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (90/100, inferred): The critic finds HBO's new comedy a fully realized and commercially promising series that delivers unforced humor through its look at the birthing pains of a tech startup. The serialized plot, eccentric characters, and satirical take on feuding billionaires and geek culture stand out as strengths. [Read](https://variety.com/2014/tv/reviews/tv-review-silicon-valley-1201127088/) - **Vulture**, Matt Zoller Seitz (85/100, inferred): HBO’s Silicon Valley captures an under-depicted tech milieu with intelligence, blending Office Space-style satire with Entourage-like absurdity through needy narcissists and a brilliant but awkward hero. The show's fresh take on machismo among intellectually competitive men feels both hilarious and original. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2014/03/tv-review-silicon-valley-hbo.html) - **The AV Club**, Les Chappell (B+): The pilot effectively translates Mike Judge's satirical take on office life to the tech world, establishing a distinct setting and ensemble with sharp dialogue and visual gags. It lays solid groundwork for the series by focusing on the protagonist's decision to build his own company rather than sell out. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/silicon-valley-minimum-viable-product-1798180057) - **Collider**, Perri Nemiroff (A): The critic calls the pilot a model episode that establishes a vibrant world with high stakes and fills it with appealing yet flawed characters. They single out the immaculate balance of humor, intrigue, and emotion, plus the universal appeal of characters chasing a dream in the startup realm. [Read](https://collider.com/silicon-valley-review-mike-judge/) - **Den of Geek**, Chris Longo (80/100, inferred): Mike Judge returns to his tech roots with an excellent new comedy that sharply observes the self-fulfilling motives and panic of Silicon Valley start-up culture. The pilot delivers dry, quick-witted writing and promises strong potential through its earnest protagonist and underlying purpose. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/silicon-valley-minimum-viable-product-review/) ## Details - **Created by:** Dave Krinsky, Mike Judge, John Altschuler - **Creator:** Dave Krinsky, Mike Judge, John Altschuler - **Director:** Mike Judge, Alec Berg, Jamie Babbit, Matt Ross, Liza Johnson, Charlie McDowell, Eric Appel, Tricia Brock, Clay Tarver, Gillian Robespierre, Pete Chatmon, Maggie Carey, Tim Roche - **Writer:** Alec Berg, Carson D. Mell, Carrie Kemper, Clay Tarver, Ron Weiner, Dan O'Keefe, Graham Wagner, Adam Countee, Andrew Law, Shawn Boxe, Rachele Lynn, Dan Lyons, Amy Aniobi, Matteo Borghese, Jessica Gao, Rob Turbovsky, Meghan Crumley, Daisy Gardner, John Altschuler, Lee Sung Jin, Lewis Morton, Sarah Walker, Chris Provenzano, John Levenstein, Dave Krinsky, Donick Cary, Josh Lieb, Anthony King, Megan Amram, Mike Judge - **Cinematography:** Tim Suhrstedt, Jim Denault - **Editor:** Tim Roche, Brian Merken, Al LeVine, Gina Sansom, Brian Bautista, Paul Zucker - **Production design:** Richard Toyon - **Costume design:** Christina Mongini, Suzanne McCabe, Daniel Orlandi - **Producer:** Jim Klever-Weis, Carrie Kemper, Adam Countee - **Cast:** Thomas Middleditch as Richard Hendricks; T.J. Miller as Erlich Bachman; Zach Woods as Donald 'Jared' Dunn; Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh Chugtai; Martin Starr as Bertram Gilfoyle; Amanda Crew as Monica Hall; Matt Ross as Gavin Belson; Christopher Evan Welch as Peter Gregory - **Runtime:** 28m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 6 April 2014 - **Genres:** Comedy - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm4tx1O9GAc ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Office Space* (1999), Fi1m 80: Judge’s earlier, grumpier office comedy, about people who want out rather than up. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/office-space.md) - *The IT Crowd* (2006): The British basement version, sillier and shorter, with the same contempt for management. - *Halt and Catch Fire* (2014), Fi1m 84: The same industry thirty years earlier, played straight and rather moving. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/halt-and-catch-fire.md) - *The Social Network* (2010), Fi1m 91: The deal-room drama Pied Piper keeps stumbling into, done without the jokes. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-social-network.md) - *Veep* (2012), Fi1m 82: Clever people failing loudly in a different building, at the same pace and volume. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/veep.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/silicon-valley