Room 104

Room 104 frames a new story every episode by limiting the stage to a single hotel room and changing everything else. Guests come and go, bringing awkwardness, humor, tension, or menace, and each installment resets the tone and the rules. Some episodes play like dark comedies, others like tense character studies or surreal genre pieces, but all focus on brief, intense encounters that reveal quirks, secrets, and the small ways people affect each other. The format keeps surprises front and center, with no ongoing arc to tie episodes together beyond the physical space they share.

The series was created by Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass and premiered on HBO in 2017, running through multiple seasons into 2020. It was conceived as an anthology that gives writers and directors room to experiment, and production credits include a rotating roster of filmmakers and actors who each bring distinct styles to single-episode stories.

Room 104 didn’t land major awards like Emmys or Golden Globes, but it did attract notice for its unusual approach on a prestige network. Its modest profile meant it rarely appeared in mainstream award conversations, though individual episodes earned praise in reviews and among festival-curious viewers.

The show found a niche cultural presence by proving a high-profile home can host low-budget, risk-taking TV. Fans and indie filmmakers pointed to it as a place where unusual ideas could get screen time, and a handful of episodes sparked online discussion and recommendation from viewers who enjoy oddball, short-form storytelling.

Critics were mixed, a pattern reflected in its vote average of about 5.7 out of 10 from a sample of viewers. Reviews tended to admire the ambition and willingness to shift genre from one episode to the next, while noting that quality varied widely from entry to entry. Thematically it returns to intimacy, isolation, moral slips, and how tiny interactions can escalate, all delivered with a tone that can flip between comic, unsettling, or quietly human in a single sitting.