Time travel is a universally fascinating concept. It’s been a hit across popular culture for decades, with a widespread fan appeal that till the day remains immortal. Mainstream media has so far invented a myriad ways of portraying and dramatising the act of travelling through time. A multitude of works have depicted it as a miracle of science, a product of technology or even a feat of fantasy. But may we look at time travel from an economic perspective? What if, like transportation or electricity, time travel simply became a public facility? This is precisely what creator and showrunner, Elliott Walker does with his viral web series, Time Travel Department. The series consists of a chain of short films featuring a titular department of time travel where clients who want to go back in time plead their cases to be approved (or denied) by the company’s admin.
Time Travel Department mashes up a brilliant sci-fi premise with the comedic energy of a workplace sitcom. Everything from the absurd reasons provided by clients for wanting to visit the past, the sheer irresponsibility of the admin in charge to the hilarious side effects of manipulating timelines makes each part a comical masterpiece. There’s one case featured per episode. Some of the most iconic ones feature scenarios such as a client wanting to go search for the love of her life in Ancient Mesopotamia, another travelling back to 2009 because that’s the last time new year glasses were made, and more recently, the admin intending to make his past self choose a different line of work.
The show stars Elliott Walker as the admin along with various guest actors as clients. It does so much with a single compact set and two characters across a table, employing a snappy dialogue-intensive style and improvised lines that make every exchange delightfully unpredictable.
In his pilot video for the series, Walker said he had the idea to make Time Travel Department while chatting with a friend, and then he made what he considered a ‘fairly stupid’ move by constructing a set for the production in the middle of his kitchen. The series has, since May 2026, garnered massive attention and is consistently blowing up across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Each episode runs for less than 3 minutes, and 43 episodes have been released so far. Walker runs the show in collaboration with head producer, Lara Haciosmanoglu and episode director, Eliab Rice.
You can watch the series on their YouTube, TikTok and Instagram pages (@timetraveldepartment).
