A Shark in the Office Pool

I have a confession to make. I came very close to crying at the end of the final episode of the BBC’s “The Office.” No spoilers here for those who haven’t had the pleasure of seeing it, but the remarkable balance of humor, empathy and pathos it elicited I had never before experienced, and I must admit I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. This was in December of 2004, well after the episode had originally aired on BBC America, and, from what I can gather, also on a British network counterpart of some note. I watched the episode on DVD—actually a DVD borrowed from a friend—so, from my quick math, I was watching a “third generation” version of the program. Word of mouth spread so quickly among my friends about this show, and we were all quickly rendered experts on everything “Office,” with only 14 episodes, a handful of deleted scenes, and a “making of” featurette to absorb.

This is what I love about British serial television. The best programs know to quit when they’re ahead:

The numbers don’t lie, folks. Three of the most popular and acclaimed British television programs outnumbered by three of the most popular and acclaimed American television programs 874 to 32. Does that make them any better? That’s a matter of much subjectivity. No, wait, it’s not. Statistically, they are better. From my calculations, the British shows are batting 1.000 on the quality scale. Not a bad episode in the lot. On the other hand, the amount of bad television included in the American triumverate could fill 26 years of programming on the BBC. Don’t get me wrong, “The Simpsons,” in my opinion, is the best family-centered program ever to air on television, period. I base this assumption, however, on episodes aired before 2000, when they “jumped the shark.” On that note, has that term ever been applied to a British sitcom? (By the way, “Happy Days,” 255 episodes.)What this leads me to is the recent decision by NBC (and, more importantly, creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant—who looks remarkably like your author) to reappropriate “The Office” with American actors and pop-culture references in an attempt to regain their “Friends” and “Frasier” audiences, geared to a slightly hipper and smarter type of comedy. My initial reaction, probably similar to many other fans of the show, was one of outrage—at the cynicism of NBC to assume that blatant copying of distinctly British humor with American coloring would pass for entertainment. Surely the general viewing populace would be smart enough to boycott the show and watch episode one of season two of the original on DVD instead. Then, after throwing up after laughing for several minutes, we regained our composure and realized that, of course, that’s what American television is all about.

The only smart move NBC made was hiring Steve Carell as the David Brent character. Carell is a marvelous comedic actor, capable of playing distinctly stupid and unlikeable characters like no one since Chris Elliott or, perhaps, Will Ferrell. However, Carell’s strengths as an actor lead to the main problem with the Americanized version of “The Office.” It’s dumb. And unlikeable. Carell may have stolen camera time away from the likes of Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” and Ferrell in “Anchorman,” but, despite his best efforts, he can’t save this show.

Ricky Gervais, who had very limited acting experience before embarking on “The Office,” imbued David Brent with a smarmy insouciance that made you feel sorry for him even as you gasped at his complete lack of social grace and interpersonal communicative competence. And he was funny as hell. The show was created as a vehicle for the character, and succeeded wildly based on it. In the American version, Carrell is simply a culturally lobotomized buffoon, with no charm or grace to create any sympathy for his obliviousness. The same goes for Gareth Keenan, played by avian-faced Mackenzie Crook with an innocence that belied his completely annoying behavior. His American counterpart, while equally strange-looking, strikes me more as a two-dimensional “stapler guy” from “Office Space.”

Finally, getting back to my original point, what is the marker for the ultimate success of the American version of “The Office?” It seems that its ostensible American success (a long run) would run completely counter to the original premise of the British show, a documentary camera crew following a bumbling manager around a middle-class paper distribution office. Part of the brilliance of the British version was its verisimilitude. More even that Christopher Guest’s genre-defining mockumentaries, the look and feel, combined with its short broadcast run, gave the feel of a distinct television event with clear character arcs and a clever avoidance of mawkishness. It’s only a matter of time before the American version runs out of jokes from the British version—at fourteen episodes, it looks like it jumps the shark at the beginning of Season Two.

Filed under: The Office  TV