Top10 comedies # 9 :The Office ( 2001)

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When I first watched The Office I rang my brother up to say you have to see this show, it's something different, it's something special,it's very funny and smart and bang on. It reinvigorated my faith in British comedy. British Sitcom had become tired, and reality TV was about to take over the schedules. TV was tiptoeing around, race, gender and politics in comedy and becoming too liberal. Ricky Gervais, who I knew of through the fringe and edgy comedy the 11 O'clock Show, had sensed that it was nearly game over for TV comedy and decided to send up the reality TV genre instead with a situation comedy. He set in a grungy English town called Slough at a paper merchants office and stirred in the British ingredients of the class system, being too polite and our beloved sarcastic humor - and a gentle ongoing love story. The star is David Brent (Ricky Gervais), an office manager but more a delusional dreamer who sees the cameras filming their everyday lives for a documentary at work an opportunity for fame. He is cringey and embarrassing and not self-aware as his staff quietly mock him. The other characters melancholy drags them through the day in the banal world of phones, computer screens , fax machines and paper cuts , bounce off him and each other for subtle laughs. There is no canned laughter here. You get it or you dont. The humor is clever and subtle and occasionally slapstick. It's beautifully written by Ricky and his partner-in-crime Stephen Merchant and pulses with office and social class in-jokes. Its clever in that its aimed at a more erudite TV audience that get the subtlety of it, the show more able to get away with edgy race, gender and minority 'observations' that didn't offend the audience but comfortable with it and not feel guilty. If a working-class comedy made those very same jokes and observations in a more blunt manner it would be seen as mildly offensive - the very same Office show audience would refuse to watch it as offensive. As I say it's very subtle. It would not get made today in our wokey world. Just as The 11 O'clock Show was the birthplace of some serious comedy talent so was this show . Ricky has gone on to Hollywood and Mackenzie Crook, as the anal office supervisor, has done some good shows here and Martin Freeman became the Hobbit. The AMericans did their version of The Office and deemed a success but I haven't seen it as I cant see this type of humor working there, and no way it can improve the British version. If you haven't seen either watch the GB version first.