Office Transfer

The American cast of The Office, from left to right: BJ Novak, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, Rainn Wilson and Steve Carell. Courtesy Global TV.

The title sequence for the now-classic BBC comedy The Office began with a montage of squat buildings followed by a shot of cars going round and round a traffic circle – employees stuck in an endless paddlewheel of days. Next, we saw a traffic sign reading, “Slough Trading Estate,” Slough being a small city 20 kilometres west of London. Of course, the name also refers to a depression filled with mud.

A perfect opening, it turned out, for what followed was a comedy about paper-jammed lives. David Brent was regional manager of Wernham Hogg, a stationery manufacturer, but what David really wanted to be was an entertainer. Next in command, Gareth Keenan dreamed of being a howling commando, although we sensed he would’ve settled for a girlfriend. Then there was Tim Canterbury, a bright underachiever who passed time with inventive pranks like suspending Gareth’s stapler in Jell-O and mooning over an engaged receptionist, Dawn Tinsley.

While The Office was brilliantly cast, what made the sitcom come alive was the supposed presence of a BBC documentary crew. David saw a whirring camera as an open audition to advance his preferred career: show biz. Every inappropriate comment and failed shtick paid off twice. There were his fantastic blunders and then, a few moments later – and funnier still – his being caught on film acknowledging his fantastic blunders.

The snooping camera incited all characters in The Office to greater recklessness. The result was howling comedy. But the show was also surprisingly tender, with an aching theme song, Handbags and Gladrags, which acknowledged the heartbreak of wasted dreams.

Starting March 24, The Office begins life anew as an American TV sitcom. For fans of the old show, witnessing the new “photocopy” is, at times, a painful ordeal – like hearing a kid brother retell a family story and getting the voices and plot wrong.

Everything is shockingly the same as the 2001 BBC pilot. During the opening credits we see the same stubby beige office towers. Regional manager Michael Scott (Steve Carell of The Daily Show) of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company is an obvious facsimile of David Brent. Again we have a bored wisenheimer dunking a nerd’s stapler in Jell-O. And the office receptionist remains unhappily engaged with her job and fiancé.

At the same time, nothing is quite right. Take the opening. The montage of office buildings is as before, but the NBC show fails to include the image of cars following each other in circles as if in a trance. That’s the shot that gave the original title sequence power – what made it funny.

Similarly, the stapler scene isn’t nearly as sharp this time around. In the original, David Brent (Ricky Gervais) hurries between Tim, Gareth and the imperiled office equipment, sensing an opportunity to perform and pontificate. “Slow down, you’re moving too fast,” he purrs. “Solomon’s here.” Then he gives the camera a little wink. Three seconds of screen time, but every moment comically priceless. “Slow down, you’re moving too fast” recalls the opening to Simon and Garfunkel’s The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy), the cornball anthem of 1967. And only David would consider a fight over a jellied stapler a disagreement worthy of the King of Israel.

Ricky Gervais, co-creator of BBC's The Office. AP Photo by Alastair Grant.

Still, it’s what happens next – the toothpaste commercial smile for the camera – that makes us wince with pleasure. There is no way to explain why David’s constant begging for approval is so painfully funny, but we might start with the way he looks. Dressed in a vaudevillian’s baggy shirt, pulling on his tie as if ringing a church bell, a swinger’s goatee adding an unnecessary circle to his spreading pie face, David Brent is the perfect office twit. He’s also the boss. Go figure.

While Gervais can steal a scene in three seconds, Steve Carell does little refereeing in the first episode’s stapler fight. He simply shows up mid-dispute and announces, “The judge is in session.” No smile, no song. You’ve got it all wrong, we find ourselves moaning, for we’ve already seen the bit done better, on BBC Canada or, more likely, the first season DVD.

Carell is a funny guy, as he proved on The Daily Show and in a deft comic cameo in Bruce Almighty. But it seems pointlessly cruel and, beyond that, simply bad television to have him replicating an American version of a British comedy that has already won international acclaim.

Fifty years ago, when Pat Boone redid Fats Domino’s R&B hit Ain’t That a Shame, translations were sometimes needed to reach mainstream North American audiences. Few Canadians had seen Till Death Do Us Part when in 1968 CBS re-made the British hit into All in the Family. Today, however, the mainstream is shrunken and crowded with tributaries. The Office is glad proof of that – the BBC sitcom won two Golden Globe Awards (best TV comedy, best comedy actor) in the States in 2003.

“I’m not from these parts,” Gervais told an L.A. audience when accepting his prize. “I’m from a little place called England. We used to run the world before you.”

Instead of watching the American pilot of The Office, on March 24, fans can easily turn to the original DVD collections – the best-selling BBC productions ever. Or they can switch on BBC Canada, where they can catch a re-run from season two of the David Brent series. This country’s satellite pirates, meanwhile, might access BBC America, where on Easter weekend, the entire series, including the 2003 Christmas special, airs in a special Office marathon.

For those who haven’t seen the original, the regional touring company production of The Office is OK. Newcomer Jenna Fischer adds a dimension of wounded kindness to the part of the thwarted receptionist, Pam. Other than that, however, everything is pretty much the same only better on the BBC Canada repeat from season two.

In that episode, David is inexplicably asked to give a motivational lecture to civil servants and shows up as a SWAT team assertiveness trainer, wearing a backwards ball cap and an imitation diamond in his still-bleeding ear, with a boom box blaring Tina Turner’s The Best. The lecture flops like a fish. And to fill time, David is reduced to improvising nonsense about laughter’s medicinal benefits.

“When you laugh,” he says, eyes searching for approval, “your brain releases endorphins. Your stress hormones are reduced. And the oxygen supply is improved to your blood.” Then David begins guffawing like a madman, gesturing for people to stand and join him. Instead, they stare grimly ahead as if witnessing a traffic accident.

Before green-lighting The Office, a BBC executive complained to creator-star Gervais, “Now hold on though, [David Brent] is so incompetent, why wouldn’t he be fired?” Brent replied by saying, “Go and take a look around this building. Just go and knock on a few doors.”

The Office’s best laugh was always a joke against the world – what kind of idiot would ever want to be boss? It’s a joke worth considering. But even great jokes have to be told differently to work a second time.

Stephen Cole writes about television for CBC.ca.

Letters:

I agree wholeheartedly with Stephen Cole, it's pretty sad when the supposed entertainment capital of the world has to try and remake an already classic and award-winning show.  Are there no imaginative writers left to the south? Oh well, I guess the dry humour and innuendo that made the original show great has to be edited out and replaced with a more in-your-face approach to appeal to the masses on this side of the Atlantic.

Chris
Ottawa