Hey, the British like our Office after all!
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- May
- 27
Once upon a time it was sacrilege to mention the U.S. version of The Office in the same breath as Ricky Gervais’s British original. In fact, my first exposure to the online mania surrounding the debate came from an imdb.com message board, of all places. The tone was nasty, snarky and condescending, to put it mildly.
Well, the Yank take on mockumentary look at the farce of workplace drudgery has firmly established its bona fides, and that is no slight to its forebear.
As Variety, points out, the U.S. ‘Office’ is even winning over the Brits. It turns out, with only 12 episodes and a pair of hour-long Christmas specials of the original to watch, the availability of 60-plus episodes of the U.S. show are winning over even the staunchest resisters across the pond.
”’The Office’ is, like so many U.S. comedies, tremendously well written,” says (Britain’s ITV2 network exec Zai) Bennett. “Steve Carell is a good, bankable face—and, of course, ‘The Office’ is a known property in the U.K. that audiences are already familiar with.”
NBC.com has put up 27 photos from the shooting of “Goodbye, Toby” that are worth a gander, mainly because many of them look more like out-takes and posed snapshots. There’s even a group photo of cast and crew that illustrates just how many people it takes to put this show together every week.
Check it out here: “Goodbye, Toby” photos
I said in my recap that “Goodbye, Toby” was no “Casino Night” as far as Office finales go. And just to underscore the fact that I meant no slight by the remark, Entertainment Weekly has named “Casino Night” one of the best finales ever.
That’s a nice compliment, and one I’ll agree with even if I haven’t seen half the finales on the list of 25. That said, there’s a glaring error—to diehard fans, anyway,—in the accompanying blurb.
The Jan/Michael/Carol love triangle! Kevin’s Police cover band, Scrantonicity! Oh, who are we kidding? This one was all about The Kiss. When Pam rebuffed Jim’s profession of love in the parking lot, we sighed; when he followed her into the office and kissed her anyway, we squealed; when she said she was still marrying Roy, we cried. Even the best melodramas haven’t toyed so effectively with our emotions. —Jennifer Armstrong
Pam didn’t say she was still marrying Roy in that scene. Those tears came four months later, during an ill-conceived and ham-handedly executed flashback that occurred in the season 3 premiere, “Gay Witch Hunt.”
The Season 4 DVD set, originally thought to be coming out Sept. 9, is actually releasing on Sept. 2, according to tvshowsondvd.com (a very cool Web site for such things). The $49.98 price tag should translate to the usual $32-$35 past sets have sold for. That and fact that it’s going to be a four-disc set are about all the details available so far.
By the way, I signed up last week to watch and blog about NBC’s Last Comic Standing. I’d never watched the show before, but I figured I like comedy, there’s not a heck of a lot else on TV right now and four Office cast members are judges.
Well I watched one episode and decided it is one of the worst shows on TV. A reality show about stand-up comedy is still a reality show, and that is not my cup of tea. So I dropped the show like a bad habit.
But all is not lost. Check out these videos featuring Angela Kinsey and Oscar Nunez. If any clips with Brian Baumgartner and Kate Flannery pop up, I’ll be sure to share those too.
Photo/Videos: NBC Universal
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 11:31 am by Brian Howard.
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