Ten years have passed since the hit UK TV sitcom The Office first aired on the BBC Two on July 9 2001. 2011 also sees Ricky Gervais, born on 25 June 1961, celebrate his 50th birthday. RTÉ TEN’s Taragh Loughrey-Grant takes a look back at the origins of Wernham Hogg, the creation of David Brent and his colleagues, the initial reaction to the show, how a new style of comedy was born and the spin-offs that followed.
First though a quick summary for the short attention spanned amongst us: The series is a mockumentary based in the offices of fictional paper manufacturers, Wernham Hogg in Slough. The premise is that a BBC documentary crew follow manager David Brent to get an insight into the day-to-day activities of this office. There was two series, each with six episodes plus a two-part Christmas specials of 45-minutes each (14 episodes in total) all written and directed by Gervais and Merchant.
Origins of The Office
The story goes that The Office was originally a 30-minute comedy showcase pilot by creators, writers and directors Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais. Merchant came up with the idea following a BBC production course and he and Gervais moulded the original concept into The Office. When they initially pitched it, a confident Gervais said that they would pull it if the BBC tried to change the format or if they failed to cast him as Brent. He said: “I star in it, we write it and direct it or we’re out of here!” After that intense meeting, a nervous Merchant asked Gervais to let him do the talking next time! However, as history has shown, they were right to stick by their guns.
The style of the show was so off-the-cuff that nowadays it would probably have appeared on YouTube first but as it didn’t exist then, it made it to BBC Two. In the pilot, there was a weird voiceover that made it look and sound like a real-life corporate training video – so much so that people couldn’t understand why BBC would air it.
The initial disappointing ratings resulted in the drawing board being revisited and BBC producers, including the acclaimed The IT Crowd and Comedy Lab producer Ash Atallo, approached the duo with some ideas and changes. One of the producers made the suggestion to get rid of the voice over, the awkward silences and play to the characters strengths. Gervais and Merchant agreed to two of their suggestions and played with Gervais’ notorious David Brent and let all the characters have room to breathe and develop. However instead of reducing the awkward silences, they increased them. Gervais has said: “Normally drama is life with the boring bits removed - we put them in.” He wanted the mockumentary to appear as realistic as possible and all of those office lulls, phone ringing in the background and photocopier noises are as realistic as the characters.
Reaction to the show
In the beginning the reviews weren’t great but the BBC and the duo kept plugging away at it. The Office was so ahead of its time that in the beginning people didn’t know what to make of it, were irked by it even. People thought it was mimicking their lives, their colleagues. After a period of time and a number of episodes, people got the joke; got the characters and the fact that it was a mockumentary of office life.
Slowly but surely they began attracting this huge cult following through a mixture of word-of-mouth, reruns and DVD sales. A huge part of the appeal of the show because it was so close to the bone of what people knew and believed office dynamics to be, everyone knew or could identify with the show and many of the characters.
It was the first time BBC 2 had an appointment to view programme in a long time, in this pre-YouTube or Player era people wanted to stay in, watch it live and be able to talk about it the next day. TV was going through a crisis, as competition increased and audiences were becoming more selective.
Where The Office fits into TV comedy history
BBC entertainment was struggling in the late 90’s to find relevant comedies following the success of twee hits in the 70’s and 80’s such as Only Fools and Horses. They were up against the success of modern US comedies such as Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond and Fraser. Meanwhile Channel 4 had asserted themselves with the likes of Father Ted and they had their own indigenous Friday night slot. The panelling style comedy show hadn’t kicked off yet and the BBC was historically renowned for their comedy with hits such as Are You Being Served, Hi-Di-Hi and Last of the Summer Wine. However it was time to turn to new writers such as Merchant and Gervais in the hope of finding a new comedic voice and of course a hit, which happened almost by accident.
Breaking the comedy mode: Single Camera Comedy
Many believed that the success of The Office marked the end of the sitcom, because this new style didn’t involve a live studio audience or multiple camera angles, instead it had a smaller crew and what was to be known as single camera comedy.
Since then many comedies no longer follow that style, instead they follow the style of The Office: No tinned laughter, no big studio set-ups, no recorded audience and smaller budgets. Plus the series was more of an ensemble piece rather than star led, although it does focus on four main characters: Brent (Gervais), Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman), Graham Keenan (Mackenzie Crook) and Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis).
Only in recent years with shows like Graham Linehan’s The IT Crowd have we seen a return to the sitcom format with a live audience albeit on a smaller scale – falling somewhere between the old and the new. The pace wasn’t necessarily gag after gag but more character comedy. The essential mockumentary cringe factor was increased because you knew these characters, Brent in particular so well, that you feared what they would say before they said it, adding to the car-crash, unPC, addictive shock appeal.
The pace and edit were slow, unlike the flashy, brash New York cutaways in Friends - the cutaways here were the opposite, those mundane yet essential office activites mentioned above.
Characters
David Brent is such an iconic character in the true sense of the word because with the Dot Coms came a whole cool generation of high flying, highly educated, experienced managers whereas Brent was of the archaic school of managers. He was a dying breed, in danger of extinction but everyone still knew someone like him. While it was initially hard to like him, as the episodes transpired, it was hard not to or at least to feel sorry for him as he embarrassed himself and those around him on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.
Watch the best known and most popular David Brent dance clip here
You can see the influence that Spinal Tap and the films of Christopher Guest (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind) had on the show. Initially Spinal Tap also had a mixed reaction because people wondered why make and watch a film about a rubbish band. However, just as was the case with The Office, with subsequent viewing the film grew a dedicated and cult following. Incidentally Guest became a huge fan of The Office and even cast Gervais in his 2006 For Your Consideration, as a studio exec.
Awards and Accolades
The show went on to win the UK Best Comedy Award in 2002, with the Best TV Comedy Actor Award going to Gervais and two years later the show became the first British comedy in 25 years to be nominated for a Golden Globe and the first to win one. Plus Gervais once again picked up the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series: Musical or comedy.
The success of the show was such that it moved from BBC Two to BBC One indicating that it was accepted into the mainstream, into the big time. For many years comedians would start off doing sketches on radio, before making the move to BBC Two and then if they succeed to BBC One, as Steve Coogan did with Alan Partridge. The show is now one of UK’s biggest success stories as it has been sold to over 80 countries.
Bill Gates comes knocking on The Office door
In 2004 Gervais and Merchant were asked by Microsoft to do create two special 20-minute training videos with Gervais in character as David Brent, by then a managerial consultant brought in to talk to staff. Merchant plays a Microsoft office worker who introduces Brent to the group and questions him during the informal presentation. The two videos, namely The Office Values and Realising Potential featured Brent jibing at Microsofts’ success before trying to land a job as the new MD of the company! The videos were never meant to be viewed by the public and Microsoft were said to have been disappointed when they leaked onto YouTube in 2006 however they were a huge hit.
Watch The Office speicals here
Cast, bloopers and romance
The cast and crew all seemed to get along very well and the show made household names of a number of other actors aside from Gervais and Merchant, including Freeman, Crook and Jasper Carrot’s daughter, Davis.
There was one scene where Gervais and Freeman were laughing so much they had to reshoot over 30 times and Gervais himself corpsed a number of times during one of his notoriously paraphrased quotes, this time he was quoting Dolly Parton.
Watch the brilliant bloopers here
Aside from the office politics and Brent’s bad behaviour there was also the all important, brilliantly executed romance. Brent finally found love with Carol; you can see/ hear their relationship begin to blossom here - watch the clip here
The relationship between Dawn (Davis) and Tim (Freeman) was extraordinarily well written and the episode where they finally came together both shocked and delighted audiences.
Watch the Clip: The kiss between Tim and Dawn finally happens
Spin offs:
The most successful spin off of The Office is the US version, set in the Scranton, Pennsylvania based company Dunder Mifflin.
Gervais and Merchant are executive producers of the show and they also co-wrote the pilot episode, season three’s episode The Convict and Gervais has cameo'd in two episodes.
Extras followed The Office with Gervais as Andy Millman and Merchant as his agent and the focus in this successful social satire, which featured numerous A-Listers such as Samuel L Jackson, Kate Winslet and Ben Stiller, is on celebrity and the trappings of fame.
Other spin-offs include:
An Idiot Abroad is their latest incarnation starring Gervais and Merchant’s friend/ producer/editor Karl Pilkington, travels the world so that he can learn the benefits of same mostly for Ricky and Stephen’s amusement. Surprisingly, it works. As usual they make it all look so effortlessly simple, unscripted and like unedited, reality TV, which given The Office, it probably isn’t.
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