Office Space
In a desperate move to get out of fourth place (behind CBS, ABC and Fox), NBC has released its own version of The Office, a remake of the British hit comedy that first aired on the BBC in 2001. The peacock has hardly been lucky in the past with this tactic (Coupling, anyone?), but this time they just might have a modest success on their hands. Unfortunately, next to its predecessor, modest is all the American Office will ever be.
Taking over for Ricky Gervais (below, right) as the boss is Steve Carrell (left). David Brent has become Michael Scott, regional manager of a paper company in Scranton, Pa. (Wernham Hogg has become Dunder Mufflin, as well.) Carell is most recognizable from his work on Comedy Central's The Daily Show and small roles in Bruce Almighty and Anchorman. Indeed, for a while there it didn't look like Carell would ever play anything other than a fake newsman, and The Office isn't much of a stretch: self-assured, dimwitted reporter becomes self-assured, dimwitted middle-manager. Carell, though, is smart enough not to play the role as Gervais did. Recreating Gervais's precise blend of smarmy dictator and inept communicator would have been impossible and would have doomed the show from the outset. Carell plays the part as more of a gregarious moron, the clown of a boss that doesn't seem to know his remarks might be racist or sexist. His desire to relate to his coworkers, to be one of the gang, is something anyone who's logged cube time will recognize with a shudder. ("I like to think of myself as a friend first," Carell's character tells a new hire, "a boss second, and probably an entertainer third.")
As for the plot, the American pilot mirrors the British one, down to the last joke and plot twist. A film crew roams around the office, filming the banal daily interactions and interspersing them with interviews with the employees. Maybe it's because NBC is desperate, but someone there actually had the wits to preserve as much of the feel of the original as possible: no laugh track (the presence of which can damage a show), documentary-style cuts, etc. The storyline of the new series diverges from the old next week (in a sensitivity-training seminar), and it's at that point we'll see whether the show can make it on its own. When it's just recycling the jokes from the original, the new version pales in comparison.[Do yourself a favor and just buy the original and the series finale.]
