The Office

Started in 2002. It was created by Ricky Gervais (who starred as the series main character David Brent) and Steve Merchant. It was set in The Office of a paper merchants - Wernham Hogg, based in and filmed in Slough, Berkshire. As mentioned Ricky played the lead boss David Brent, other characters - his fellow workers were Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman) Gareth (MacKenzie Crook) and Dawn the receptionist (whom Tim had a crush on). The show followed a 'docu' soap format which was something that hadnt really been done before. David spoke into the camera in his cringeworthy, self centered manner mainly saying how good he was at his job and how much his staff looked up to him. Gareth appeared to be the one person who actually appeared to liked David, mainly because as Gervais said ' David is in charge. Gareth respects rank. And he’s a creep.'Gervais also says of his character David Brent ' I remember when we were talking the executives at the BBC, he said, ' this man is so incompetant why wouldn't he be fired?' and I said go and take a look around this building. Just go and knock on a few doors.

Gervais and Mechant were astonished at the response from the British public they had on the series. The show quickly obtained a cult status, one of the most memoriable scenes was that of the 'Dance' David Brent did at the end of the second series (click link above). Apparently it wasnt rehearsed. He went berserk for thirty seconds, then had to have a sit down for twenty minutes, hes quoted as saying.

The show ran for 2 series and a Christmas Special (as well as a Comic Relief special). They intended the show to have a happy ending and they wanted it to be moving and uplifting without being corny, which proved much harder than originally thought. The American versionis called Michael Scott, played by comedian Steve Carrell from The Daily Show. They decided to do the US version as Ricky said many of his influences were Amercian. Not much else is known about the US version but apparently it is not receiving the rave reviews that The Office received here.