I began watching the US version of ‘The Office’ on the recommendation of several friends. One told me not to bother with the first episode – and probably the entire first season – as it was too much like a shot-for-shot remake of the much heralded English equivalent.
One episode in and I was messaging him to confirm his warning. The lines were the same. The delivery was pretty much indistinguishable but, as so happens when you have an expectation of how things are meant to go, it was naturally worse off.
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From the very first scene where Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott mistakenly calls a woman on the other end of the phone a “gentlemen and a scholar” before realising his mistake, the episode is littered with the same jokes that were crafted by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant several years prior.
But that’s pretty much where the similarities end. The rest of the season develops as its own entity. The characters are given room to expand and the actors playing them grow out of the shackles of their British counterparts and make them their own.
Plenty of people have tried to analyse and compare the British and American versions of ‘The Office’ and many of them are probably far better qualified then me to do so. But I’d go so far as to say that once the agony of that cringe-inducing first episode is out of the way, the two shows take on different tangents that are vastly different to each other.
It is such that when people feel the need to categorically say which version they think is better, it is, to me, a moot point – though if you read on I might just let you in on my personal choice on the matter.
The US version’s main characters may have been created using the British templates, but they are portrayed in a wholly different manner. The obvious example is the differences between the shows’ leads: Gervais’ iconic David Brent and Carrell’s blundering but at times loveable Michael Scott.
Over the course of the UK installment’s two-season run (plus the outstanding Christmas special finale), Brent offers precisely zero redeeming qualities; he is nauseatingly narcissistic, completely detached from reality and utterly useless at his job. His workers despise him, and given the interactions between them and their boss that we are shown, quite rightly so.
Brent was a boss who was so desperate for his employees to like him, he would constantly sabotage any progress he was making by trying too hard. His light-hearted quips as he shows temp worker Ricky around the office fail hilariously as he gets next to no reaction from his staff.
He is also shown to be tragically out of touch with any of the workers from the warehouse, despite his attempts to fit in, reinforcing the lack of respect that he is afforded throughout the workplace. The main element of humour in Brent’s character is his complete obliviousness to how others perceive him.
In a piece to camera, he reveals that he wants to be regarded by the staff as “a friend first and a boss second… probably an entertainer third” but in reality the office workers are repulsed by his actions, leading to some particularly embarrassing (for Brent) but hilarious (for us) silences when his jokes fail to land.
Contrast this to Michael Scott, initially shown to be something of a similar character and one who displays plenty of moments of revulsion throughout the seven seasons that he appears in. But the key difference is the scenes where Carrell is able to demonstrate a softer, more human side to Scott’s character and provide hope to the audience that he has it in him to tell right from wrong.
His pep talk to a broken-hearted Jim on the booze cruise in season two was among his finest moments. The effect was the same when he showed up at Pam’s art exhibition in Season Three and purchased her painting of the office building at a moment when her character was in desperate need of a lift.
Scott is still a massively flawed character, with a desperate need to be adored by his staff and a detachment from the reality that many who come across him find him difficult in the extreme. But his character is allowed to grow – a direct consequence of the longer run of episodes afforded to the US version of the show.
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One of the key arguments I often refer to when fighting the corner for the UK version is the shortened run of just 14 episodes, with every moment scrutinised in more detail and every look, reflex and line spoken given more relevance. The show ended with the audience wanting more, which is surely the mark of a hugely successful venture.
Although nine seasons in all for the US version was probably a touch too long, it allowed the characters and storylines to take on a new shape, giving a greater pay-off to the audience who had invested emotionally in what was happening.
Take Tim and Dawn/Jim and Pam. Two love stories that began in identical fashion yet were able to follow different paths thanks to the corresponding lengths of each series. Tim and Dawn’s plot is mostly one of heartbreak and repressed love. It’s obvious to the audience from their first scene together, yet it takes them until the penultimate shot of the entire series to finally make it happen.
Dawn’s return to the Christmas party and her kiss with Tim is a magical scene and one which is cherished by fans of the UK version time and time again, perhaps to the point where it overshadows any single scene enjoyed by Jim and Pam in the US. But theirs is a storyline that is just as romantic and just as enjoyable when spread out across the entirety of nine seasons.
Pam, like Dawn, initially rejects Jim when he makes his big move, but where the UK show soon came to a close following Tim’s leap of faith, the US version had plenty more legs in it. We were able to witness Jim’s relocation to Philadelhia and his inevitable return, the added complication of Karen Filippelli played Rashida Jones, the dramatic departure of Pam’s fiancé Roy and then the company’s eventual happy ending at the end of Season Three – not to mention their subsequent attempts to build a life together and the frictions that naturally occur.
And it’s not just the main characters. Whereas in the UK version, the rest of the office staff aside from Brent, Tim, Dawn and Gareth Keenan (exceptionally played by Mackenzie Crook) aren’t given much more than the odd sentence and certainly no major storylines, the characters who play similarly meagre role in the first season of the US version are then given license to expand in the subsequent seasons.
Meredith turns into a sex-crazed alcoholic, Angela becomes hilariously more tightly-strung (not to mention her romantic liaison with Dwight) and every line Creed says is crazier than the last. Even the character of HR rep Toby has his own excellent development, earning initial sympathy from the audience for his rough treatment at the hands of Scott, before he eventually comes to embrace how flaccid and monotone his own personality really is, giving the audience something extra to laugh at.
When you boil both shows down, what’s left is a revealing glimpse into what Brits and Americans find funny. Gervais and Merchant created a show that was both innovative and hugely funny, but also, one that was dark and complicated. There are moments of raw emotion to go alongside the hilarity; Brent begging his bosses not to make him redundant is an absolutely gut-wrenching scene, where the viewer instantly feels empathy for a character they have no reason to like at all.
The US show is an altogether brighter, more optimistic offering. The emotional moments are still there but they centre around Jim and Pam’s romance and come hand-in-hand with optimism that they will eventually find their way. For lack of a better phrase, the British version is to me more ‘real’ and easily relatable.
While I find the American alternative exceptionally funny and extremely well written, I suppose I connect to the UK version in a stronger way and, thus, find it to be the show I would choose to watch more often when browsing through Netflix.
But going back to my point right at the top, both shows are immensely different from each other and stand alongside one another as separate entities, despite coming from identical backgrounds. The chief success of Greg Daniels and his American team of writers was that they were able to create their own thing, a show that remains independent of the one that it was birthed from and still retains the same appeal.
We should all be thankful that both shows exist.
Mark Tilley
Filed under: Pop Culture
