The Paper Chase - The New Yorker The Paper Chase Office life in two worlds. By Tad Friend If Samuel Beckett were still around, his plays might begin on the late shift. “An office. An unattended PC glows under strong fluorescent light. Front left, a copying machine. Front right, a document shredder. Back, in near-darkness, a lounge with a disorderly refrigerator. A head peeps over a cubicle wall.” Yet Beckett might consider an office too familiar, too encoded with generic misery. Just as a commercial about a fretful housewife readies us for a miracle spray, so a commercial set in an office—such as one for FedEx, Sprint Nextel, and countless others—prepares us for jocular scenes of oppression. The ads follow the blueprint established by the “Dilbert” comic strip and by Mike Judge’s 1999 film “Office Space” (where the boss kept dropping by to follow up on “those T.P.S. reports”).

At the office, we have come to understand, the boss is always a blustery martinet; abbreviations are a B.F.D.; your co-workers eat your food, talk your ear off, and stab you in the back; and work has no inherent value. The richest treatment of these themes—and other, more searching considerations—occurred on “The Office,” a BBC Two sitcom whose impact vastly exceeded the length of its run: a mere twelve episodes in 2001-02 and a two-part coda, “The Office Christmas Special,” the following year. Shot as a mock documentary, it examined the daily nonevents at a branch of Wernham Hogg, a fictional paper-supply company in Slough, the city west of London celebrated by John Betjeman: “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! / It isn’t fit for humans now.” The show, which aired here on BBC America and is available as a DVD set, was indebted for its format and some of its improvisatory byplay to such Christopher Guest films as “Best in Show,” but while Guest’s characters are defined by excessive optimism, the paper pushers created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant were glum and self-loathing.

They gauged their standing in the world by their jobs, as many of us do, and their jobs involved monotonous labor at a failing company in a collapsing industry. Like “The Office,” standout workplace sitcoms—including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “M*A*S*H,” “Taxi,” and “The Larry Sanders Show”—take place at pokey or besieged outfits. Their characters’ struggles to have their lives matter make the show “relatable,” as the networks put it. Failure is repeatedly relatable, whereas triumph goes down best in a single serving, such as one of those movies about unlikely bobsled heroes or plucky pint-size hockey players. A Goldman Sachs sitcom would have to be set in the mailroom, because watching envy and truckling is a lot funnier than watching the distribution of Christmas bonuses. The workers at Wernham Hogg wear muted blues and grays and seem to be drowning in queasy fluorescence; they never see the sun.

The show’s format compounded the gloom, because our emotions weren’t being cued with pop-song hooks or jolted by a laugh track; yet, by placing the cameras right up in the action and interspersing one-on-one interviews, the show allowed us to discover the characters for ourselves. The documentary verisimilitude also allowed scenes to peter out with a blank look or a sigh rather than build up to the American joke-joke-joke crescendo, known as the “blow,” a structure that usually involves someone bellowing at a freshly slammed door, “Does this mean we’re not getting married?” The show’s lodestar was Ricky Gervais as the regional manager, David Brent. With his dated Vandyke, darting eyes, and shit-eating grin; with his wish to be more of a friend and entertainer than a boss, a wish torpedoed by the coercive feebleness of his patter and his horrifying dance moves; and with his unerring gift for joining conversations and killing them with one unpardonable remark, David was a new figure in sitcoms: the unbearable lead.

In the first episode, in a scene that extended for an excruciating two and a half minutes, he sought to impress the new temp by having him sit in as he played a practical joke on the receptionist, Dawn (Lucy Davis). After calling her into his office, he pretended to fire her for stealing. When she began to sob, he winced and shifted and finally murmured, “Good girl, that was a joke we were doing.” With her head still in her hands, she called him a “wanker” and a “sad little man.” “Am I?” he said, attempting nonchalance. “Didn’t know that.” But he does. And our slow discovery of how this self-knowledge eats at David made us, grudgingly, begin to think of him as tragic. While Gervais and Merchant’s decision to end the show well before it jumped the scone was admirable, NBC’s decision to air an American version, beginning in the spring of 2005, seemed deplorable.

The show’s cult of admirers was outraged; the New York Observer wrote that, to much of Hollywood, “this smells like another colossal failure in the works.” It was as if the network had announced that it was going to take a British institution like “Pop Idol” and remake it with a jingoistic title like “American Idol.” (Since then, Québécois, French, and German networks have rolled out local versions of “The Office”; the template is becoming as globally ubiquitous as “Baywatch.”) The doubters had reason for concern, though: while classic sitcoms such as “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son” were based on British models, more recent efforts to adapt “Absolutely Fabulous,” “Coupling,” and “The Kumars at No. 42” had all gone amiss. Initially, NBC was too respectful. The goings on at the Scranton branch of the Dunder-Mifflin paper company duplicated those at Wernham Hogg scene for scene, which didn’t play to the new writers’ interests or the new cast’s strengths.

But in the fall of 2005 the writers, led by Greg Daniels, the co-creator of “King of the Hill,” declared independence, and soon enough the show became a hit, first as a downloaded phenomenon on iTunes and then in the Nielsen ratings. It also became the best sitcom on the air. The creative turning point was last fall’s Halloween episode, in which Dunder-Mifflin’s corporate office in New York tells Michael Scott (the American version of David Brent, played by Steve Carell) to fire an employee by the end of the day. As he loudly struggles to think of a way out, or a way to get someone else to do it, Carell lets us see his character rummaging around in his brain for ideas, rocking forward as if to tip one closer to his mouth. The episode becomes completely goofy when Michael, in costume with a papier-mâché head on his shoulder, persuades his dweeby but Machiavellian lieutenant, Dwight (a brilliantly humorless Rainn Wilson), that the second head is whispering advice about whom to fire. The winning silliness was new, as was that episode’s final scene.

We see Michael, after going through with the firing, sitting glumly in his condo. Then the doorbell rings and he brightens, spilling candy in his eagerness to befriend a group of trick-or-treaters. Sappy, perhaps, but also an assertion that work needn’t define us. The British “Office” was a pitiless meditation on rules and class. (The American “Office” doesn’t care about class; the writers handle very gently the fact that Michael’s favorite New York restaurants are a Sbarro’s and a Red Lobster.) David Brent was always afraid that he was being sneered at—and he was. It wasn’t so much that David’s bosses spoke in the tones of the BBC, while he spoke Estuary English and prided himself on knowing all the pop-culture trivia familiar to readers of the Sun; it was his attempts to disguise his background by larding his conversation with Latin tags like “ipso facto,” always misused, and with management-speak about, say, “team individuality.” And there was his public behavior, as when a woman at a club accused him of wanting just to shag her.

His wounded rejoinder: “Yeah, and from behind, ’cause your breath stinks of onions, and I didn’t tell you that, did I?” As he smirked at her—touché!—she slapped him, and everyone froze. The appalled silence was “The Office” ’s recurrent landing point. Most of David’s employees didn’t know what to do with their embarrassment, but Tim (Martin Freeman), a salesman, usually bailed out of the collective mortification with a deadpan look at the camera. Making faces is the way the weak take their revenge. (Tim also regularly needled David’s provincial assistant, perpetuating a British tradition of repressive jeering that extends back to Mr. Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” who observed, “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?”) Many of Tim’s poker-faced glances and slightly pop-eyed takes were directed toward Dawn; he wooed her the way a dog woos its master. Their long-simmering mutual crush was the show’s sole gesture toward the optimistic American “arc,” in which characters go on a journey together and are rewarded.

But the crush didn’t boil over, because Dawn was engaged to someone else. Tim and Dawn were afraid to break the rules-—and their colleagues, equally afraid, made sure that they didn’t. David declared at one point that he’d like “to live, you know, on and on and on, you know—know what it’s like to live forever.” Yet the show’s blank interstitial shots of the photocopier chunking out documents and of people staring at their computer screens, just as before, became increasingly dreadful. “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” as Estragon observes in “Waiting for Godot.” In the final episode, when David’s bravado crumbled and he pleaded with his bosses in a low voice to rescind their decision to fire him (“Don’t . . . make me redundant,” he said, barely able to get the words out. “Just say that it’s not definite now”), his appeal to keep things as they were, given how bad even he knew they were, was wrenching. The challenge that faced the American “Office” was to honor the spirit of the original while tweaking the workplace dynamics so that audiences would want to watch more than twelve episodes.

The British scabrousness and barely suppressed violence is gone, and the Scranton office—brighter and noisier, with more posters, parties, and pep—is Slough on Zoloft. Scranton has its thwarted lovebirds, too, Jim and Pam (the boyishly appealing John Krasinski and a depressed but radiant Jenna Fischer), who are better-looking and more assertive than Tim and Dawn. But two more office romances have been woven into the mix, and where Ricky Gervais’s David was nearly asexual, Steve Carell’s Michael Scott is weirdly and delightfully pansexual. Ryan, the go-getter junior salesman (B. J. Novak, one of several writers on the show who also play characters), tries never to be alone with his boss. It’s not just that Michael slaps him on the rear and calls him on his cell phone to coo but that Michael once proclaimed, when everyone was playing Who Would You Do?, “Well, I would definitely have sex with Ryan!,” adding, a moment late, “ ’cause he’s going to own his own business.” Which makes it perfectly understandable.

Referring to such differences, Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, has remarked that “Americans need a little bit more hope than the British.” In fact, conditions in Scranton are fairly hopeless: when it appeared, earlier this season, as if the branch might close, many of the employees were delighted. Toby, the doleful human-resources nebbish (Paul Lieberstein), told the camera, “For a minute there, I saw myself selling my house, moving to Costa Rica, learning how to surf. But, Costa Rica will still be there . . . when I’m sixty-five.” What distinguishes Dunder-Mifflin from Wernham Hogg is not hope but consolation. In the British “Office,” we never learned most people’s names; the American version lovingly anatomizes everyone and takes advantage of the long-take documentary format to reveal the full complexity of everyone’s feelings (we glean, for instance, that Toby has an unspoken crush on Pam, and therefore resents Jim).

Lost is the condemnatory power of the anonymous British chorus; gained are both a standard American melting pot and a commedia-dell’arte stock company, featuring Kelly the Yakker, Meredith the Lush, Kevin the Letch, and Creed the Cantankerous Freak, who is just a possession or two away from being a hobo. When Dwight is hovering uselessly in Michael’s office as Michael tries to deal with the sudden death of his predecessor, who was decapitated in a car accident, Creed (Creed Bratton) suddenly dips in his random oar. CREED: You know, a human can go on living for several hours after being decapitated. DWIGHT: You’re thinking of a chicken. CREED: What’d I say? It wouldn’t be the same without him. In the final episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Mary Richards explained the hidden mechanism of our workplace sitcoms, telling her co-workers, “I thought about something last night. What is a family? And I think I know. A family is people who make you feel less alone and really loved.

Thank you for being my family.” Somewhat more self-importantly, Michael Scott tells the camera, “A lot of these people, this is the only family they have. So as far as I’m concerned”—he pulls out a “World’s Best Boss” mug that he bought for himself—“this says ‘World’s Best Dad.’ “ This office taps home the point that work is fundamentally alien to the workplace. The reason that bosses become blustery martinets is that any sensible employee at a place like Dunder-Mifflin would rather play video games or gossip than tutor clients in the manifold varieties of copy paper. Yet Michael is the worst offender; he hates paperwork and is constantly distracting his employees while supposedly motivating them—the man is a karaoke machine of samplings from leadership manuals, and his emotional declarations sound like “The 48 Laws of Power.” “Would I rather be feared or loved?” he wonders aloud. “Um, easy: both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.” There is something Trump-like about Michael—the inert quiff of hair, the bombastic maxims, the bluff, mechanical determination.

Where David Brent wields language like a blunderbuss, brandishing it before the gates of the establishment, Michael wraps himself in it like a Sean John jacket, longing, hopelessly, to be black. “Wassup!” he cries, to his “dawgs” and “be-yotches” when they’re “in the house.” Last week, in an episode guest-written by Gervais and Merchant, he put on a do-rag and pretended to be Prison Mike, giving his employees the 411 on why office life is, in fact, preferable to time in the hole. There are also, in a somewhat more Caucasian mode, his impressions of Moe Howard, of the Three Stooges, and Adolf Hitler, of the Third Reich. Steve Carell does wonderful work with his voice, going from strangled and squeaky when he’s wounded to orotund when he’s feeling statesmanlike, an effect routinely shattered by his penchant for cackling and blurting out “Fo’ shizzle!” or “What’s the dealio?” All the conversational lint that tumbles around the airwaves gets trapped on the blank mesh of his brain.

Michael is less concerned with class than David, but he’s classier. When layoffs loomed at Wernham Hogg, David leapt to take a promotion, even though it meant that his Slough office would close (in the end, he failed the physical). By contrast, when Michael is told that the Scranton branch will be shuttered, he and Dwight drive to New York to appeal for his workers’ jobs. Scranton winds up absorbing the somewhat more professional Stamford branch, not because of Michael’s ultimately irrelevant road trip but because Stamford’s manager leveraged the situation and got a better job at Staples. Jim tells the camera, “Say what you will about Michael Scott, but he would never do that.” Aside from such occasional clangers—fundamental-decency alert!—the show has a near-perfect grasp of tone. When Pam accepts her “Dundie” award from Michael at the annual ceremony at Chili’s, she has been drinking and flirting with Jim and wants to show off for him, so she launches into a mock acceptance speech.

“Finally,” she concludes, “I want to thank God”—and her pause as she glances at the award in her hand and the engagement ring she has worn for more than three years is strangely affecting—“because God gave me this Dundie, and because I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.” In such scenes, the show manages to send up the forced camaraderie that Michael demands while celebrating its haphazard but genuine epiphanies. The American show is much more willing to bend reality in the service of a joke. Jim, who sits next to Dwight and is able to tolerate his pettiness only by thinking of ingenious ways to punk him, goes so far as to send him faxes that purport to be time-travelling warnings from “future Dwight”—and Dwight heeds them. But the new “Office” does fix the original’s nagging realism problem: it was difficult to believe that David Brent would have lasted in his job for eight years. The writers take care to demonstrate that Michael Scott’s intense, blundering amiability can close a sale, particularly when the client is drunk.

Most of the time, Michael’s boss, Jan Levinson (a splendid Melora Hardin as a steely professional occasionally beset by self-doubt), can’t understand why she hasn’t fired him. But Jan also warms to Michael’s sympathetic side, particularly when she’s drunk. She even makes out with him, twice, to her everlasting chagrin. Michael is too dim to understand that Jan is way out of his league; he sees himself as a sort of man-about-town who’s not afraid to cry. In this vein, he regularly convenes breach-healing colloquia about diversity and tolerance, which always backfire. This fall, he tried to demonstrate that there’s nothing scary about gays by publicly embracing Oscar (Oscar Nuñez), an accountant who he had been told, privately, was gay. (Michael explained to us that he wished he’d known about Oscar’s sexuality, because then he wouldn’t have kept calling him “faggy.” “You don’t call retarded people retards,” he pointed out, with characteristic logic. “It’s bad taste. You call your friends retards when they’re acting retarded.

And I consider Oscar a friend.”) Oscar rejected the embrace with a shove, declaring, “I don’t want to touch you—ever consider that? You’re ignorant. And insulting. And small.” Michael’s pained glance at the camera demonstrates Steve Carell’s particular strength as a comic actor: he doesn’t just deliver jokes and P.C. doubletalk—he swaddles them in bubble wrap and adds a gift card. When they don’t go over, he’s crestfallen. Here he ended up crying on Oscar’s shoulder: “Sorry I called you faggy.” Michael wants nothing more than to keep his humiliations to himself. But there are so many. The biggest humiliation, though he hasn’t yet begun to acknowledge it, is the growing evidence that his office is not exactly a family.

Michael’s employees, of course, recognize family metaphors as a corporate falsehood, and they behave accordingly: his wingman, Dwight, recently maneuvered to replace him, having earlier told us that his defining quality as a worker was loyalty—“but if there were somewhere else that valued that loyalty more highly, I’m going wherever they value loyalty the most.” Similarly, Andy, a new guy from Stamford (Ed Helms, in a scene-stealing turn as a smarmy frat-boy type), tells us he’ll have the second-in-command job within six weeks, through “name repetition” and “personality mirroring.” Michael falls for the manipulation, of course, and his credulousness made us feel the sort of sadness we feel when a computer outplays Garry Kasparov. Even Jim has no problem with getting ahead and is now Michael’s No. 2. Class isn’t destiny here; destiny is achieved by selling and, in both senses of the word, hustling. Gervais and Merchant’s handling of the Tim-and-Dawn plot was a master class in the pleasures of delayed gratification. At the very end of the show’s coda, “The Office Christmas Special,” Dawn tearily stepped into Tim’s arms.

The related issue that the American “Office” must now resolve seems, at first, merely technical: how to perpetuate Jim and Pam’s mating dance as the show continues indefinitely. Their flirtation is more articulated, playful, and intimate than Tim and Dawn’s longing; it’s screwball rather than chivalric. They essentially serve as the office’s cruise directors, engineering a karate bout between Michael and Dwight and conducting an office Olympics with medals made from yogurt lids (they give Michael a gold lid for closing on his condo). Inspired writing can multiply obstacles for a long time: Sam and Diane teased viewers for five years on “Cheers,” and Niles and Daphne eyed each other for seven years on “Frasier” before running off together. But when the will-they-or-won’t-they plot winds down, it often takes the show with it, as it did on “Moonlighting.” Precisely because Jim and Pam’s relationship has been so poignant—it’s the show’s chief ornament—they are fast running out of reasons to stay apart.

At the end of last season, Jim approached Pam in the parking lot one night and said, “I’m in love with you.” A few minutes later in the darkened office, a likelier setting, they kissed. Then she said she was still going to marry Roy, her lunk of a fiancé. Yes, it made no sense. This season, even as Pam called off the wedding, Jim left for the Stamford office so that he could forget her; now the merger has brought him back, along with his Stamford colleague and new girlfriend, Karen (a spunky Rashida Jones). Their relationship feels much more mature than Jim and Pam’s skylarking, and so is clearly doomed. How this matter plays out will define the show’s view of office life. Is this “Office” a romance, a place to find your soul’s counterpoint? Or is it a comedy of consolation, a place where dreams of love and Costa Rica gradually slip away? Michael, at least, would argue for the romance. Last season, he urged Jim to “never, ever, ever give up” his pursuit of Pam.

It helped, somehow, that Michael uttered this Churchillian sentiment while wearing plastic handcuffs and shivering in the makeshift brig of a booze-cruise boat on Scranton’s Lake Wallenpaupack. The frigid weather and the correctional setting were straight out of the British original; the unlooked-for kindness was a local contribution. The BBC and NBC are two offices separated by a common language. ♦ Tad Friend has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998. Sign up for the daily newsletter: The best of The New Yorker every day. Enter e-mail address Please enter a valid e-mail address Submitting... Thank you for subscribing. You’ll receive your first newsletter soon.

View all newsletters » Most Popular The Office - Complete Series One & Two and The Christmas Specials 2001 DVD: Amazon.co.uk: Ricky Gervais, Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Lucy Davis, Ewen MacIntosh: DVD & Blu-ray Product Description Product Description Every episode, plus the two Christmas specials, from the BBC's award-winning, faux documentary comedy series starring Ricky Gervais as David Brent, the manager of paper merchant Wernham Hogg's Slough office, who, in his own mind, is not so much the boss but 'more of a friend'. Unctious and ineffectual in equal measure, he turns the life of his staff into a neverending round of irritating mini-dramas. In the first series, David is informed that company downsizing means that the Slough office might have to close. In a moment of gauche managerial bravado he promises his staff that there will be no redundacies - a promise he might not be able to keep... In the second series, the office has been merged and new staff from the Swindon office arrive to feel the benefit of David's managerial skills.

Tim (Martin Freeman) finds himself going out with new girl Rachel (Stacey Roca), whilst still in love with Dawn (Lucy Davis). After a series of mishaps, David is finally told he is to be made redundant - and in the final episode Tim tells Dawn how he feels. In the two Christmas specials, first screened in December 2003, three years have passed since the BBC documentary crew first began filming at Wernham Hogg. When they return for a final catch-up visit, they find Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) in the boss's chair. David Brent has become a travelling sales rep for a cleaning products company, blown his redundancy payout on releasing his own pop single ('If You Don't Know Me By Now'), and taken on a showbiz agent to book him a string of Z-list celebrity appearances. Despite his successful sueing of Wernham Hogg for unfair dismissal, Brent pays frequent visits to his old workplace with his dog in tow, much to the annoyance of boss Neil (Patrick Baladi).

In 'Part 1', Tim is flustered to hear of the imminent arrival of Dawn, who along with her fiance Lee (Joel Beckett) is being flown back from her new life in Florida by the documentary crew to attend the office Christmas party. In 'Part 2', Tim's world is rocked when Dawn turns up at the office to say hello, but he tries not to get his hopes up, particularly since Lee is accompanying Dawn to the office party. Meanwhile, David Brent has joined a dating agency and, in between making his celebrity appearances in nightclubs, he meets up for drinks with a disappointing selection of single women. However, he hits the jackpot when he meets his dating-agency date for the office party, a very attractive and intelligent woman, Carol (Sandy Hendrickse), who seems to bring out the best in him. Meanwhile, Dawn, who had left the party early with her insensitive pig of a boyfriend Lee, later returns alone, much to the surprise and delight of her real soulmate Tim. From Amazon.co.uk It feels both inaccurate and inadequate to describe The Office as a comedy.

On a superficial level, it disdains all the conventions of television sitcoms: there are no punch lines, no jokes, no laugh tracks, and no cute happy endings. More profoundly, it's not what we're used to thinking of as funny. Most of the fervently devoted fan base watched with a discomfortingly thrilling combination of identification and mortification. The paradox is that its best moments are almost physically unwatchable. Set in the offices of a fictional British paper merchant, The Office is filmed in the style of a reality television show. The writing is subtle and deft, the acting wonderful, and the characters beautifully drawn: the cadaverous team leader Gareth (Mackenzie Crook); the monstrous sales rep, Chris Finch (Ralph Ineson); and the decent but long-suffering everyman Tim (Martin Freeman), whose ambition and imagination have been crushed out of him by the banality of ! the life he dreams uselessly of escaping. The show is stolen, as it was intended to be, by insufferable office manager David Brent, played by codirector-cowriter Ricky Gervais.

Brent will become a name as emblematic for a particular kind of British grotesque as Basil Fawlty, but he is a deeper character. Fawlty is an exaggeration of reality, and therefore a safely comic figure. Brent is as appalling as only reality can be. --Andrew Mueller The second series exceeded even the sky-high standards of the first. Indeed, it ventured beyond caricature and satire, touching on the very edge of darkness. Ricky Gervais is once again excruciatingly superb as David Brent, but in this series, Brent's to-the-camera assertions concerning his management qualities and executive capabilities are seriously challenged when the Slough and Swindon branches are merged and his former Swindon equivalent Neil (Patrick Baladi) takes over as area manager. To compensate, Brent cultivates his pathologically mistaken image of himself as an entertainer-motivator-comedian whose stage happens to be the workplace. Meanwhile, Tim, who can only maintain his sanity by teasing the priggish Gareth, continues to wrestle with his yearning for receptionist Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis), a sympathetic character persisting in a relationship with a man about whom she still maintains unspoken reservations.

As ever, it's the awkward, reality TV-style pauses and silences, the furtive, meaningful and unmet glances across the emotional gulf of the open-plan office, that say it all here. As for Brent, his own breakdown is prefaced by a moment of hideous hilarity--an impromptu office dance, a mixture of "Flashdance and MC Hammer" as Brent describes it, but in reality bad beyond description. Then, when his fate is sealed, he at last reveals himself in a memorable finale to perhaps the greatest British sitcom, besides Fawlty Towers, ever made. --David Stubbs The brilliant and devastating comedy of The Office is brought to a satisfying conclusion in The Office Special, originally a two-part Christmas special on the BBC, set three years after the end of the faux-documentary's second season. The former office manager David (Ricky Gervais) now ekes out a desperate existence as an oblivious quasi-celebrity, making awkward, humiliating visits back to the office staff he still believes loves him.

Gawky Gareth (Mackenzie Crook) has risen to manager and become a petty tyrant, while the sweet but snide Tim (Martin Freeman) continues to pine for former receptionist Dawn (Lucy Davis), who fled to Florida with her fiance. When the documentary crew pays for Dawn to return for the holiday party, an unpredictable reunion looms ahead. The Office fuses scathing humor and genuine empathy, turning excruciating social discomfort into inspired satire. Fans will find this special rewarding in all respects. --Bret Fetzer Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. British Comedy - Mefi Wiki MetaFilter's site and server can always use upgrades of hardware, software, and bandwidth, as well as more stable funding for continued support of its small but high-skilled moderation and backend team! If you'd like to chip in, you can donate to Metafilter. British Comedy This is based on this thread, originally filtered through an html to wiki filter.

For the past 50 years, The British have made some of the funniest Comedy TV Shows. Come inside for A Video Chronology of The History of British TV Comedy. [Hover over the Wikipedia links for show descriptions. Noteworthy shows highlighted with star (*). All links are double-checked but BBC seems to be on the war path, resulting in removed clips.] Contents The Goon Show (1951-1960): The Goon Show was a popular and influential radio comedy produced by the BBC from 1951 - 1960, starring Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. (from this thread) Steptoe and Son (1962-1974): Steptoe and Son is a British sitcom written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson about two rag and bone men living in Oil Drum Lane, a fictional street in Shepherd's Bush, London. Four series were aired on the BBC from 1962 to 1965, followed by a second run from 1970 to 1974. Its theme tune, “Old Ned”, was composed by Ron Grainer.

In a 2004, BBC, poll to find “Britain’s Best Sitcom”, Steptoe and Son was voted 15th best British sitcom of all time. Till Death Us Do Part (1965-1975): Till Death Us Do Part (also known as Til Death Us Do Part) was a BBC television sitcom series written by Johnny Speight that ran from 1966 until 1975. The programme starred Warren Mitchell as the racist East End misogynist (and Rudyard Kipling lookalike) Alf Garnett. Also appearing in the series were Dandy Nichols as Alf's long-suffering wife, Else Garnett, Una Stubbs as Rita, his daughter, and Anthony Booth as Mike, his layabout son-in-law, whose socialist leanings were the cue for many of Alf's more offensive outbursts. The Likely Lads (1964-1966): The Likely Lads was a hit British sitcom created and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Twenty episodes were made and broadcast in all, over three seasons, by the BBC between December 1964 and July 1966.

However, only eight of these shows have survived intact. [no clips found] Morecambe and Wise (1968-1983): Morecambe and Wise were a famous British comic double act comprising Eric Morecambe OBE and Ernie Wise OBE. The act lasted four decades until Morecambe's death in 1984. They are widely considered to be the most successful double act in Britain for generations. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, The Morecambe and Wise Show was placed 14th. In September 2006, they were voted by the general public as number 2 in a poll of TV's Greatest Stars. On the Buses (1969-1973): On The Buses was a British situation comedy created by Ronald Wolfe and Ronald Chesney. The pair had already had successes with The Rag Trade and Meet the Wife for the BBC. The BBC rejected this offering and so the pair turned to ITV station London Weekend Television.

The show was accepted and although the critics disliked it, the show was a huge hit with the viewers. * Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969-1974): Monty Python’s Flying Circus (also known as Flying Circus, MPFC or, during the final series, just Monty Python) is a BBC sketch comedy program from the Monty Python comedy team, and the group's initial claim to fame. The show was noted for its surreal plots, risqué or innuendo-laden humour, sight gags, and sketches without punchlines. It also featured the animations of Terry Gilliam which were often sequenced or merged with live action. (Spike Milligan's) Q (1969-1982): Spike Milligan's Q was a surreal television comedy sketch show which ran from 1969 to 1983 on BBC2. The first and third series ran for seven episodes, with the remainder running for six episodes, each of which was 30 minutes long.

Each series was numbered, starting with Q5 - possibly because the project to construct the Cunard liner QE2, launched in September 1967, was dubbed Q4 - and continuing in ascending order, through to Q9. The final series was renamed There's a Lot of It About, after, according to Milligan's autobiography, the BBC felt the public might find Q10 too confusing. The Lord's Prayer Epilogue | The Fresh Fruit Song | Kilt Chimes | Sandwich * The Benny Hill Show (1969-1989): The Benny Hill Show featured Benny Hill in mostly short sketches (often portraying a protagonist), along with Thames Television show regulars Henry McGee, Bob Todd, Jackie Wright, Nicholas Parsons (in the early years), Jenny Lee-Wright, Rita Webb and others. Hill often demonstrated his versatility as an actor by appearing in vastly different costumes as well as in female character. Slapstick and double entendre were his hallmark. Some critics accused the show of sexism, but Hill often pointed out that the female characters were all intelligent and kept their dignity, while the men chasing them were all buffoons.

The Two Ronnies (1971-1987): The Two Ronnies is a British sketch show that aired on BBC One from 1971 to 1987. It featured the double act Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, the “two Ronnies” of the title. [...] The show revolved around comic sketches in which Barker and Corbett appeared together and separately, with various other additions giving the programme the feeling of a variety show. Are You Being Served? (1972-1985): Are You Being Served? was a long-running British sitcom broadcast from 1972 to 1985. It was set in the men's and women's department of a large fictional London store called Grace Brothers. It was mainly written by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft, with contributions by Michael Knowles and John Chapman. The idea for the show came from Lloyd's brief stint working at Simpsons of Piccadilly in the early 1950s, a classy clothing store which traded for over 60 years until 1999.

* Love Thy Neighbour (1972-1976): Love Thy Neighbour was a British sitcom which ran from 13 April 1972 to 22 January 1976, made by Thames Television for ITV. It starred Jack Smethurst, Rudolph Walker, Nina Baden-Semper and Kate Williams. There was also a movie spin-off and a brief sequel set in Australia. The series (and movie) was created and largely written by Vince Powell and Harry Driver, and was based on a suburban white working class couple who unwittingly found themselves living next door to a black couple, and the white couple's attempts to come to terms with this. Last of the Summer Wine (1973-): Last of the Summer Wine is a British National Television Award winning sitcom which airs on BBC One and is written by Roy Clarke and produced and directed by Alan J. W. Bell.

[...] Set and filmed in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, England, the plot centres around a trio of older men, the lineup of whom has changed over the years, but originally consisted of the scruffy and child-like Compo, deep-thinking and meek Clegg, and authoritarian and snobbish Blamire, who was replaced by the quirky war veteran Foggy after two series in 1976. Porridge (1973-1977): Porridge is a British sitcom that was broadcast on BBC1 from 1973 to 1977, running for three series, two Christmas specials, as well as a feature film. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two criminals in the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland. Rising Damp (1974-1978): Rising Damp was a UK television sitcom produced by Yorkshire Television for ITV, first broadcast from 1974 to 1978. It was adapted for television by Eric Chappell from his well-received 1971 stage play, The Banana Box (retained as the working title early in the series).

The series was the highest-ranking ITV sitcom on the 100 Best Sitcoms poll run in 2004 by the BBC. * It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974-1981): It Ain't Half Hot Mum was a British sitcom about the adventures of a Royal Artillery Concert Party, broadcast between 1974 and 1981, and written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the creators of Dad's Army. It was set in British India and Burma, towards the end of the Second World War. [...] The first four series of It Ain't Half Hot Mum were set at the Royal Artillery Depot Deolali, a place where British soldiers stayed before being posted up the jungle. The Royal Artillery Concert Party, consisting of several soldiers who would rather sing, dance and dress up as women than fight, are stationed permanently in Deolali to keep the troops entertained. In the first episode of the fifth series, the concert party are posted up the jungle, and from then on It Ain't Half Hot Mum is set in Tin Min, Burma close to the front line.

* Fawlty Towers (1975-1979): Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom made by the BBC and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Only twelve episodes were produced, but the series has had a lasting and powerful influence on later shows. [...] Fawlty Towers was inspired by the Monty Python team's stay in the Gleneagles Hotel in Torquay in May 1970. Cleese and Booth stayed on at the hotel after filming for the Python show had finished. The owner, Donald Sinclair, was very rude, throwing a bus timetable at a guest who asked when the next bus to town would arrive, and placing Eric Idle's suitcase behind a wall in the garden on the suspicion that it contained a bomb (it actually contained a ticking alarm clock). The Good Life (1975-1978): The Good Life is a British sitcom that aired on BBC1 from 1975 to 1978. It was written by Bob Larbey and John Esmonde. In 2004, it came 9th in Britain's Best Sitcom.

[...] On his 40th birthday, Tom Good gives up his job as a draughtsman in a company that makes plastic toys for breakfast cereal packets as he is no longer able to take his job seriously. Their house is fully paid for, so he and his wife Barbara make a decision to live a sustainable, simple and self-sufficient lifestyle while staying in their beloved home in The Avenue, Surbiton. [...] Their actions horrify their kindly but conventional next-door neighbours, Margo and Jerry Leadbetter. Originally, Margo and Jerry were intended to be minor characters, but their relationship with one another and with the Goods soon become an essential element of every episode. * The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (1976-1979): The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is a novel and British sitcom starring Leonard Rossiter in the title role.

Both book and TV series were written by David Nobbs, and the screenplay for the first series was adapted by Nobbs from the novel, though certain subplots in the novel were considered too dark or risqué for television and toned down or omitted from the TV series, a case in point being the relationship between Perrin's daughter and his brother-in-law. Open All Hours (1976 and 1985): Open All Hours was a BBC sitcom written by Roy Clarke which ran for four series (26 episodes in all) between 1976 and 1985, with a pilot episode from the Seven of One series in 1973. In 2004, the series was voted eighth in Britain's Best Sitcom. [...] The series centres around a small grocer's shop in Balby, a suburb of Doncaster in South Yorkshire. The store's owner, Albert Arkwright (played by Ronnie Barker), is a middle-aged miser with a stammer and a knack of being able to sell anything and everything to any passing visitor to his shop.

[no clips found] George and Mildred (1976-1979): George and Mildred was a British sitcom produced by Thames Television that aired from 1976 to 1980. It was a spin-off of Man About the House and starred Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce as an ill-matched married couple, George and Mildred Roper. [...] George and Mildred Roper have left their old house after receiving a compulsory purchase order from the Council and move to 46 Peacock Crescent in Hampton Wick. While Mildred enjoys moving up in the world socially, lazy and unemployed George remains true to his working class roots and also continues to show a lack of interest in sexual relations with Mildred. To the Manor Born (1979-1981): In To the Manor Born Penelope Keith, who had became famous for playing Margo Leadbetter in the suburban sitcom The Good Life, plays Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, an upper-class woman who, upon the death of her husband, has to move out of her beloved manor house. The manor is then bought by Richard DeVere, played by Peter Bowles, a nouveau riche millionaire supermarket owner.

* Not the Nine O'Clock News (1979-1982): It featured a new generation of young comedians, principally Rowan Atkinson, Pamela Stephenson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, and helped to bring alternative comedy to the mainstream. Rather than being written by a single team of writers, it gave virtually anyone involved in UK comedy scriptwriting a chance to demonstrate their talents, creaming the best of the contributions. Its format was similar to that of a forerunner, Monty Python's Flying Circus, including sketches that lasted from a few seconds to several minutes. * Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (1980-1988): Yes Minister is a multi-award winning satirical British sitcom written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn that was first transmitted by BBC television and radio between 1980 and 1984, split over three seven-episode series. The sequel, Yes, Prime Minister, ran from 1986 to 1988. In total this made 38 episodes, all but one of which last half an hour. Hi-de-Hi! (1980-1988): Hi-de-Hi!

was a popular British sitcom set in a holiday camp that aired for nine series from 1980 to 1988. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who had previously written Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. The title was the phrase used to greet the campers at events, and in early episodes was written Hi de Hi. Only Fools and Horses (1981-2003): Only Fools and Horses is a British television sitcom, created and written by John Sullivan, and made and broadcast by the BBC. Seven series were originally broadcast in the UK between 1981 and 1991, with sporadic Christmas specials until 2003. After a relatively slow start the show went on to achieve consistently high ratings, and the 1996 episode “Time On Our Hands” holds the record for the highest UK audience for a sitcom episode. * 'Allo 'Allo! (1982-1992): 'Allo 'Allo! was a long-running British sitcom broadcast on BBC1 from 1982 to 1992 comprising eighty-five episodes.

Set during World War II, 'Allo 'Allo tells the story of René Artois, a French café owner in the village of Nouvion (the town square scenes were filmed at Lynford Hall, Norfolk). Germans have occupied the village and stolen all of its valuable artifacts. The Young Ones (1982-1984): The Young Ones was a popular British sitcom, first seen in 1982, which aired on BBC2. Its anarchic, offbeat humour helped bring alternative comedy to television in the 1980s and made household names of its writers and performers. Soon after, it was shown on MTV in its early days, being one of the first non-music television shows to appear on the fledgling channel. * Blackadder (1983-1989): Blackadder is the generic name that encompasses four series of an acclaimed BBC One historical sitcom, along with several one-off installments. The first series was written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson, while subsequent episodes were written by Curtis and Ben Elton.

The shows were produced by John Lloyd, and starred Rowan Atkinson as the eponymous anti-hero, Edmund Blackadder, and Tony Robinson as his sidekick/dogsbody, Baldrick. Spitting Image (1984-1996): Spitting Image was a satirical puppet show that ran on the United Kingdom's ITV television network from 1984 to 1996. Chance in a Million (1984-1986): The hapless Tom Chance meets his long-suffering girlfriend, Alison Little, by chance. This happens when Tom Chance goes to the same pub on a blind date to meet a girl (who is also called Alison), that Alison Little has arranged to meet her cousin Tom (for the first time since they were young children). [no clips found] * French & Saunders (1987-2007): French & Saunders is a British sketch comedy television show written by and starring Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, and also the name by which the performers are known on the rare occasions when they appear elsewhere as a double act.

[...] Widely popular in the early 1990s, the show was given one of the highest budgets in BBC history to create detailed spoofs and satires of pop culture, movies, celebrities and art. [...] The show features an unusual style of humour, where many otherwise normal parody sketches are permeated with an underlying theme (which somewhat breaks the fourth wall) of the jealousy that French has for Saunders, and the superiority complex of Saunders. * The New Statesman (1987-1994): The New Statesman was an award-winning British sitcom of the late 1980s and early 1990s satirising the Conservative government of the time. It was written by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran at the request of, and as a starring vehicle for, its principal actor, Rik Mayall. Many people consider the show a hybrid of Yes Minister and another Rik Mayall sitcom, The Young Ones.

Chelmsford 123 (1988,1990): The series was located in the British town of Chelmsford in AD 123, and concerned the power struggle between Roman governor Aulus Paulinus (Jimmy Mulville) and the British chieftain, Badvoc (Rory McGrath). Britain is a miserable place, cold and wet – just the place to exile Aulus for accidentally insulting the Emperor's horse, but also give him something useful to do. Aulus was a rather delicate Roman, who was usually outwitted by the scheming Badvoc, who hadn't had a haircut for twenty-five years. * Red Dwarf (1988-1999): Red Dwarf is a British science fiction comedy franchise, the primary form of which comprises eight series of a television sitcom that ran on BBC2 between 1988 and 1999, and which has achieved a global cult following. It was created and originally written by Grant Naylor (a so-called 'gestalt entity', in reality a collective pseudonym for the writing duo Rob Grant and Doug Naylor).

The show's origins come from a recurring sketch, Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, in the mid-1980s BBC Radio 4 comedy show Son Of Cliché, also scripted by Grant and Naylor. * Keeping Up Appearances (1990-1995): Keeping Up Appearances is a British sitcom starring Patricia Routledge as social-climbing snob Hyacinth Bucket. It aired on BBC1 from 1990 to 1995. Keeping Up Appearances was written by Roy Clarke, who also wrote Last of the Summer Wine and Open All Hours. In 2004, it came 12th in Britain's Best Sitcom. [...] Hyacinth Bucket is a social-climbing snob who insists her last name is pronounced “bouquet”. She spends most of her time trying to impress her neighbours and friends by boasting about her wealthy sister Violet, and pretending to be of a more “aristocratic” class.

Simultaneously, Hyacinth tries desperately to avoid her lower-class relatives who frequently turn up, either on the woman's doorstep (a suburban bungalow situated on Blossom Avenue), or in public places, embarrassing Hyacinth and thus sabotaging her hopes of climbing the social ladder. Vic Reeves Big Night Out (1990-1991): ic Reeves Big Night Out was a cult British comedy stage show and later TV series which ran on Channel 4 for two series in 1990 and 1991, as well as a New Year special. It marked the beginnings of the collaboration between Vic Reeves (real name Jim Moir) and Bob Mortimer and started their Vic and Bob comedy double act. One Foot in the Grave (1990-2000): One Foot in the Grave was a BBC television situation comedy series written by David Renwick. The show ran for six series, with several specials, over a ten year period, from 1990 to 2000. In addition, four episodes were remade for BBC Radio 2 and the series also inspired a novel.

[...] The series featured the exploits of Victor Meldrew, an irascible pensioner with attitude. In the first episode, Victor, played by Scottish-born actor Richard Wilson, was prematurely retired from his job as a security guard being replaced by an automated machine. From then on the series followed his struggle to keep himself occupied, often with little success. Mr. Bean (1990-1995): The series followed the exploits of Mr. Bean, described by Atkinson as “a child in a grown man's body”, in solving various problems presented by everyday tasks and often causing disruption in the process. [...] The title character, played by Rowan Atkinson, is a slow-witted, sometimes ingenious, childishly selfish and generally likeable buffoon who brings various unusual schemes and connivances to everyday tasks. He lives alone in his small flat in Highbury, North London, and is almost always seen in his trademark tweed jacket and skinny red tie. Mr. Bean rarely speaks, and when he does it is generally only a few mumbled words.

Have I Got News for You (1990-): Have I Got News for You is a British television panel show; produced by Hat Trick Productions for the BBC. It is based loosely on the BBC Radio 4 show The News Quiz, and has been running since 1990. The show has cultivated a reputation for sailing close to the wind in matters of libel with its satirical, light-hearted format. * Drop the Dead Donkey (1990-1998): Drop the Dead Donkey was a situation comedy that ran on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom from 1990 to 1998. It was set in the offices of “Globelink News”, a fictional TV news company. Recorded close to transmission, it tried to use current news events as a means of giving the programme a greater sense of realism. It was created by Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin. The series had an ensemble cast, making stars of Haydn Gwynne, Stephen Tompkinson and Neil Pearson.

* Absolutely Fabulous (1992-2005): Absolutely Fabulous was an Emmy and BAFTA winning British sitcom written by and starring Jennifer Saunders and co-starring Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks. [...] Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone are two immature, prosperous, but preposterous substance-abusing fashion and fad-obsessed Londoners who value fame and style over substance (unless they are controlled substances). Saffron, Edina's daughter, provides the persistently dour voice of Monsoon and Stone's super-ego. Edina and Saffy live in a house in Holland Park (although the house is seemingly very close to Shepherds Bush, much to Edina's chagrin), with Patsy spending most of her time there as well. Men Behaving Badly (1992-1998): Men Behaving Badly is a British comedy, which first broadcast in 1992 on the ITV network, however moved to BBC One (and a later timeslot) from the third series onwards.

It was written and created by Simon Nye, who also wrote a book in the 1980s, which forms the basis for much of the first series. [...] The first series features Martin Clunes as Gary Strang, and Harry Enfield as his flat mate, Dermot Povey. From series two onwards, Enfield is replaced by Neil Morrissey as Tony Smart, who resumes Dermot's role as the immature under-achiever, perpetually behind in his rent, and hopelessly in love with Deborah, who lives in the flat above. * Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (1994): Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (also known as Knowing Me, Knowing You or abbreviated to KMKY...WAP) is a British comedy show first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as a six-episode series, which subsequently transferred to BBC Television with a series of six episodes (beginning 16 September 1994), and a Christmas special (Knowing Me, Knowing Yule) in 1995.

It is named after the song “Knowing Me, Knowing You” by ABBA (Alan Partridge's favourite band), which was used as the show's title music. [...] The show was a parody of a chat show, and both the radio and television versions were so embarrassingly accurate that listeners and viewers often thought they were the real thing. Many wrote in to complain, for example, at Partridge slapping a child prodigy in an episode of the radio series. The series did feature an audience who clearly knew the show was a parody, but apparently this wasn't enough to persuade some listeners that it wasn't real. * The Vicar of Dibley (1994-2007): The Vicar of Dibley is a British sitcom created by Richard Curtis and written for its lead actress, Dawn French, by Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer, with contributions from Kit Hesketh-Harvey. The Vicar of Dibley aired from 1994 to 2007. In 2004, it came third in Britain's Best Sitcom.

[...] The Vicar of Dibley is set in a fictional small Oxfordshire village called Dibley, which is assigned a female vicar following the 1994 changes in the Church of England that permitted the ordination of women. The main character was an invention of Richard Curtis, but Dawn French and himself extensively talked with Joy Carroll, one of the first female vicars, and garnished many character traits and informations. The Fast Show (1994-2000): The Fast Show, known as Brilliant in the US, was a BBC comedy sketch show programme that ran for three series from 1994 to 1997 with a special Last Fast Show Ever in 2000. [...] The series was the brain child of Paul Whitehouse and his writing partner and friend, Charlie Higson. They wanted to break away from Harry Enfield and Chums, a show in which they had appeared and written for. After viewing a quick press preview tape of Enfield's show, compiled by producer friend Geoffrey Perkins, the pair began to develop the idea of a rapid-fire 'MTV generation' format based wholly on quick cuts and soundbites/catchphrases.

After LWT passed on the early scripts, they returned to the BBC. * The Day Today (1994): The Day Today is a surreal British parody of television current affairs news programmes. It is an adaptation of the radio programme On The Hour. The series is composed of six half-hour episodes and a selection of shorter, five-minute slots recorded as promotion trailers for the longer segments. [...] Each episode is presented as a mock news programme, and the episodes rely on a combination of ludicrous fictional news stories, covered with a serious, pseudo-professional attitude. Each episode revolves around one or two major stories, which are pursued throughout the programme, along with a host of other stories usually only briefly referred to. * Father Ted (1995-1998): Father Ted was a popular 1990s television situation comedy set around the lives of three Irish Catholic priests on the remote (and fictional) Craggy Island off the west coast of Ireland. It ran for three series, totalling 25 episodes, between 21 April 1995 and 1 May 1998 on the UK's Channel 4.

Father Ted was written by two Irish writers Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, who also co-created Big Train. All of the interior scenes were shot at The London Studios, while all of the location footage was shot in Ireland. The Thin Blue Line (1995-1996): The Thin Blue Line is a British sitcom starring Rowan Atkinson set in a police station that lasted for two series from 1995 to 1996. [...] The Thin Blue Line was set in the police station of a fictional town of Gasforth, one of the main themes was the rivalry between the uniformed squad led by Inspector Fowler; and the CID led by Detective Inspector Grim; who provided much of the humour through his use of the English language. * Never Mind the Buzzcocks (1996-): Never Mind the Buzzcocks is a comedy panel game show with a pop and rock music theme, currently presented by Simon Amstell and produced by talkbackTHAMES for the BBC. It is usually aired on BBC Two. The title plays on the names of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks album, and the band Buzzcocks.

[...] The show is infamous for its dry, sarcastic humour and scathing, provocative attacks on the pop industry. * I'm Alan Partridge (1997-2002): I'm Alan Partridge is a British sitcom. Two series were produced, the first in 1997 and the second in 2002. Six episodes were produced for each series. [...] Steve Coogan stars as Alan Partridge [...] A former chat-show host on BBC television, Alan was dismissed from the BBC partly for punching Chief Commissioning Editor Tony Hayers in the face with a stuffed partridge and partly because his programmes were of a low standard, delivering ever-declining ratings. In series one, he is divorced from his wife Carol, lives in the Linton Travel Tavern and is reduced to working the graveyard shift on Norwich radio and desperately trying to get back on television in any capacity. Big Train (1998-2002): Big Train is a surreal British television comedy sketch show created by Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan, writers of the successful sitcom Father Ted.

It was first broadcast in 1998 with a second series, in which Linehan was not involved, shown in 2002. [...] Following in the tradition of Monty Python, the comedy of Big Train is based on the subversion of ordinary situations by the surreal or macabre. For example, one scene features a bad-mannered man casually stabbed to death by his embarrassed wife at a dinner party. The Royle Family (1998-2006): The Royle Family is a popular, BAFTA award-winning television sitcom produced by Granada Television for the BBC, which ran for three series between 1998 and 2000, with a special episode in late 2006. It concerns the lives of a working class Manchester family, the Royles. [...] The series is remarkable for its simple production and realistic portrayal of working-class family life at the turn of the millennium. It, therefore, has something in common with kitchen sink drama.

The League of Gentlemen (1999-2002): The League of Gentlemen is a quartet of British comedy writer/performers, formed in 1995 by Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. The television program for which they are best known, although officially labelled a sitcom, was initially more sketch-based, linked together by their common setting: the fictional village of Royston Vasey, set somewhere in the north of England. * Spaced (1999-2001): Spaced is a British television situation comedy written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright. It is noted for its rapid-fire editing, frequent dropping of pop-culture references, and occasional displays of surrealism. [...] Tim Bisley (Pegg) and Daisy Steiner (Stevenson) are two London twenty-somethings who meet by chance in a cafe while both are flat-hunting.

Despite barely knowing each other, they conspire to pose as a young “professional” couple in order to meet the requisites of an advertisement for a relatively cheap flat in the distinctive building at 23 Meteor Street, which is owned by and also houses the landlady, Marsha Klein (Julia Deakin). * Smack the Pony (1999-2003): Smack the Pony was a British sketch comedy show that ran from 1999 until 2003 on Channel 4. Its title was intended to sound like a euphemism for female masturbation; the working title was Spot the Pony. The main performers and writers on the show were Fiona Allen, Doon Mackichan and Sally Phillips. [...] Among the show's regular themes were unsuccessful relationships, competition in the workplace and latent lesbianism, but sketches would also dip into the surreal; such as two women jumping from their car as they neared a parking space and brushing in front of the path of their car to allow it move forward further à la curling. Two regular strands involved a series of different women making dating agency videos about their general likes and dislikes, and a musical parody that would close the show.

* That Peter Kay Thing (2000): That Peter Kay Thing was a series of six spoof documentaries shown on Channel 4 in January and February 2000. Set in and around Bolton, these followed the lives of different characters and starred Peter Kay as the subject of each documentary. All of the episodes displayed Kay's penchant for nostalgic humour and unsympathetic lead characters. The voiceovers were provided by Andrew Sachs. Many of the plot lines were based around actual events from Kay's life. * Black Books (2000-2004): The series is set in the eponymous “Black Books”, a small, independent bookshop in the Bloomsbury area of central London. The show is based around the lives and often surreal antics of its foul-mouthed, eccentric, misanthropic, alcoholic Irish owner Bernard Black (played by Moran), his assistant Manny (Bailey), and their friend Fran (Greig). The Office (2001-2003): The Office is an Emmy-nominated, and Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award-winning British television comedy that first aired in the UK on BBC Two on 9 July 2001.

Created, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the programme is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough, Berkshire branch of the fictitious Wernham-Hogg Paper Company. Although fictional and scripted, the programme takes the form of a documentary (a fictional documentary, i.e. a mockumentary), with the presence of the camera often acknowledged. * The Armando Iannucci Shows (2001): The Armando Iannucci Shows is a series of eight programmes directed by Armando Iannucci and written by Iannucci with Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil. It was shown on UK's Channel 4 in October 2001. Each show had a rough theme, often somewhat existentialist in nature, around which Iannucci would weave a series of surreal sketches and monologues. [...] Recurring themes in the episodes are the superficiality of modern culture, our problems communicating with each other, the mundane nature of working life and feelings of personal inadequacy and social awkwardness.

Several characters also make repeat appearances in the shows, including the East End thug, who solves every problem with threats of violence; Hugh, an old man who delivers surreal monologues about what things were like in the old days; and Iannucci's barber, who is full of nonsensical anecdotes. Dead Ringers (2002-): Dead Ringers is a UK radio and television comedy impressions show broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Two. [...] The series is well known for its portrayal of fellow BBC employees, such as Radio 4 newsreader Brian Perkins as a Godfather-like figure (“Who's the daddy?”), controlling all of Radio 4. He often sends death threats to other members of the BBC, and threatens to kill anyone who tries to chat-up his love interest Charlotte Green. Little Britain (2003-2006): Little Britain is a character-based sketch show first appearing on BBC radio and then television. It was written by and stars Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Its title is an amalgamation of the terms 'Little England' and 'Great Britain', and is also the name of a Victorian neighbourhood and modern street in London.

[...] The format of the show is a compilation of short sketches featuring recurring characters, linked by narration from Tom Baker (most famous as the Fourth Doctor on Doctor Who). The voiceovers take a wry look at Britain, with comically absurd statements on the nation's character, such as, “Britain.... We've had running water for over 10 years, an underground tunnel linking us to Peru, and we invented the cat”, or “Unlike other countries, Britain has people of two genders: women and men.” Peep Show (2003-): Peep Show follows the often sexually-frustrated lives of two men in their late twenties, Mark (Mitchell) and Jeremy (Webb). Having met while at the fictional Dartmouth University together (they occasionally refer to themselves as 'The El Dude Brothers' in reference to their student days), they now share a flat in Croydon, south London. * QI (2003-): QI, standing for Quite Interesting, is a comedy panel game television quiz show created and produced by John Lloyd, hosted by Stephen Fry, and featuring permanent panellist Alan Davies.

[...] It is distinguished by the awarding of points not necessarily for correct answers, but rather, for (quite) interesting ones. Many of the questions are extremely obscure, making it unlikely that the correct answer will be given. Points are deducted from a panellist who gives an obvious but wrong answer, typically one that is generally accepted as true but is, in fact, false. Davies is usually in last place in the show as he consistently gives answers like these. * Green Wing (2004-2007): Green Wing is an award-winning British television comedy set in the fictional East Hampton Hospital Trust. It was created by the same team behind the sketch show Smack the Pony, led by Victoria Pile, and stars Tamsin Greig, Stephen Mangan and Julian Rhind-Tutt. [...] Although set in a hospital, there are no medical storylines; the action is produced by a series of soap opera and Commedia dell'arte-style twists and turns in the personal lives of the characters. They proceed through a series of often absurd sketch-like scenes connected by lazzi, or by sequences where the film is slowed down or speeded up, often emphasising the body language of the characters.

The Thick of It (2005): The Thick of It is a British comedy television series, which satirises the inner workings of modern British government. [...] The action centres on the fictitious Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship (“DoSAC” - previously the Department of Social Affairs, or “DSA”, prior to the reshuffle of episode five), which supposedly came out of the Prime Minister's passing enthusiasm for “joined-up government”. Thus, it acts as a “Super Department” overseeing many others, which enables different political themes to be dealt with in the programme, similar to the Department for Administrative Affairs in Yes Minister. Extras (2005-2007): Extras is a BAFTA, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning British television sitcom about extras working on film sets and in theatre. The series is co-produced by the BBC and HBO, and is co-written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, both of whom also star in it. [...] Each episode has at least one guest star; a television or film celebrity, who play what Gervais and Merchant have referred to as "twisted" versions of themselves; an exaggerated or inverted parody of their famous public personas.

* The IT Crowd (2006-): The IT Crowd is set in the offices of Reynholm Industries, a fictitious British corporation in central London. It focuses on the shenanigans of the three-strong IT support team located in a dingy, untidy and unkempt basement - a stark contrast to the shining modern architecture and stunning London views enjoyed by the rest of the organisation. Gavin & Stacey (2007-): Gavin & Stacey is a British sitcom originally aired on BBC Three and later shown on BBC Two, written by and starring Ruth Jones and James Corden and produced by Baby Cow Productions. Gavin is played by Mathew Horne and Joanna Page plays Stacey. Outnumbered (2007-): Outnumbered is about a family living in South London, where the parents are “Outnumbered” by their three children. The parents constantly try to keep their children under control, but completely fail to do so. * The Armstrong and Miller Show (2007-): The Armstrong and Miller Show is a British sketch comedy television show produced by Hat Trick Productions for BBC One.

It reunites the comedy duo Armstrong and Miller, who have not appeared together on screen since 2001, and features League of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson as scriptwriter.

Question: What was the name of the fictional paper company whose offices provide the setting for the British sit-com 'The Office'?
Answer: 'WERNHAM HOGG'