El vino did flow – How The Office achieved sit­com perfection

It shouldn’t have worked. When The Office first aired on a Mon­day evening in July of 2001, noth­ing sug­gest­ed an epochal event was in the off­ing. The first-time writer/​directors, who had met at the Lon­don alter­na­tive radio sta­tion XFM, had no real expe­ri­ence to speak of. Stephen Mer­chant was the gan­g­ly, ana­lyt­i­cal half of the part­ner­ship who’d grown up want­i­ng to emu­late local hero John Cleese, anoth­er tall man from the West Coun­try behind a beloved sit­com. Ricky Ger­vais, the show’s lead, was a failed pop star who’d spent years in mid­dle man­age­ment as the assis­tant events man­ag­er for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don Union. Not for noth­ing do they tell you to write what you know.

Merchant’s dream was to write the next Fawl­ty Tow­ers, an ambi­tion he achieved in his twen­ties. After leav­ing XFM and embark­ing on a pro­duc­tion course at the BBC, he enlist­ed the fun­ni­est man he knew to take part in a short film enti­tled Seedy Boss; from the sec­ond Mer­chant point­ed a cam­era at his friend and invit­ed him to impro­vise as David Brent, it was clear the pair were on to some­thing. A char­ac­ter emerged ful­ly formed and, while there might be a bit of Brent in all of us, there’s a bit more in Gervais.

The wheel was not rein­vent­ed overnight. There was a 1999 Com­e­dy Lab pilot for Chan­nel 4 in which Ger­vais played a David Bowie-obsessed man­ag­er of a video rental com­pa­ny. There were shades of The Office but it was too broad – when it failed to be picked up for a full series the writ­ers could hard­ly have believed that they would be work­ing with the Thin White Duke him­self with­in a decade.

In 2000, expand­ing on his obnox­ious per­sona from The 11 O’Clock Show, Ger­vais front­ed Meet Ricky Ger­vais, a Chan­nel 4 chat show with a title that under­lined its cen­tral premise; the host con­sid­ered him­self more impor­tant than the guests. It fell a long way short of Know­ing Know­ing You with Alan Par­tridge or The Lar­ry Sanders Show with guests like Tom­my Walsh and John Vir­go. The host would lat­er neat­ly reorder the title for Ricky Ger­vais Meets in 2006, a series of rev­er­en­tial inter­views with his com­e­dy heroes: Lar­ry David, Christo­pher Guest and Gar­ry Shandling.

The one thing Mer­chant and Ger­vais had on their side is that they’d actu­al­ly shot some­thing. The Office was not a script at the bot­tom of a draw in a BBC build­ing but some­thing which demon­stra­bly worked on film. Vet­er­an pro­duc­er Jon Plow­man, then Head of Com­e­dy, com­mis­sioned a pilot script and, in the sum­mer of 2001, the pro­gramme final­ly aired on BBC Two.

The Office is often cred­it­ed for kick-start­ing the mock­u­men­tary genre in the lean years fol­low­ing This is Spinal Tap in 1984, but one sens­es that is sim­ply because his­to­ry is writ­ten by the win­ners. Peo­ple Like Us, Human Remains and Mar­i­on and Geoff all pre­ced­ed Ger­vais and Mer­chant, and there was a gen­uine feel­ing that this spoof doc­u­men­tary cen­tred around a paper com­pa­ny, par­o­dy­ing docu­soaps like Dri­ving School and Air­port (a show ref­er­enced in the finale of The Office), was slight­ly late to the par­ty now that those shows were going out of fash­ion. By this point, even Mau­reen had passed her dri­ving test.

The first series went out with lit­tle fan­fare and its cre­ators have delight­ed­ly claimed that, when it was test screened, the only thing that scored low­er with audi­ences was women’s lawn bowls. Vic­tor Lewis Smith, writ­ing in The Evening Stan­dard, brand­ed the show a ​“sum­mer stinker” and won­dered ​“how this dross ever got beyond the pilot stage”. It was anoth­er huge mis­take from the white man with dreadlocks.

A com­bi­na­tion of word-of-mouth, repeats and the bur­geon­ing advent of the DVD mar­ket saw The Office grow into a phe­nom­e­non in the 14-month gap between its first and sec­ond series. Ger­vais went on record claim­ing he hoped it might be 10 people’s favourite show rather than a hun­dred people’s tenth favourite show, cit­ing The League of Gen­tle­men as the kind of cult favourite he’d like to emu­late. He needn’t have wor­ried – occa­sion­al­ly, as with The Bea­t­les, pas­ta and Sein­feld, the mass­es get some­thing exact­ly right.

Watch­ing the first episode back, it’s not hard to see why. From the moment Brent appears on screen obnox­ious­ly click­ing his pen and work­ing his way through an array of obnox­ious facial ges­tures, hand move­ments and mean­ing­less man­age­ment speak, it’s clear we are in the pres­ence of great­ness. There was always the sense that Ger­vais was pure­ly instinc­tu­al and able to inhab­it the char­ac­ter entire­ly the sec­ond the cam­eras start­ed rolling.

In behind-the-scenes fea­tures, Mer­chant was always the one seen behind the com­put­er typ­ing while his part­ner threw out ideas. They were astute enough to know peo­ple tuned in for Brent but kept watch­ing for Tim (Mar­tin Free­man) and Dawn (Lucy Davis). And while there were clear­ly no lines drawn in the sand, one sens­es Ger­vais’ biggest con­tri­bu­tion to the writ­ing was in the char­ac­ter he played (fur­ther evi­denced by the 2016 Brent film which saw no return for Mer­chant or any oth­er orig­i­nal cast members).

The writ­ing is a mas­ter­piece of econ­o­my. Has there ever been a tele­vi­sion char­ac­ter defined as quick­ly or effi­cient­ly as Gareth Keenan (Macken­zie Crook)? He enters the office, says ​“Wass­su­u­uppp” years after it was cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant, smacks Tim in the head with a news­pa­per and asks if it’s his ​“time of the month” before adding, ​“Just the eight pints for me last night”. We know who he is and his rela­tion­ship with Tim with­in a few sec­onds of screen time and not a hint of dia­logue is wast­ed on exposition.

There were prece­dents, of course. Brent’s delu­sions of grandeur owe some­thing to Cap­tain Main­war­ing, Basil Fawl­ty, Tony Han­cock and, lat­ter­ly, Alan Par­tridge. Tim was orig­i­nal­ly envi­sioned as a chub­by, Norm from Cheers type, and the impor­tance of that romance with Dawn has the air of those long-run­ning Amer­i­can sit­coms with their heart­felt, roman­tic arcs.

The Office bowed out after two sea­sons and a flaw­less two-part Christ­mas spe­cial that would stand as the great­est British roman­tic com­e­dy ever made had it been released in cin­e­mas. Tim and Dawn kissed, Brent found love and, best of all, Chris Finch (Ralph Ine­son) was told to fuck off. In the show’s final line, Brent looks into the cam­era and says, ​“Have you got every­thing you need? Cheers.” (For this and a host of oth­er rea­sons, David Brent: Life on the Road has no rea­son to exist.)

The lega­cy of The Office is every­where. The US ver­sion spawned shows like Mod­ern Fam­i­ly and Parks and Recre­ation while the likes of This Coun­try and Peo­ple Just Do Noth­ing clos­er to home have tak­en the spir­it of the orig­i­nal and bril­liant­ly explored very dif­fer­ent aspects of Eng­lish cul­ture. Its endur­ing influ­ence is with us in myr­i­ad sub­tler ways too, most notably in the way we speak (in a way).

There’s even a Face­book group ded­i­cat­ed to repur­pos­ing lines from the show in inven­tive ways, such as a recent image of Gareth South­gate watch­ing his Eng­land side tri­umph in a Euro 2020 match accom­pa­nied by the words, ​“Gareth, ulti­mate fan­ta­sy? Two mid­field­ers, prob­a­bly. Sit­ters. I’m just watch­ing.” That is a pun deserv­ing its own 20^th anniver­sary ret­ro­spec­tive when the time comes.

Occa­sion­al­ly with art, every­thing comes togeth­er and per­fect­ly cap­tures a moment. Ger­vais will con­tin­ue to plug every new project like Noël Gal­lagher, claim­ing it’s the best thing he’s ever done. He’d be bet­ter off tak­ing a leaf out of Joseph Heller’s book. The author of ​‘Catch-22’ was fre­quent­ly asked why he’d nev­er writ­ten anoth­er book as good as his debut and, like Brent when asked if he’d rather be thought of as a fun­ny man or a great boss, his answer was always the same: ​“Who has?”

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