Extras:
"How I Made 'The Office', By Rick Gervais" Documentary, "The
Staff Training Video", Deleted Scenes.
Directors/Writers:
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
Music:
Big George
Cast:
David Brent: Ricky Gervais
Gareth Keenan: Mackenzie Crook
Tim Canterbury: Martin Freeman
Dawn Tinsley: Lucy Davis
Dave Finch: Ralph Inneson
Jennifer Taylor-Clark: Stirling Gallacher
Keith: Ewan Macintosh
Lee: Joel Beckett
The Office
has quickly become one of the best home-grown comedies in
the past ten years, perhaps even in British history - taking its place
amongst the likes of "Only Fools And Horses", "Fawlty Towers", "Monty
Python", "Blackadder" and all the other shows that are synonymous with
classic belly-laughs.
Ricky Gervais (right) has been a talented writer and actor on the periphery of
the business for many years - as a London radio DJ and contributor to
Channel 4's "The 11 O'Clock Show", that led to the short-lived C4
chat-show "Meet Ricky Gervais" in 2000. (Ricky: "I wanted a second series
but Channel 4 wanted something different - ratings!")
But it's with the BBC in The Office that Gervais, together with
co-writer Steve Merchant, launched himself into the big league. The
first series of the show debuted in 2001 with a genuinely unique set-up:
a "mockumentary" comedy. The fabulous conceit behind the show is that
the office workers of paper merchants Wernham Hogg are the stars of a
fly-on-the-wall documentary following their working lives.
There is no studio audience, no canned laughter and very few excursions
beyond the office environment. Instead the show is a note-perfect salute
to the filmmaking style of various reality documentaries currently still
in vogue - such as Airport and Cruise Ship.
The comedy is delivered through the idiosyncratic nature of office
working life (which a growing chunk of the UK populace can relate to),
and the finely drawn characters. Gervais stars as David Brent - a
monstrous office manager who's inept at his job but eager for popularity
from his ineffectual staff.
In Brent, Gervais has carved himself a classic character that can be
mentioned in the same breath as Basil Fawlty. He's that good. A
hideously deluded boss with no staff management skills but an underlying
good nature and eagerness to "entertain" his workforce. Watching Gervais
perform is an absolute joy - with his ticks and mannerisms catapulting
the squirm factor of the show into the stratosphere. A work of sheer
comedic genius.
The Office doesn't rest on its laurels with David Brent, however. It
also has a fantastic supporting line-up of actors; Mackenzie Crook's (right)
Gareth is a nerdy "assistant to the manager" with military aspirations,
Martin Freeman's Tim is a popular office jack-the-lad with no career
confidence and a romantic eye on Lucy Davis' sweet-natured receptionist
Dawn. (DVDfever Ed: "How can someone as talent-free as Jasper
Carrott spawn someone so gorgeous as Lucy Davis?")
Most of the six episodes continue the underlying theme of this first
series - the possibility that their branch at Slough may be closed down
and face staff redundancies. The six episodes from the first series are
as follows:
Episode 1: David Brent learns that his branch of the paper merchants
might be closed down. But he promises his staff, that under his regime
there will be no redundancies. A perfect start to the series - with the
characters already fully-formed and Ricky Gervais doing an outstanding
job as David Brent. Plenty of memorable quips and keen asides to camera.
Episode 2: An attractive young woman called Donna arrives in the office
on work experience. Meanwhile, a manipulated pornographic image of Brent
sends shockwaves through the staff. A very satisfying episode held
together by Brent's hilarious ineptness with his staff, and everybody's
vain efforts to woo the sexy Donna...
Episode 3: It's Tim's birthday, but the celebrations are soon
overshadowed by the annual Wernham Hogg Quiz Night - which Brent and his
cohort "Finchy" (right) have never lost. A good episode, but one that seems far
more concerned with story and occasionally forgets to balance it with
laughs. However, Ralph Ineson's turn as chauvinist Finchy is a nugget of
pure gold.
Episode 4: A management consultant arrives to give the staff a special
training day, much to Brent's chagrin. An excellent episode that
parodies the entire style of office training days across the country;
with Peter Purvis' cheesy 80s video a real highlight, though even this
pales next to Brent's show-stopping turn with his guitar...
Episode 5: Even though some of the staff may be made redundant, Brent
decides to take on a new secretary. Naturally, he chooses the prettiest
woman... Another fine episode, particularly with Brent's interviewing
techniques for the position of new secretary - all but ignoring the male
interviewee to letch around the female candidate for all he's worth.
Excellent.
Episode 6: It's judgement day on whether the Slough branch is to be
downsized and combined with the Swindon branch of the company. A
marvellous end to the series as the merger situation reaches a head and
Brent is forced to make some tough decisions. A fantastic episode with a
fantastic end sequence at the "end of financial year office party".
I can't recommend "The Office" highly enough. The second series recently
played to huge acclaim - but that's not to say the first series was a
shaky start. Far from it. It's rare that a new comedy series hits the
ground running so quickly - but literally from the first scene you can
tell this show is a high-quality, groundbreaking breath of fresh air.
Long may it continue to prompt real office discussions the next
morning...
The Office arrives as a double-disk DVD set in a fold-out
cardboard holder tucked inside a cardboard protective sleeve. The
artwork is minimalist and stylish; with a wonderful poem about Slough on
the inside cover.
The animated menu screens are beautiful - retaining the cover art's
minimalist approach with a bleached white screen carved with pencil
drawings of office paraphernalia and easy-to-navigate options. Very
good, although faster loading times between screens would have been
appreciated.
The image transfer retains the original broadcast's 16:9 widescreen
ratio, and is exquisite. The level of detail and crispness to the images
are excellent and far outstrip the digital satellite picture quality the
BBC broadcast in 2001. Fabulous work.
Sadly, the sound is merely a Dolby Stereo track. It would have been nice
to have had a 5.1 mix, or even a Pro-Logic effort would have sufficed.
Still, "The Office" is essentially dialogue driven and the centre
speaker does a good job of getting the gags across in pristine quality.
The extra material is incredible sparse for a double-disk DVD set, with
Disk 2s entire contents being just the following:
How I Made 'The Office', by Ricky Gervais: this is a very funny
documentary presented by Ricky Gervais and (unseen in the first series, but
made a cameo as Oggy in the second)
co-writer Stephen Merchant. There's input from the supporting cast, plus
lots of scenes from the BBC "Pilot" episode and "Pre-Pilot" filmed by
the crew (with Brent far more insidious than he would eventually
become). Packed full of insights, bloopers, behind-the-scenes footage
and evidence that Gervais is (in real life) an unhinged buffoon...
Deleted Scenes: a nice collection of cut scenes - most erroneous, but
some fairly enlightening. The problem with this extra is that selecting
a scene results in a static screen with text to "set the scene" before
the scene is played. This wouldn't be so bad, but the static text is
displayed for an eternity before th actual scene is played back.
Extremely frustrating.
The Staff Training Video: this is the naff training video from
Episode 5, presented by Peter Purvis, and is presented here in all its
cheesy 80's glory. A hilarious bonus for those who have endured such
videos in their own workplace. Excellent.
Overall, a great visual transfer with disapprovingly non-immersive
sound. The extra features are of high quality, but are far too sparse.
Why weren't the Pre-Pilot and Pilot episodes made available for full
viewing? Likewise the bloopers.
Still, The Office DVD deserves a place on your shelf purely because of
the fist-class episodes themselves. Let's just hope that the even better
second series will provide more expansive extra features.
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
The Office
has quickly become one of the best home-grown comedies in
the past ten years, perhaps even in British history - taking its place
amongst the likes of "Only Fools And Horses", "Fawlty Towers", "Monty
Python", "Blackadder" and all the other shows that are synonymous with
classic belly-laughs.
The comedy is delivered through the idiosyncratic nature of office
working life (which a growing chunk of the UK populace can relate to),
and the finely drawn characters. Gervais stars as David Brent - a
monstrous office manager who's inept at his job but eager for popularity
from his ineffectual staff.
Episode 1: David Brent learns that his branch of the paper merchants
might be closed down. But he promises his staff, that under his regime
there will be no redundancies. A perfect start to the series - with the
characters already fully-formed and Ricky Gervais doing an outstanding
job as David Brent. Plenty of memorable quips and keen asides to camera.
Episode 4: A management consultant arrives to give the staff a special
training day, much to Brent's chagrin. An excellent episode that
parodies the entire style of office training days across the country;
with Peter Purvis' cheesy 80s video a real highlight, though even this
pales next to Brent's show-stopping turn with his guitar...
The Office arrives as a double-disk DVD set in a fold-out
cardboard holder tucked inside a cardboard protective sleeve. The
artwork is minimalist and stylish; with a wonderful poem about Slough on
the inside cover.
The extra material is incredible sparse for a double-disk DVD set, with
Disk 2s entire contents being just the following: