The American Office

For fans of the brilliant BBC comedy “The Office”, watching last night’s premiere of the Americanized version was a bizarre experience. The script was virtually identical to the BBC show’s first episode except with American locations, slang, references, and cast. I feel sorry for the American actors that have to step into characters that were played so memorably by the original British cast. Watching Steve Carell attempt to play boss David Brandt (or whatever his new name is) in the shadow of Ricky Gervais is especially painful.

A better idea would have been for an American network to sign up the BBC show’s talented creators (and writers of all the episodes) Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant to create an entirely new series. The BBC series had quite a few fans, and it’s hard to imagine them sticking with this knock-off for long.

UPDATE: It's getting worse. Today's "Diversity Training" epsiode was a disaster. They tried to evoke the classic training episode from the BBC series and failed miserably.