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| Ricky
Gervais and Stephen Merchant |
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| Ricky
Gervais, Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Lucy Davis |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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David Brent (Ricky Gervais): I gave
a speech only this morning to my staff assuring them that there
would
not
be
cutbacks at this branch and there certainly wouldn't be redundancies,
so...
Jennifer (Stirling Gallagher): Well, why on Earth would you do that?
David Brent: Why? Oh, don't know. A little word I think's important in management
called morale.
Jennifer: Well, surely it's going to be worse for morale in the long run when
there ARE redundancies and you've told people that there won't be.
[Pause]
David Brent: They won't remember
The story of an office that faces
closure when the company decides to downsize its branches. A documentary
film crew follow staff and the manager Brent as they continue their
daily lives.
 Notwithstanding
the legendary reputation of British comedy (and, most especially,
BBC-produced comedy), quality TV comedy has been dominated
by American product for at least a decade now. While the great
traditions of verbal wit and surreal humor epitomized by series
like Monty Python's Flying Circus, Fawlty Towers and Black
Adder descended into the lowbrow slapstick of Mr. Bean,
American shows like Seinfeld, The Larry Sanders Show and Friends improved
with each season, quickly establishing world domination over comedy
on the tube.
It's with a delirous sense of discovery and relief therefore that
one comes across The Office, the first British comedy
show in decades to raise that level of interest and aspire to such
classic status. Indebted in style and approach to the masterful Larry
Sanders Show, it offers a wholly convincing quasi-vérité look
at the idiotically clueless manager of a provincial paper supplies
office and his put-upon staff. Both painful and hilarious, its
comedy comes out of utterly depressing yet inescapable truisms,
like the fact that most people end up spending most of their time
slaving away in pointless, uninspiring and even dehumanizing jobs.
Hesitant to exhaust the formula, the second (and final) series
of six episodes pulls a reversal that plays like a long-overdue
come-uppance for the vulgar, pretentious and painfully needy manager
David Brent, adding a deeper level of affective pathos to what
is already a classic series. |
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The two seasons, each comprised
of six episodes, are available for Region 1 and Region 2
in identical versions.
The anamorphic widescreen
image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx. 1.78:1. The
nicely framed image looks completely natural and sharply
defined, its muted, documentary-style color palette perfectly
rendered in a terrific transfer.
The sound mix is presented in a straightforward 2.0 stereo
mix that responds reasonably well to ProLogic decoding.
 The
two seasons of The Office are available as separate
releases or - in some countries - as three-disc box sets
containing all twelve episodes along with the supplementary
material. The first series is a two-disc release, with the
second disc in the set bearing the 40-minute documentary 'How
I Made The Office - by Ricky Gervais'. It's a very
funny, offhand look at the creation of the series made up
mostly of interviews with the main cast members and two directors,
perfectly suited to the style of the series. As in the series
itself, it's hard to tell about many of the things they say
whether they're in jest or in earnest, but this playfulness
only adds to the featurette's entertainment value. A generous
collection of funny outtakes is also featured prominently
in this documentary.
The second series DVD is a single-disc release that has a
20-minute featurette presenting a Video
Diary from series creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
that's very funny. Also included on both series are selections
of deleted scenes that are very amusing,
but rightfully excised due to redundancy and repetitiveness.
Dan
Hassler-Forest
Reviewed:
2003
Click
here for IMDB info on The
Office.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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