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Dreadful Nonsense

"I've read your blog. it's really funny. you should write a column." - Jon Ronson

Continuing my series of self-important reviews...

The Office

Lordy. The prospect of writing a second series of something is, I would imagine, a daunting task. If your first attempt has been heaped with praise and more awards than your mantelpiece can handle, then the thought of attempting a follow up must be a very frightening thing. As I see it, you then have one of three options - you can choose to repeat more of the same, following and not diverting from the winning formula set down by the first series (the road taken by Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash when writing the second and third series of The Royle Family). You can turn the whole thing around, and change everything - situation, location etc - apart from the main characters (which worked very well for Grant & Naylor when writing Red Dwarf up until... oh, round about when I stopped caring). Or, you can up the ante on the first series, introduce more characters, exaggerate character traits, make situations more heightened, throw in more complications and challenges for the leads to overcome.

Obviously, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, when faced with the prospect of writing the second series of The Office, decided that the third choice would be the best way to go. And that way, for the viewer at least, lies embarrassing madness.

Three episodes in, and we’ve already experienced so much worse than anything the first series could have had us prepared for. The speech to the new staff and the ill judged joke telling in the first episode was bad. The discomfort in the second episode, thanks to the unfortunate trip to the pub and Dawn’s imprisonment during Brent’s poetry recital was even worse. But last night… Last night we watched the television through out fingers, occasionally covering our heads with pillows and duvets. We started by murmuring quiet “oh no please don’t”s at the television and ended by working up to a scream “Stop it, stop it. Stop. Oh, stopitstopitstopit STOP IT!” The inappropriate touching from Gareth. The constantly embarrassing eruptions from Brent. The incident in the warehouse. The horrible silences. Oh, the horror.

It’s becoming more difficult to watch than the first series ever was. The debut of the show allowed Gervais and Merchant’s unique approach to the comedy of embarrassment to catch us by surprise. To have such an idiot - a self aggrandising, morally repugnant, tact impaired idiot - as the lead character for a programme is a very brave leap. Comparisons were made to Basil Fawlty, but at least Fawlty was palatable for most of the programme. The difference, possibly, is the fact that, even if we haven’t actually worked alongside a David Brent, we all imagine that we have. There is always a difficulty in relations between any group of people when thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, and forced to get along with each other, as was so needlessly illustrated by ‘I’m A Celebrity…’ The office environment is therefore chock full of opportunities for discomfort and embarrassment on a scale never previously explored by television, comedy or otherwise.

I started this series laughing very loudly at the first episode, and giggling furiously through the second. However, as you are drawn in by the show, certain moments can become a little too much to bear, and the attention to the smallest details - Brent's habit of touching his tie when he feels he is out of control of the situation, or Dawn's increasingly frequent furtive glances in Tim's direction - brings the show even closer. The threat that Brent feels from his new boss was brought out even clearer last night, as he bought heels for his shoes and attempted to dress in the same manner. You begin by giggling, but end up just feeling uncomfortable and embarrassed by the whole situation.

Last night's was a little too much for me, and about five minutes before the end, we started yelling at the television that the programme should really have been over by then - was it possible that we'd only been watching for 25 minutes? I do love this show, but I can't say that I particularly enjoy watching it - at least not the first time round. It's rubbernecker telly, that's for certain, in that you just can't help yourself. But, like the 1.2 million viewers that dropped off between the first and second episode of this new series, I'm not sure how much more I can take of it.

This entry was posted on 15 October 2002 at 12:32 pm. 0 comments

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