Pick of the day: The Office
TONIGHT'S episode of The Office contains a gem almost mythic in its impact for comedy aficionados.
TONIGHT'S show, another in the long lead-up to the series fade-out of Steve Carell, contains a gem almost mythic in its impact for comedy aficionados.
Based on Ricky Gervais's British series of the same name, this faster-paced American version has evolved into one of television's great success stories and made Carell a star.
It carries more sadness than the original, as its complicated characters bounce off each other in ways that are often totally predictable and sometimes surprisingly revelatory. Few spin-offs have honoured the original with such integrity while working so intelligently on their own terms. It follows the daily interactions of a group of disgruntled, highly idiosyncratic employees at paper company Dunder Mifflin's Scranton branch, somehow presided over by Carell's complex, unlovable, hapless manager Michael Scott.
Tonight, finally, in the 14th episode of the seventh season and the show's 140th episode overall, Scott meets Gervais's David Brent, the character on whom he is loosely based. It's a classic scene: short, sweet and funny, played at breathless pace with a kind of edgy, one-take spontaneity.
At the episode's start the imperturbable Scott waits for a lift and out walks the wary, sandpaper-voiced Brent. After realising Brent is English, Scott, always keen to impress with his comedic skills, tells him about an English character he came up with called Reginald Poofter, and they immediately begin to tell each other racist jokes.
When Brent points out the politically incorrect nature of their joking, Scott corrects him saying it's just comedy and Brent agrees, saying: "Comedy is a place where the mind goes to tickle itself." Then he adds Scott's favourite catchphrase: "That's what she said." In miniature the scene shows how Carell's series evolved, how he has made Gervais's creation his own and allows the great British comic to salute a peer in his last season.
The Office screens 9.30pm, on Eleven.
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