Back when I worked at the small magazine, I had a boss who used to keep a set of instructions under a clear plastic blotter on her desk.
They were tips on how to talk to underlings: Act friendly but superior, speak in short, noncommittal sentences, maintain eye contact with the clock, etc.
Chances are we've all worked for boneheads. That's what makes The Office -- the latest NBC/Brit makeover -- so universal. It premieres tonight at 9:30 p.m. on Global and NBC.
As executive producer Greg Daniels (King Of The Hill) says, "There's, like, 40 million people that work in an office in America. It's not specifically a British thing."
The series is based on the critically acclaimed BBC series starring Ricky Gervais as the biggest twit ever to rise to his level of incompetence. (An episode from Season Two -- the one where Gervais' knob-boss David chills to Tina Turner's Simply The Best -- airs tonight at 9:40 on the diginet BBC Canada.) That original series so rocked, that the very idea of Americanizing it seemed sacrilegious. Remember (shudder) the horrible job NBC did making over another recent Brit hit, Coupling? Blimey.
The good news here is that the Yanks didn't just re-type the Brit scripts and hire a handful of Friends' clones. This time they went more for the style, sensibility and spirit of the original. (It probably helped that Gervais and Brit co-creator Stephen Merchant are consultants on this series.)
The Office is shot like a documentary, with a camera crew weaving between the cubicles at a paper supply office in Scranton, Pa. Steve Carell (The Daily Show) plays Michael Scott, an obnoxious boob of a boss who is blindly unaware that everybody in the office thinks he's a dolt.
Following in Gervais' footsteps is a brave task, but Carell shows there's no jerk like a born-in-the-U.S.A. jerk. It has been done before, with Carroll O'Connor's iconic Archie Bunker the most spectacular example of an American actor running away with a British-inspired part.
24's Jenna Fischer shows she's got comedy game as Pam Beesley, the office receptionist who has to suffer through most of Michael's lame routines. John Krasinski stars as likable sales rep Jim Halpert; B.J. Novak plays Ryan Howard, a smart-alecky temp; and Rainn Wilson, that creepy boarder dude from Six Feet Under, plays Michael's oddly arrogant assistant Dwight.
With backgrounds in improvised comedy, they all manage to make The Office look like a wacked out reality show. Without trying to build hopes too high, there is a Best In Show/Larry Sanders quality to this series.
Following tonight's premiere, the series moves to Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m. starting next week. That's when it also switches from Global to CH in our area, a pointless and disruptive move that only an Office-level programming dolt could come up with. Hey, not all the knuckleheads are in England and America.
