From an online reviewer about the BBC "Office" that became the American "Office" in Scranton, PA:

Every reviewer out there has praised this show for its brilliance and I'm going to be redundant and do the same. From its first episode to the last few seconds of the Christmas Specials, The Office never has one bad line or one false note. It's just about perfect.

Almost every scene takes place in the dull offices of the Slough branch of the Wernham Hogg paper company (Dawn, the receptionist, accurately describes it as "a crappy sub-branch paper merchant's). Wernham Hogg employs about 40 people and we get to know all their faces as we see them stare at computer screens, take coffee breaks, and goof off day after day. It's as realistic as TV has ever been. Nobody is too pretty, everyone's "office-casual" wardrobe is slightly wrinkled, and everyone looks bored out of his or her mind most of the time.

The people we get to know best are: Gareth Keenan, a bizarre "team leader" with a fixation on survival skills; Dawn Tindsley, the sweet and sarcastic receptionist who is stuck in both a boring job and a boring relationship; Tim Canterbury, a sales rep who hates his job but can never seem to actually quit it; and David Brent, a man who thinks he's everyone's "friend as well as their boss" but who is actually liked and respected by no one.

The two main story threads running through all 14 episodes of The Office are Tim's attempts to convince Dawn to leave her idiotic fiance and David's constant need to impress his employees, bosses, and everyone he meets with his various talents. We see his "humor," his "poetry," his "songs," his "dancing," and his philosophical "wisdom." All of which are horrifyingly bad. David's constant need to perform ends up slowly destroying him, Tim and Dawn remain unhappily inert, and things get worse and worse for everyone until the show almost becomes unbearable to watch. The cast is so good, though, and every line so pitch perfect, that you'd follow these people anywhere, even in despair. Also, the great thing about The Office is, like life, all the possibilities continually exist for these characters and we never know when they might have a moment of redemption.

So, it's not strictly a comedy, but it is the funniest, most devastating, and strangely uplifting show I have seen in recent years.

BuzzFlash Note: If you like the droll, wry, dry biting humor of the American version, see the BBC series from which it all began.

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