One would expect that with only three hours of total material, but we've seen bad transfers with less. The transfer is quite good, perfectly capturing the quality of the broadcast. All of the footage is shot on handheld digital video, and the image quality is meant to represent that of television documentaries. Score: 9 out of 10 The Video The video is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, as it was broadcast. In many ways, it's the most thought-provoking show on network television, and NBC deserves a lot of credit for nourishing it and bringing it back for a second helping. It consistently takes pot shots at political correctness, and lampoons office culture better than anything, including the DVD hit Office Space. The show operates on discomfort and awkward silences to draw many of its laughs. There is also a constant threat of downsizing which never quite develops over the course of the short six episodes. Much of the drama of the show is caught up in Jim's relationship with Pam, and his jealousy over her meathead boyfriend, who works in the warehouse below the office. Nobody on the show is a cookie-cutter sit-com prop. The beauty of the show, however, is that even the smallest character is well fleshed-out. The rest of the characters, a gaggle of depressed and depressing microserfs, support the main foursome. In addition to Carell, there is Rainn Wilson (who audiences will recognize from Season Three of Six Feet Under) as Dwight Schrute, a power-hungry yes-man who is perhaps more hated than his boss Jim Halpert, a normal everyman and the closest thing the show has to a protagonist and Pam, the engaged receptionist who Jim secretly has a crush on. The pilot episode is almost a carbon copy of the UK show, but after that, it thankfully departs and seeks its own style. This results in a lot of nervous looks at the camera and palpable tension between crew and subject. The premise of the show is that it is being shot documentary-style, as if a camera crew were taping it for a reality show. But he cheerily leads them on, oblivious to their feelings, making every HR mistake in the book.
Many of the jokes and situations are changed up for American audiences, but the idea is the same: Michael Scott is a deplorable character in charge of an office full of dead-enders who despise him. The BBC show is all about making viewers shift in their seats in knowing discomfort as he tells racist jokes, unknowingly degrades his associates and generally makes an ass of himself for the cameras.Ĭarell is equally up to the task. Gervais took the British show and ran with it, twisting audiences around with his deluded vision of his own power and popularity. The fact that the States' version of The Office is every bit as funny and uncomfortable as its UK counterpart is high praise, indeed.
#The office season 1 episode 1 full episode us series#
The one distinction is that many Americans have already seen the UK version of the show, as both seasons of the Ricky Gervais-led series aired on BBC America. The Office, produced by Simpsons guru Greg Daniels, follows the oft-tenuous trend of taking something that works overseas and bringing it to an American audience. His deadpan delivery and everyman looks served him well on Comedy Central, but with The Office, he flexes his chops, playing the audacious, loathsome Michael Scott, regional manager for a small paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Like Will Ferrell, he made his name on television before making the leap to the box office in films like Anchorman and most recently, 40-Year Old Virgin. Steve Carell is quickly launching himself to the heights of comic celebrity.
0 kommentar(er)
