Closed For Business

So this dropped today:

Was it what we were expecting? Pretty much, but you know what we’re like.

What is puzzling about this is not that it looks bad, because it was always going to look bad*. It’s that it seems to have been made by people with absolutely no idea of how Australian television works in 2024. Which is a problem, because this is an Australian television show in 2024.

The Office as a concept has a lot of things going for it. It’s got name recognition: that’s great for bringing in viewers. There’s been more than one extremely successful version of it: that means it’s a concept that can work in different situations. But the one thing it doesn’t have – the one thing those other strengths actively block it from having – is the ability to come out strong right from the start.

Because people know about it, and because people have enjoyed the earlier versions, it’s going to take a while to become anything more than a knock off. This isn’t news; the US version had the exact same problem. You know what else the US version had? Multiple seasons to work it out.

Going by this trailer – a promotional device designed to show off the best available moments from the series – this sucks. Which isn’t really a surprise: the first season of the US version of The Office largely sucked too. But being expected doesn’t make it acceptable.

If you’re making a series for Australian television in 2024, you have zero room to suck. You have to arrive on screen as your best possible self. Maybe overseas there’s a production process that allows room for change and development. Australia is too small for that luxury. Here, series arrive fully formed, go through their run, and vanish.

This means that what you see is what you get. Even when a dud gets a second series (which only happens on the ABC), it’s just more of the same. There’s no “oh well, maybe it’ll get better as it goes”, because that never happens. And it won’t happen here.

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*Specifically, it looks bad because it seems to be following very firmly in the very deep footsteps of the original UK version, which, you know, we already have. Which is also a comedy that’s 20 years old**, so it’s a bit like someone deciding to remake To The Manor Born in 1993. Or Mother and Son in 2023 oh wait

**Is it just us, or have general attitudes towards (office) work kind of hardened over the last few decades? In 2001 a comedy about how working in an office was shit was like “haha yeah, it sucks but it’s a living”, whereas now it’s more like “this bullshit is a total fucking fantasy, I can’t even pay my rent”. If we’re meant to be getting laughs from recognition, then the hostility and desperation needs to be cranked up a fair bit – and you know, that stuff’s always hilarious