Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6977 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-10-14
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 176 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
It feels both inaccurate and inadequate to describe The Office as a comedy. On a superficial level, it disdains all the conventions of television sitcoms: there are no punch lines, no jokes, no laugh tracks and no cute happy endings. More profoundly, it's not what we're used to thinking of as funny. Most of the fervently devoted fan base that the programme acquired watched with a discomfortingly thrilling combination of identification and mortification. The paradox is that its best moments are almost physically unwatchable.

Set in the offices of a fictional Slough paper merchant, The Office is filmed in the style of a reality television programme. The writing is subtle and deft, the acting wonderful and the characters beautifully drawn: the cadaverous team leader Gareth, a paradigm of Andy McNab's readership; the monstrous sales rep, Chris Finch; and the decent but long-suffering everyman Tim, whose ambition and imagination have been crushed out of him by the banality of the life he dreams uselessly of escaping. The show is stolen, as it was intended to be, by insufferable office manager David Brent, played by cowriter Ricky Gervais. Brent will become a name as emblematic for a particular kind of British grotesque as Alan Partridge or Basil Fawlty, but he is a deeper character than either. Partridge and Fawlty are exaggerations of reality, and therefore safely comic figures. Brent is as appalling as only reality can be. --Andrew Mueller

On the DVD The Office, Series 1 is tastefully packaged as a two-disc set appropriately adorned with John Betjeman's poem "Slough". The special features occupy the second disc and consist of a laid-back 39-minute documentary entitled "How I Made The Office by Ricky Gervais", with co-writer Stephen Merchant and the cast contributing. Here we discover that Gervais spends his time on set "mucking around and annoying people", and that actress Lucy Davis (Dawn) is the daughter of Jasper Carrott; as well as seeing parts of the original short film and the original BBC pilot episode; plus we get to enjoy many examples of the cast corpsing throughout endless retakes. There are also a handful of deleted scenes, none of which were deleted because they weren't funny. --Mark Walker

DVD Description
Contains all six episodes from Series 1:

• Episode 1 - David Brent learns that his branch of the paper merchants might be closed down. But he promises his staff that under his regime there will be no redundancies.
  
• Episode 2 - Donna arrives on work experience. But her first day at work is dominated by a dirty picture of her boss that's been e-mailed around the office.
  
• Episode 3 - It's Tim's birthday. But it's also the annual quiz night. Will Brent and Finchy be able to beat the young pretenders Tim & Ricky?
  
• Episode 4 - Rowan, a management consultant, has come to Wernham Hogg to give the staff a special training day.
  
• Episode 5 - Even though some of the staff may be made redundant, Brent decides to take on a new secretary. Naturally, he chooses the prettiest woman.
  
• Episode 6 - It's judgment day on whether the office is to be downsized.

Special Features
A 40-minute documentary, "How I Made The Office" by Ricky Gervais including the following:

• Out-takes
  
• Pilot and pre-pilot footage
  
• Cast interviews
  
• Full length Peter Purves "Staff Training Video" as featured in Episode 4

DVD Technical Information:

• Total running time: 180 minutes approx.

Customer Reviews

The best BBC comedy since Blackadder...
In fact the best comedy since Blackadder, period. When I first stumbled upon The Office halfway through the first episode, I took a moment or two to realise that it was a spoof, and not a genuine fly-on-the-wall. When I realised I laughed my head off at it's often painful accuracy, and have done so with each episode since.

For those few who haven't yet seen it, The Office is not a traditional sitcom. The 'plotlines' are intentionally drab (end-of-financial year disco!!) and nothing of note happens at all. But this ridiculing of docusoap culture and it's pointlessness is what makes the series. As of course, are the people in it.

The character of Brent is magnificent. Every last mannerism, every utterance of cringeworthy 'let's all pull together' management-speak is spot-on. Finch is revolting in every way, Tim is terrific (although a little unrealistic, has there ever been a 20/30-something lad as intelligent and thoughtful as that?) and his yearning for Dawn, already in the clutches of caveman Lee is genuinely poignant. The scene where Lee discusses their future, and his plans for Dawn (a few kiddies under her belt and a cleaning job!) is priceless. So true, and so sad.

As for Gareth...well, as Mackenzie Crook says in the documentary, 'a right wally'. Boasting about army exploits has never sounded so ridiculous.

The vast majority of us have known the characters featured in The Office, and had the misfortune to work with them. It is a comfort to those of us who always suspected how supremely sad these people were, but never wanted to say. Now we have it confirmed. The Office is a masterpiece, and I hope it will stay that way, and that Gervais and co. don't blow it by making abysmal feature length versions, for example. The power of this series is that it took a fresh, raw idea, without a trace of commercial formula, and scored a massively deserved hit.

The DVD could hardly be bad, with this series on it. As previous reviews have suggested, a director's/writer's commentary would have been nice (even if it was just a couple of episodes) but the documentary is good, the deleted scenes definitely watchable, and the anamorphic picture lovely for a TV series. The couple of hidden extras are okay, but I haven't watched them more than once.

The Beeb don't always do a very good job with their comedy DVDs, but this one is a definite winner.

Waiting for Godot
I can only watch this curled up in a ball of cringe. It is utterly brilliant - perceptive, hilarious and totally tragic. An office of lonely people working for a paper merchant in Slough, bored out of their minds, just waiting for Godot. Nothing ever happens. And in the meantime they just pick at each other. I can't bear to watch it, but it is so eye-wateringly true to life that it's addictive. The overly competitive work pub quiz, the mind-numbing management seminar, wars over desk size... and best of all there's the rancid manager David Brent who flicks his eyes around the place and tries to be everyone's best mate.

Subtle, cringe-inducing genius!
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have struck gold with 'The Office', surely one the most accurate and original mock-documentaries that you will ever see. Based in the sales office of Slough based paper merchant Wernham Hogg, it follows the life of the office and its staff, most notably the manager David Brent (Ricky Gervais), a self-promoting, pompous and incompetent boss who sees himself as a "friend first, boss second. Probably entertainer third." I've found myself watching much of his offerings on management and life squirming behind my hands and with gritted teeth - absolutely brilliant!

Although it is the character of Brent that rightly steals the show, he is ably supported by other brilliant characters - his "assistant to the regional manager" Gareth (Mackenzie Crook), a jobs-worth and the brunt of Tim's jokes; Tim (Martin Freeman), a sales-rep who is completely bored by the mediocrity and banality of the job and of those who surround him and Dawn (Lucy Davis), the receptionist who is stuck in a dead-end job and relationship.

All of the cast give brilliant performances, which with the sublime script and "reality TV" style of direction make it all to easy to forget that it is a written comedy and not an actual documentary. The main theme that drives the series is the news that either the Slough or Swindon branch will be closed and the staff that are still employed will move to the other office. However, the highlight is the unspoken relationship between Tim and Dawn, mostly acted out through quick glances and lingering touches that develops throughout the series.

'The Office' contains many memorable jokes, moments and characters - the stapler in jelly, the training day, Keith in accounts, the night out at Chasers nightclub - all brilliantly and beautifully realised. For once, the BBC truly has a "classic" to add to 'Fawlty Towers' and 'Alan Partridge.'