Did you see him on the Daily Show last night? Possibly one of the funniest reports I have seen in awhile.

So the american office is that bad? I boycotted the first episode but was planning to watch this week...oh well.

network

oh, whoops, the browser thought i was trying to tag something.

i meant: network is less than cable is less than the movies.

the office wasn't terrible, and i hear the second episode is better. but i found steve carell to be terribly grating.

it wasn't awful, it just wasn't very good, either. it's nice to not have a laugh track or tiresome setup/punchline scripting, but the show still needs to be genuinely funny. All the actors were too self-conscious, and things seemed just a bit too exaggerated. The UK edition always seemed pretty plausible to me.

I really hate to see my friends encouraging the British to make more television shows. Need I remind you all the price of appeasement?

Kriston makes an excellent point. Any country that can produce and celebrate Benny Hill could surely use a touch more firebombing.

However, AbFab aside, it's really the American adaptations of BBC shows that commit the worst sins. Whose Line Is It Anyway, anyone?

I hear that the American Office was a line-for-line repeat of the British, they just changed some of the phrases like "he's rubbish" to "he sucks." Seems pretty stupid to me, as fans of the British aren't going to want to watch the same show in a watered-down version, whereas a fresh variation on the theme could be hilarious.

But supposedly they'll be dong original ones at some point.