Thursday, 01/29/04

Speaking of people whose last names have Cs and Rs and Ls, former Daily Show correspondent Steve Carell seems to have been signed to play David Brent in NBC's forthcoming catastrophic Americanization of the brilliant BBC sitcom The Office.

The story says NBC is still trying to get Ricky Gervais, the original British star, to reprise his role in the American version. If true, this is NBC being even more fantastically clueless than usual. Gervais co-created and co-wrote the original series as well as starring in it, and he had the power to pull the plug over the BBC's objections after the second season of just six episodes each.

Assuming the American version survives longer than Coupling, the most recent BBC gem that NBC bought and butchered, the American "Office" will have exhausted Gervais' scripts by around Christmas. At that point the show is powerfully likely to tank, and if the quality can't be maintained, Gervais won't have the clout to walk away again. Why should he put his face on what looks like an inevitable, high-profile failure, when he's already getting paid for the US rights and to serve as a script consultant? How do American TV executives get to be such rubes?

[update: The Futon Critic says that I'm wrong, and that the Americanized Office will not be a verbatim copy of the BBC series.] 10:54PM «

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