ID:183369
 
The television show "The Office" has both a British version and an American version.

The UK version has weak character development, poor acting, dry flimsy characters, and a general lack of humor, whereas the American version is off the wall with hilarity and crazy antics.

My opinion only, feel free to chime in =}

[EDIT] Not meaning to offend anyone!

~Kujila
I have never seen the UK version, but I am sure the US version is better. Steve Carrell is hilarious.
In response to Cavern
Cavern wrote:
Steve Carrell is <s>hilarious</s> GODLIKE.


Fixed

~Kujila
I'm thinking of trying to watch the German version. I just noticed it the other day, and watched a few minutes of it. It looks like it holds the exact same format, but my German isn't nearly good enough to get the jokes(the version I found wasn't subbed).
Kujila wrote:
The UK version has weak character development, poor acting, dry flimsy characters, and a general lack of humor, whereas the American version is off the wall with hilarity and crazy antics.

Funny how you're WRONG MAN. Nah- the UK version is easily superior. =P Maybe it's just cultural differences... the UK version has a lot of in-jokes only brits would get, and I'm sure the reverse is true for the yank one.

I think you're possibly missing the point of the office (the universal concept, regardless of country) if you're meriting it on "off the wall hilarity and crazy antics"... the original UK version (written by Ricky Gervais (the guy who plays David Brent, the boss in it) and Stephen Merchant (who only plays a few bit parts)) is intended to be about awkward everyday situations and a kind of muted comedy that is grounded in boring real life (hence being set almost entirely in an office =P).

Without wanting to sound like an arrogant prick (anymore than I already do), the lack of obvious "Friends"-style humour is sort of the point.


Interestingly the original concept arose when Ricky managed to land a job working in a radio station as a manager there. His assistance was Stephen Merchant who arrived thinking he was going to be working for a big-shot media savvy guy, commanding and authoritative. What he actually got was a guy who was laid back, didn't quite know what he was meant to be doing... seeing the resemblance?
In response to Elation
Very nice. I guess the humor is the same but flipped due to cultures.

~Kujila
In response to Elation
Elation wrote:
the UK version has a lot of in-jokes only brits would get, and I'm sure the reverse is true for the yank one.

The rest of the world seems to get British humour, it's just the American's who don't quite get it.
I'm not calling all American's slack-jawed yokels incapable of understanding such highly complex humour, that's clearly not true, but they don't seem to get subtle humour any more unless you tell them to go looking for it.
Now, I haven't watched either, but I'll quote Tim's words just for the hell of it.

Tim Buckley (Ctrl-Alt-Del) wrote:
As I'm sure most of you know, The Office with Steve Carrell was based off of a British comedy of the same name (at least I really hope you knew that), with Ricky Gervais playing the roll of the boss. Both versions were brilliant
In response to DarkView
In my opinion, the best British comedy sitcom ever hands-down was Fawlty Towers. John Cleese is a genius, and those episodes never get old.

In regards to subtle humor, there are several things in Fawlty Towers that you'd have to have watched the episodes a few times to catch. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend you at least rent it -- it was only one season long, unfortunately. I have no clue why they didn't do more, it was brilliant! I might have to look into that.
In response to Volte
Volte wrote:
In my opinion, the best British comedy sitcom ever hands-down was Fawlty Towers. John Cleese is a genius, and those episodes never get old.

In regards to subtle humor, there are several things in Fawlty Towers that you'd have to have watched the episodes a few times to catch. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend you at least rent it -- it was only one season long, unfortunately. I have no clue why they didn't do more, it was brilliant! I might have to look into that.

I watched one episode of that. To me, it was 3 minutes of glory wrapped in... 27(?) minutes of suck.
Are you kidding? The US version took everything that made The Office funny and reversed it. It's not supposed to be about off-the-wall antics - slapstick isn't really very funny. It's subtle humour.

EDIT: This reminds me of the rather disturbing US version of Coupling, which consisted of the exact same script, except with all references to the UK replaced with America.

That's right. They just transplanted the whole series to another country and shot it with American accents. Apparently, the unwashed masses won't watch anything with non-American accents in it.

TV executives make very strange calls.
In response to Jp
Jp wrote:
TV executives make very strange calls.

? Their calls make perfect sense. As long as you assume that their desired goal is to lower ratings and kill the show off. :)