The Office, Prime Video review: a cookie-cutter Australian version of the show

Since it first aired in the UK in 2001, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s sitcom The Office has spread like a weed through the global comedy ecosystem.

The original was sold to over 80 countries; to date over a dozen countries have made their own adaptations, including Poland, Canada, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and the extremely successful US version. The question isn’t so much why are we getting an Australian version, as why has it taken us so long?

We all know the set-up. In a boring office a rubbish boss treats their workers like their own personal audience with the help of an officious sidekick, while the only two non-weirdos pass the time flirting with each other. So long as there are dull jobs and annoying bosses, it’s a format that will never die.

The Office: Australia

In the Australian edition, Hannah Howard (Felicity Ward) is the managing director of the Sydney branch of packaging company Finley Craddick. Her always entertaining performance here is closer to Steve Carell’s from the US version than Ricky Gervais’, but that’s no big surprise.

The Office: watch the trailer

The Office may live forever but over the decades comedy has shifted away from the cringe-heavy approach that made Gervais a star. Remember how the first ever episode of The Office featured a scene where a deadly serious David Brent told Dawn she was being fired until she broke down crying and then haha only kidding? This version does not feature that scene.

When the regional director (Pallavi Sharda) tells Hannah that as her staff are perfectly happy working from home they’re going to shut the office down and let everyone work remotely, she panics. What if, she says, instead of closing the office, she brings everyone back full time and they make so much money by the end of the financial year that the rent is fully covered?

So now we have our ticking clock to drive the rest of the season: if Hannah can’t find a way to bring in the money, it’s all over.

Then again, pretty much every version of The Office features a ‘oh no, they’re going to shut us down’ subplot, and tying it into working from home doesn’t make this version any funnier. Especially as it rapidly becomes clear that while in theory everyone wants to work from home, in reality the only two competent workers – Nick (Steen Raskopoulos) and Greta (Shari Sebbens) – have got that workplace flirting thing going on, as seen in every other version of this series.

Will they really want to leave behind true love, not to mention pranking officer stickler Lizzie Moyle (Edith Poor)?

The Office: a rich seam

A lot has changed in the office in the last two decades, and no doubt there’s a rich seam of comedy to be mined from stagnant wages, increased automation, endless cost-cutting, excessive workloads, obscenely wealthy upper management and 90-minute commutes. Well, maybe not the commutes, as anyone who remembers Australian sitcom Squinters knows too well. But going by this version, The Office is not up to the task.

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There are some decent jokes scattered about. The first episode manages to have Lizzie selling off the office chairs to raise some cash, forcing everyone to work at standing desks (which are just their old desks). Hannah might want everyone in the office, but Zoom does have a lot of entertaining backgrounds she can’t wait to show off. And maybe if this wasn’t The Office, they could run with this kind of thing.

Instead, it’s a checklist of tics and tropes we’re all way too familiar with after the UK versions’ two seasons and two specials, plus nine full seasons of the US edition. Interview snippets to underline a joke we already got? Looks to camera to underline a joke we already got? Pranks? A vaguely menacing warehouse crew? Co-workers who barely seem employable? A boss who barely seems employable? And so it goes.

The Office: fool’s errand

Expecting realism from a sitcom is a fool’s errand. Expecting the jokes to be fresh? That’s a little more reasonable. But the hook here isn’t that we’re getting an all-new funny Australian sitcom: we’re getting a local version of an international format you (presumably) already know and love. The point isn’t to be good – it’s to be good at giving audiences the same-old.

Judged solely on that basis, The (Australian) Office is just fine. There’s not a lot of gas left in the tank, but getting to see all your favourite characters only now with fresh faces has a minor charm of its own. An all-new sitcom about office work in 2024 featuring the same talent would almost certainly have been funnier, but why take a chance on something original and exciting when there’s a tried and tested format already sitting on the shelf?

The Office premieres on Prime Video on 18 October 2024.