The Office (Australia)

Streaming on: Prime Video

Episodes viewed: 8 of 8

Well, here we go again. The Office — the still-influential mockumentary sitcom created in 2001 by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant — returns in yet another regional guise. Like any good expanding business looking for mass market penetration, this series has had international branches in almost every time zone: there’s been Le Bureau in France, Konttori in Finland, Os Aspones in Brazil. But The Office, Australian edition, is significant for being only the third English-language take, after the original British vintage and the all-conquering American version, which ran for nine seasons and remains one of the most streamed shows of all time.

All of which begs the question: why would we need another one? Surely by now, most people in Australia will have already seen this workplace comedy in either its British or American iteration? Not to mention the fact that, post-pandemic, the physical bricks-and-mortar office building holds less universal relevance than it did back in the early noughties.

On this last point, at least, The Office Australia has found a new hook. Like many offices in 2024, the staff of Flinley Craddick, “Australia’s fourth-largest packaging company”, are in a hybrid working mode, spending half the week at home, and corporate are mulling the possibility of closing the physical office down entirely. Enter Hannah Howard (Felicity Ward), the Aussie answer to David Brent/Michael Scott, who shares her forebears’ desperation to be loved, and fights for a full five-day week in person, against the actual wishes of her “work family”.

Perhaps most unforgivably, the jokes just aren’t up to snuff.

That gives the series a little bit of difference to any previous takes, a smidge of modernity. And there are some uniquely Australian touches here — some decent jabs at the empty gestures made towards the country’s indigenous population; an entire episode centring around the Melbourne Cup; characters getting on the booze from 9am. (Sunny Sydney hardly feels as bleak as Slough, but that can’t be helped.)

Otherwise, it is, depressingly, business as usual. Every character from the original series is given an equivalent here, which makes for an uncanny experience if you, like most people, have seen the US/UK editions multiple times. In a deeply unimaginative move, the writers have elected to run yet another will-they-won’t-they office almost-romance between the Tim/Jim and Dawn/Pam characters, here renamed Nick (Steen Raskopoulos) and Greta (Shari Sebbens). Unfortunately, a will-they-won’t-they doesn’t work if you already know that they will — there’s no tension to the relationship at all.

But perhaps most unforgivably, the jokes just aren’t up to snuff. Nick and Greta pranking Edith Poor’s Lizzie (the Gareth/Dwight equivalent) doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it should. The supporting characters barely make a dent. And crucially, Ward’s Hannah is not a strong-enough nightmare boss; where David Brent was tragically pathetic, and Michael Scott was gormless but lovable, Hannah just seems a bit awkward, lacking a moral compass to boot. This is only Season 1, and plenty of sitcoms do not find their feet in their first year — most notably of all The Office US, which had a wobbly Season 1 but a barnstorming Season 2. For now, though, all we can do is offer a weary, bemused glance to camera — in the style of Tim, Jim, and now Nick — and hope that all this nonsense stops soon.