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The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

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Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#91

Post by nikau »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #83
colordrops wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's subjective - I found the UK office to be more funny and authentic. I couldn't watch the US version without cringing at the unnatural sitcom-iness of it.

I think my issue with the UK office is that it was just too bleak and dull to be funny. I got the jokes, but it didn't make laugh, just made me kind of feel worse about life. This is not a "UK comedy is has more flawed characters" thing either, IT Crowd, Peep Show were full of terrible, flawed, miserable human beings but there were still some drama & larger than life aspects to those shows that gave it some element o…

The UK office felt like it could have been a genuine documentary vs the American version which felt more like a sit com.

Not sure how you can find this bleak and dull:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Eaz-1_3iA

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#92

Post by pooper »

I watched it in full this time around. Maybe it should have been titled a screen test instead of a pilot, only for people who haven't seen the original. I have never seen the UK Office and I love the Office (US).

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#93

Post by unwind »

tonfreed wrote: post #42
RajT88 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I can't understand what they are saying with their funny accent" This is charitable. Probably a lot of folks here just have a general disdain for all things foreign. I am not sure anyone has ever tried to put numbers to the distinction between the two groups.

The thing that amuses me as an Australian is the subtitles when a pom, Irish, or Scot is talking. I've not seen it with Australians, but I wouldn't be surprised

I had to read your comment twice, I first mis-read "pom" as being a badly kermed [1] "porn", which made the entire thing hard to parse.

Then I realized I wasn't sure what "pom" means (not a native speaker, and from the northern hemisphere) either, so had to look it up [2]: "(Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, mildly derogatory slang) An Englishman; a Briton; a person of British descent". It's more of the rhyming slang, didn't know that was a thing for Australian slang.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/keming

[2]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pom#Noun

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#94

Post by Apocryphon »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #78

It's really hard for me to imagine any alternate scenario where the IT crowd could be improved upon. It was kind of a perfect storm - Richard Ayoade during the only time he ever was or ever will be likable or funny, Christopher Morris back when was one of the funniest people on earth, Matt Berry just being absolutely brilliant and completely stealing the show, the cultural "geek" zeitgest of the time, etc etc. It's n…

Ayoade was on Garth Marenghi's Darkplace two years before IT Crowd came out, though maybe that overlaps with the time you're talking about.

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#95

Post by tgv »

abetusk wrote: post #27

My opinion is that the original British IT crowd just had actors that were of a different caliber. It's painful to watch all the actors around Richard Ayoade in the American version.

I watched the first bit, but Jen definitely doesn't exude the same weird combination of entitlement and despair. Her entering the basement looks more like an anonymous blonde in a slasher movie, and Reynholm's character is so flat that you start noticing the laughing track. Roy is fine, although he lacks the pent-up anger turned into almost active aggressiveness that made the UK character.

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#96

Post by jrockway »

Too bad they didn't make it to episode 2. I feel like "they're not just THE emergency services, they're YOUR emergency services" is one of the most British things I can imagine. (I say that as an American, though, so I don't really know what I'm talking about.)

The IT Crowd always impressed me with their set design. I was working as "IT" at the time, and our office was nearly identical to the one in Season 1. We had O'Reilly stickers everywhere. There were an infinite number of desk toys all over the place. We spent 99% of our day screwing around. It just felt so authentic to me at the time, and still does to this day. (Some of that screwing around was legit office stuff, though. Our air conditioner's drainage pipe was blocked, so we rigged up a fish tank pump to pump the water out of it into a giant bucket. We'd then dump that in one of the many floor drains that our office had, because of course our building's hallway had floor drains every 3 feet. The other 1% of the day was screwing around under the guise of helping people. We were the computer support team for the Physics department at the University of Chicago. People who had recently won the Nobel prize would come to us with things like "my hard drive died", and we would just put it in a plastic bag, immerse it in liquid nitrogen, and copy off their files. Worked every single time. Did we ever try copying the files before freezing the thing? Absolutely not. We weren't the scientists, we were a bunch of random idiots trying to help, and we had an unlimited supply of liquid nitrogen in the building.)

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#97

Post by throwaway742 »

tonfreed wrote: post #42
RajT88 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I can't understand what they are saying with their funny accent" This is charitable. Probably a lot of folks here just have a general disdain for all things foreign. I am not sure anyone has ever tried to put numbers to the distinction between the two groups.

The thing that amuses me as an Australian is the subtitles when a pom, Irish, or Scot is talking. I've not seen it with Australians, but I wouldn't be surprised

Reminds me of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0m4rcx0of4

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#98

Post by cfn »

nikau wrote: post #91
LAC-Tech wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my issue with the UK office is that it was just too bleak and dull to be funny. I got the jokes, but it didn't make laugh, just made me kind of feel worse about life. This is not a "UK comedy is has more flawed characters" thing either, IT Crowd, Peep Show were full of terrible, flawed, miserable human beings but there were still some drama & larger than life aspects to those shows that gave it some element o…

The UK office felt like it could have been a genuine documentary vs the American version which felt more like a sit com. Not sure how you can find this bleak and dull: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Eaz-1_3iA

Although it is funny it is mostly cringey and, if you have ever worked in an office in the UK (in Slough of all places) it brings back some of the bleakness and dullness of the average office in the UK.

Having said that, if you know the context, that is, if you have watched the series, the looks and expressions of the actors are priceless, relatable and advance the story in what could have been a just slapstick moment.

I never know if I love or hate the Office UK as some scenes bring me to tears and others I just can't watch to the end. It is a masterfull piece of TV. I have only watched a few scenes of the US version on YouTube and I find them funny. It is a very different beast.

Re: The IT Crowd US Pilot (2007) [video]

#99

Post by emsixteen »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #83
colordrops wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's subjective - I found the UK office to be more funny and authentic. I couldn't watch the US version without cringing at the unnatural sitcom-iness of it.

I think my issue with the UK office is that it was just too bleak and dull to be funny. I got the jokes, but it didn't make laugh, just made me kind of feel worse about life. This is not a "UK comedy is has more flawed characters" thing either, IT Crowd, Peep Show were full of terrible, flawed, miserable human beings but there were still some drama & larger than life aspects to those shows that gave it some element o…

> UK office [..] was just too bleak and dull

> [..] has no relief, it's just pure misery.

That's kind of the entire point mate. There is plenty of relief, but it's not your typical American sitcom relief.

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