You're English, correct?
Yeah, big time.
Yeah.
I'm working on an English character.
Would you mind-- it's called Reginald Poofter.
Oh.
David Brent, my liege.
Both versions of The Office are practically comedy institutions
at this point.
However, these are just two of 14 total remakes
of the now iconic show.
The Office's brand of anxiety-inducing and
cringe-laden theatrics has officially
taken the world by storm.
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
KGB.
KG--
We will ask the questions.
What the hell was that!
But how has this show succeeded in remaking itself, crossing
cultural boundaries, and amassing fan bases in nearly
every culture on earth?
The answer is simple.
Middle class daily grievances are universal.
What is your name, sir.
I am Bill Buttlicker.
Really?
That's your real name?
How dare you?
Created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant,
The Office began airing on BBC Two in July of 2001.
It was a near-instant success.
The high concept of an overbearing, cringeworthy boss
and the poor workaday employees that had to tolerate his antics
was a perfectly communicable premise.
The question is do you feel lucky, punk.
Well, do you?
Clint Eastwood.
Spot on.
The series was renewed for a second season
and a subsequent Christmas special
before Gervais and Merchant decided
to move on to other projects.
However, this is where something truly strange happened.
The Office's DVD sales were so gargantuan
that Hollywood came knocking, wanting
to produce an American remake.
A good idea is a good idea forever.
Developed by Greg Daniels, the co-creator of King of the Hill,
the American version of The Office
used many of the same character archetypes
from the British show but ported them
to the idyllically suburban Scranton, Pennsylvania.
While the American show lasted significantly longer
than the British version, many of the overarching plot
details, character relationships,
and comedic setups closely resemble the original show,
the most obvious being the Jim and Pam will they won't they
storyline, which is almost one to one with the Tim and Dawn
storyline from the original show.
Of course, Dwight is essentially Gareth,
and the iconic character of Michael Scott
is basically the Americanized David Brent.
And here's where things take a turn unlike nearly anything
in sitcom history previously.
With the meteoric success of both
the British and American Offices underway,
a sharp uptick in interest happened.
Different cultures from across the globe
all seem to want their own versions of The Office.
The first remake outside of the two well-known ones
was a 2004 German show called Stromberg.
This even harder-edged version of the David Brent archetype
named Bernd Stromberg would be the harbinger
of the soon-to-be-developed universe of Office remakes.
In 2006, two more countries, Canada and France,
each got official remakes with La Job and Le Bureau.
For the Canadian show, the regional manager
was even named after the franchise co-creator,
being given the name David Gervais.
Despite the Canadian show only lasting
one season, the French show ran for six years.
The genie had been let out of the bottle.
The appetite for more Office remakes across the globe
had been ignited.
Over the next 15 years, nine more office remakes
would be produced, Saudi Arabia, India,
Finland, and the Czech Republic being just a few
of the examples.
The Office is one of the rare examples
of a truly global brand, a show that has a laser focus
and is both hyper specific and universal at the same time.
Everyone has had to deal with the frustrating boss
or annoying coworkers.
Everyone has had an office crush or a break room best friend.
The reason The Office translates so well to other cultures
is that every burgeoning middle class across the globe
has ostensibly the same problems.
Therefore the show can be viewed more as a formula where
the only significant variable is the cultural trappings
of the country in question.
While Stromberg is fairly different from any
of the other Offices due in large part to the fact
that it wasn't exactly legally produced,
many of the remake series feature
episodes that are almost shot-for-shot remakes
of the BBC version.
In fact, some of the international Office remakes
have lines in their licensing agreements
that state that the shows must recreate the first three
episodes of the British show and then will
be allowed to develop off in their own directions.
When you step back and examine things from a distance,
it doesn't seem like any of this should work.
It seems like there should be a loss of the magic that
made the original Office culturally transcendent,
but it just simply doesn't work that way.
The various remakes might not all land in their cultures
the way the British or American ones have,
but for the most part, they've all been pretty successful.
A few of the series ran for one or two seasons, sure,
but even then, they're still funny.
And some like the French, German, and Indian Offices
are very popular.
The practice of remaking international films and TV
shows happens all the time.
The Mexican Breaking Bad, the Russian
It's Always Sunny, and the American Oldboy,
they are all perfect examples of remakes
that have failed to capture the spark of the original piece
of material.
They all try to localize the source material
but lost what made the original story so great in the process.
That seems to be the key to The Office however.
It's such a simple setup and has so many
clearly defined and clearly delineated characters
that it actually is possible to localize and replicate.
The characters and overarching themes more or less
stay the same, and the specific details
are what are moved around and localized.
From the original receptionist Dawn Tinsley,
played by Lucy Davis, you can draw a straight line
to Pam Beesly in the American Office or Anne Viens
in La Job or Dana in Hamisrad, the Israeli Office.
The same can be said for Gareth or Dwight
or Ernie from Stromberg or Viking Ytterman
from the Swedish Office, Kontoret.
The characters all have the same core tenets
and characteristics, but the specific details and hang ups
manifest in highly specific localized details.
Like how the Indian Office's Jagdeep Chadda
organizes a diversity day team building
exercise that goes horribly wrong,
which is obviously very close to the diversity day
that Michael Scott organizes.
Shalom.
I'd like to apply for a loan.
The jokes and cultural biases that are explored in these two
scenes are wildly different, but the underlying idea
is the same.
It all boils down to the boss is culturally insensitive.
How are you!
I had the longest meeting.
Oh!
Welcome to my convenience store.
Even though the success rate for the franchise
has varied from culture to culture,
the overall brand of Office remakes
shows no sign of slowing down.
There's a simple mathematical formula
for the broader success of The Office
that Gervais, Merchant, and BBC Two
have discovered, a winning formula that many production
companies would give their right arm to have.
You take the basic setups from the original Office
and you port them over to a culture with a rapidly
burgeoning middle class and then hire local talent
to tailor the archetypes to the specific region or culture.
Then you just sit back and print money.
What's the ratio of Stanley nickels to Schrute bucks?
The same as the ratio of unicorns to leprechauns.
It's a business model almost unlike anything else ever
seen in the history of the entertainment landscape.
Usually when something is wildly successful,
sequels that have ever increasing scale and scope
are rushed into production, but with The Office,
it's not the scale or the size of the stories that matters.
It's the specificity.
It is the details that stand in for the universal frustrations
of everyday mundanity that connects with audiences
all over the world.
And, in fact, the small scale of the stories
actually helps the show.
It's cheap to produce, cheap to edit,
and doesn't require any special effects.
The overhead is low, and the potential upside is huge.
Everyone has struggled to rectify their place in life
with their hopes and dreams for the future,
and The Office provides a clearly defined hierarchy
of power.
And we as a global species can live out
a fantasy of getting to make snarky eye
contact with the cameraman when something terrible is
happening.
In real life, we don't have anyone
to acknowledge the frictions and frustrations of middle class
ennui, but The Office, in all its forms,
holds up a mirror to our collective subconscious
and says you're not alone while also
submerging a stapler in Jell-o.
Well, that's it for this episode.
Can you think of another international remake that
was better than the original?
If so, comment below and as always
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just like this one.