the office is one of the funniest programmes to ever come out of the uk - not difficult some might say but there has been some great stuff, you just have to avoid lots of rubbish to find it

but its not really indicative of british humour, there have been a couple of office-alikes since then because of its success but at the time there had been nothing else like it on uk screens.

it started out on bbc2 (fairly minority channel) in the middle of summer, 10pm at night with very little hype or fanfare and ended its run with only the cool kids having picked up on it

i seem to recall it was the release of the dvd that really started all the hype

only the first 6 episodes of the american office have been shown over here (bbc2 around midnight) and have passed by pretty much without comment

its ok (i am up to date with season 2) but really its a different show now and there isnt too much to compare anymore

the original is just better though, i cant really fathom the arguement where that wouldnt be the case

it will be interesting to see how the episode that gervais and merchant are writing for nbc goes down on both sides of the water