Product Description

Welcome to Wernham Hogg the paper company a world away from London where life is stationery. Critics and fans alike have lauded this hilarious biting look at the everyday hell of office life as a cult comedy classic in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap and The Larry Sanders Show. Series two marks the final full season of the life in the office.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 794051198822

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26987 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2004-04-20
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 180 minutes

Features

• Welcome to Wernham Hogg, the paper company a world away from London, where life is stationery. Critics and fans alike have lauded this hilarious, biting look at the everyday hell of office life as a cult comedyic in the vein of This Is Spinal Tap and The Larry Sanders Show. Series two marks the final full season of the life in the office. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR

Amazon.com
The second series of the award-winning BBC mockudrama The Office exceeded even the sky-high standards of the first. Indeed, it ventured beyond caricature and satire, touching on the very edge of darkness. Ricky Gervais was once again excruciatingly superb as David Brent, a subtly shaded modern English comic grotesque in the desperate and self-deluding tradition of Alan Partridge and Basil Fawlty. In this series, however, Brent's to-the-camera assertions concerning his management qualities and executive capabilities are seriously challenged when the Slough and Swindon branches are merged and his former Swindon equivalent Neil takes over as area manager. To compensate, Brent cultivates his pathologically mistaken image of himself as an entertainer-motivator-comedian whose stage happens to be the workplace.

Meanwhile, Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman), who can only maintain his sanity by teasing the priggish Gareth Keenan (Mackenzie Crook), continues to wrestle with his yearning for receptionist Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis), a sympathetic character persisting in a relationship with a man about whom she still maintains unspoken reservations. As ever, it's the awkward, reality TV-style pauses and silences, the furtive, meaningful and unmet glances across the emotional gulf of the open-plan office, that say it all here. As for Brent, his own breakdown is prefaced by a moment of hideous hilarity--an impromptu office dance, a mixture of "Flashdance and MC Hammer" as Brent describes it, but in reality bad beyond description. Then, when his fate is sealed, he at last reveals himself in a memorable finale to perhaps the greatest British sitcom, besides Fawlty Towers, ever made. All this and Keith too. --David Stubbs

Customer Reviews

Smart, Brilliant
It is not a typical tv program, it actually assumes that the audience is intelligent. It doesn't talk down to us, or preach to us, or spoon feed us. It doesn't need a laugh track to tell you when you are supposed to laugh. It just makes you think, and sometimes cringe, and laugh out loud hysterically or just smile and wonder "why can't 99% of american sitcoms be this brilliant?". Our society is so dumbed down and we stand back and let them decide what we can watch until there is nothing left but stupid story lines, unrealistic conversation, sugary sweet endings and those horrible laugh tracks to make us all think it's funny, when it really isn't at all. The Office challenges all of that. Buy it, and enjoy it! It's a rare gem that we won't see again any time soon, well maybe until Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant come up with their next project.

Please don't make me redundant
I don't understand the negative reviews for this second season. I perhaps have a different outlook on the whole thing than most people, as I saw the second season first... I've never seen anything like it, and if I had to pick one season over the other, I'd go with the this one. This is comedy that makes you squirm in your seat and laugh simply because you're feeling so uncomfortable. That's unique. It may be darker and more insidious, but that's a good thing. I get so sick of 'harmless' fun comedies. I think people get used to television shows where the characters remain stagnant archetypes and never change, but I thought the ending of this season was brilliant. It seems that we expect all TV show comedies to be regularly funny and never serious or sad, but we don't require the same "consistency" from our comedy movies. Frankly, I'm sick of tv, and its shows like this that make me briefly consider reconnecting my cable... until I realize that the show is now over and practically everything else on TV is a reality show gimic with flashy cutting to distract you from how moronic its concept is. I won't plead for another season, because I think it ended perfectly and if their heart's not in it then it should be discontinued... But I will eagerly wait for anything else Gervais and company come out with.

Brilliant! Still Better Than Friends!
There's no laugh track. The humour here is subtle at times, and it makes you think. The actors' expressiveness fills the awkward silences to great effect. Many real issues and themes about life, politics of sexuality, gender and of course, politics of work environments, are embedded within the plotlines, anecdotes and jokes. It's refreshing to watch a show this funny, where the structure and writing feel real, and do not insult the viewer's intelligence. Unfortunately, there are only two seasons in this series. From personal experience working in several urban offices, I think there's enough people with stories and situations out there, that the writers could have found more material and created one more strong season. On the other hand, the writers do a fabulous job with maintaining the integrity of the show. They develop the stories and reveal the characters within the series in a seemingly natural progression.

The story of David Brent becomes particularly juicy by season's end. Yes, it's not always making you laugh to form a queue by the lavatory. However, the humour is always smart and so unbelievable that it's completely believable. Ever Brilliant. When is the series finale coming out already?! It should be included with the second series, yeah?