'The Office' ripped off 'The Day Today'
Before I say anything I want to highlight that I love 'The Office'. But it has been tagged with "ground-breaking" and "original", and this just isn't fair or true.
It might have been mentioned before on this forum but it is not mentioned at all in on TV, Radio and the mainstream media. I can not get over the fact that 'The Office' is a rip off from a sketch on 'The Day Today'. The sketch (which was also called 'The Office') was a documentary style, laughter free, dry look at a badly run office with Steve Coogan, Patrick Marber et all. Okay, so it's about how an America Shrink is trying to sort out their attitude to work, whereas Gervais' 'The Office' is much deeper and mainly about David Brent. But for a 10 minute sketch what more could you expect.
My point is that if you have seen the pilot for 'The Office' and the style, especially of the first series, it does feel like it was lifted from this particular sketch. Again, this highlights that neither Ricky Gervais, Caroline Aherne (The Royle Family) or any other British acts pioneered this new type of British comedy. It was infact Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, Steve Coogan and Patrick Marber. So will all these documentaries and books about modern British Comedy please remember who started this new era of comedy in Britain. It certainly was not Gervais or Aherne.
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