Too many fans seem to be blown away

Boring, over-political, tech fuzed mess

Absolutely brilliant

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

It doesn't spoon feed you the jokes, but, if you are paying attention there is some super funny stuff here. If the people who made this never made anything else it would already be enough. I love David Brent as a character, he may say and do dumb things sometimes, but, he is a nice person who just wants to be liked. Tim and Dawn are more normal and Gareth is the perfect right hand man for Brent. You can see the influence of Larry Sanders. It is a great show and it deserves all the hype.

When they took the decision to finish The Office I honestly was sad. Because you don't get much excellent series like this one. The character of Ricky Gervais is a delight to watch, even though everybody would probably hate the guy in real life. Well at least I would for sure. But in this series he's the funniest character to watch, as well as Mackenzie Crook's character. Actually the whole cast with the totally different characters are all good. When I saw that they sold the rights for an American version of The Office I really thought that it could not ever be the same. British and American humor are completely different so it took me years to finally decide to watch the American version. And that one I absolutely loved as well. So if you are sad like me when you watch the last episode of the British version I can only recommend you start watching the much longer American version.

THE OFFICE is one of my all-time great comedy TV shows and up there with the classic likes of FAWLTY TOWERS and MONTY PYTHON. I recently rewatched the lot - series 1 & 2 and the Christmas specials - and am pleased to report it holds up now better than ever. Even more so perhaps, given that Ricky Gervais's subsequent TV offerings - EXTRAS and LIFE'S TOO SHORT - have come across as diluted variants of this show.What makes THE OFFICE so successful? It has to be the documentary format, which makes the characters on screen feel real like never before. Anybody who's ever worked in an office will know how true-to-life the whole thing is, and the camaraderie between the main characters is what keeps this humming along. Watching the misadventures of Tim, Dawn, Gareth and Keith is just a delight. Yes, there's too much of an emphasis on lowbrow humour, but it's the character tics that make this work.Of course, Ricky Gervais's David Brent is the man who lords over it all, and he plays a surprisingly complex character. Given that his off-colour humour, desperation to be liked, and frequently humiliating situations all point towards somebody you should hate, Brent turns out to be Gervais's most likable creation ever. It says something that THE OFFICE is the only thing I truly like the comedian in. In any case, THE OFFICE is brilliant stuff and every episode is a zinger; it truly is untouchable.

After reading a lot of the comments here, it's interesting to me to see the huge difference - on the whole - between the American and the British and other European commentators. Europeans tend to like the show, Americans don't. I think the reason is that - and please excuse the generalization! - Americans like everything to be very obvious and clear. The facial expressions of the actors have to be very open, 'larger than life', and everything should be basically positive. The Office isn't like that. Its brilliance lies in its subtlety. The glances between Tim and Dawn, the pained and fleeting expression on David's face when he realizes - and he does realize it! - what a jerk he really is at times, the embarrassing and hurtful remarks people make to each other... It's all subtle and very, very human. If you don't see this, you're not going to like The Office - with apologies to all the Americans who do.