Bad accents But NBC's take on The Office still trumps the competition BY JOYCE MILLMAN

If there has ever been a TV series that did not need remaking, it’s The Office. Perfect in concept and execution, this BBC series was one of the two or three greatest sit-coms, ever. A mockumentary set at a British paper manufacturing company, The Office ran for just two short, bittersweet seasons (it aired in the US on BBC America). That added up to 12 episodes (plus a bonus Christmas special), more British TV awards than you can count, and a Golden Globe for best comedy series. It also left us with an unforgettable TV moment: inept middle manager David Brent (co-creator and star Ricky Gervais), after finally realizing he’s being squeezed out of a job, unleashing his rage during an office talent show in a Saturday Night Fever dance routine that was more disco meltdown than disco inferno. Yes, remaking this show is pointless.

Still, NBC soldiered on. And so we now have The Office: An American Workplace (Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m.), which renames the Wernham Hogg paper company "Dunder Mifflin" and moves it from Slough (a dreary London suburb off the highway to Heathrow) to Scranton, Pennsylvania. I’m relieved to report that the Americanized version of The Office is at least well made. Someone at NBC respected the original enough to sign up Gervais and his co-creator/writer/director, Stephen Merchant, as executive producers. The American in charge, Greg Daniels, has the right approach to working-stiff despair, having written for The Simpsons and King of the Hill.

And yet, none of that matters. The remake is still pointless. The pilot episode was almost a shot-for-shot, line-for-line re-creation of the British series’s pilot. The original’s tone and look is duplicated: there is no laugh track, the office is generic and overlit, the characters are aware of the camera, and there are lots of long takes and uncomfortable silences as office workers attempt to co-exist with the most irritating and irresponsible boss in the world. A few of the actors simply mimic their British counterparts’ mannerisms and line readings. The American version of The Office is one of the weirdest TV experiences I have ever had. It half-pretends that the original never existed and half-acknowledges that it wouldn’t be here without that original. Watching it, I felt as if I were in a Twilight Zone episode where everything was familiar but not quite right. Who are these impostors, and what have they done with my David Brent?

Enamored as I am of the original, I guess I can’t be objective about NBC’s version. But, I figure, this show isn’t made for viewers like me — it’s made for people who never saw the original, for various reasons (no cable, an aversion to thick British accents). So if you are one of those people, then I recommend that you watch NBC’s Office. Because, even recycled, it’s fresher than most of what passes for comedy on network TV; it nails the sort of brutally subtle, marvelously stupid humor that Arrested Development aspires to but can’t quite get right. If, on the other hand, you can quote the original show backward and forward, perhaps you’d best stay away. It’ll only depress you.

Michael Scott (Steve Carell of The Daily Show), regional manager of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch, is wholly unsuited for leadership. He’s a jokester who wants to be everyone’s pal, not realizing that he offends at every turn with his racist and sexist remarks. In addition to his appalling lack of office etiquette, Michael is also ignorant when it comes to office politics. In the first episode, he is told by a superior that the Scranton office may be closed or hit by layoffs, and he’s asked not to tell the staff yet. Michael then calls a meeting to reassure his staff that there will be no closure and no layoffs. His second-in-command, Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson, from Six Feet Under), is a fascist nerd who quotes company rules and regulations like gospel. Salesman Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) is too smart for the job but lacks motivation. Like his British counterpart, Tim, Jim is a bundle of unexpressed longing for the firm’s receptionist, who is called Pam here (Jenna Fischer). Pam is an aspiring illustrator with low self-esteem who is being sucked into a dead-end marriage to a boor who works in the Dunder Mifflin factory. The peripheral characters from the British series are all present in American form too: the deadpan fat guy who hovers around speaking the blunt truth, the black co-worker whom Michael always manages to offend, the Greek chorus of nameless office drones who are forever shooting Michael looks of disapproval and disgust.

The stories so far have also remained faithful to the BBC version. (The first two episodes of the new series are being rerun on CNBC on April 1 beginning at 10 p.m.) Last week’s episode, "Diversity Day," in which Michael ruins a racial-sensitivity workshop, was a reworking of one of the original’s finest episodes, "Customer Care," in which David Brent ruins a team-building workshop. Still, "Diversity Day" had a squirmingly funny sequence that matched the original for audacity. Unsatisfied with the professional group leader’s approach to teaching racial and ethnic sensitivity, Michael made people wear cards on their foreheads reading "Asian," "Jew," etc., and then had them guess the group each person represented by offering stereotypical hints (bad driver, good with money). Michael himself wore a card reading "Martin Luther King" because, as he proudly told the camera, Dr. King was one of his heroes, along with Bob Hope and God.

The most significant difference in NBC’s Office is its characterization of Michael (and to a lesser extent Dwight). But this attempt to assert its own identity is also the show’s weakest element. Carell and Wilson seem to have been encouraged to play their own concepts of Michael and Dwight, as opposed to, say, Krasinski and Fischer, who are delightful as Jim and Pam but nevertheless are imitating British actors Martin Freeman and Lucy Davis down to the smallest facial expressions and timing. To understand why an Americanized Michael and Dwight don’t work, you have to understand how integral the Laurel & Hardy dynamic of David (Hardy) and his assistant Gareth (Laurel) was to the original’s elegant comedic structure. Gareth (played by Mackenzie Crook, a scarecrow of an actor) is a self-important toady given to hilariously obvious exaggerations about his military service, as well as to his place in the office hierarchy. Gareth is endearingly dense and defers to David at all times.

In the American version of The Office, the Gareth figure, Dwight, is still ridiculously self-important. The upcoming episode "Hot Girl" has a prime Gareth/Dwight moment when Dwight falls for a saleswoman and enumerates, with a characteristically serious face, her fine qualities: "Creamy skin, straight teeth, curly hair, amazing breasts — not for me, for my children. The Schrutes produce very thirsty babies." But Dwight is odd to the point of being scary. And he is assertive in Michael’s presence; in the "Hot Girl" episode, he breaks rank to badger Michael into not putting a move on Hot Girl because he saw her first. It’s a jarring moment. In the original series, Gareth never undermines David’s authority; he remains David’s only supporter, his yes man, his last cushion against hard reality. David is never alone as long as Gareth is around, and the fact that Gareth is a useless bootlicker makes David’s position both poignant and bitterly funny. But in the American version, having an assertive, creepy Dwight push Michael around is like hitting us over the head with the point that Michael is a loser.

The more serious problem with the American version, though, is that Michael Scott is a complete ass. In the original, Gervais didn’t take such an easy way out — David was a fool, and delusional, but he was not altogether clueless. The heartbreaking, and hilarious, thing about David Brent was his belief in himself: he really thought that he had a gift for entertaining people, for making people laugh, and that this gift could make the world a better place. But he also knew that he was in trouble with his superiors — even if he chose to ignore this knowledge. There were moments when David looked into the camera with a panicked smile after being reprimanded by a superior or after a prank backfired with serious consequences, and you could feel his terror at the prospect of getting sacked. You sympathized with David Brent. You do not sympathize with Michael Scott. There is no complexity or humanity or anything redeemable in Michael. You don’t see the flop sweat that Gervais did so well. Michael is selfish, loud, and dumb — he’s a one-dimensional idiot.

The British version of The Office balances on the wire between comedy and tragedy — go find the DVDs and watch the fifth episode of season two, where David hits bottom (and dances), and the special, where he crashes through bottom and bounces back up. Without a boss as shallow-seeming yet deep as David Brent, the Americanized Office risks being just another sit-com. Granted, it is a more ambitious sit-com than anything else the networks are offering. But it will always be an imitation of greatness. Let’s put it this way: Jamie Foxx might have won an Oscar, but that doesn’t make him Ray Charles.