Droll humor at ‘The Office’

Imagine a television series about mid-level workers stuck in dead-end jobs watching their dreams slowly die. Now imagine calling it a comedy but producing it without big stars, laugh tracks, tidy endings or glamour. Imagine doing it largely without jokes even and with strong doses of pathos instead.

This hardly sounds like an award-winning hit -- in fact, it sounds, well, un-American, doesn’t it? Sure enough, “The Office,” a mock documentary exploring the nuances of office life with a deft and subtle touch, is a big hit ... in Britain. The comedy, debuting Thursday on BBC America, earns laughs without sitcom gags and banter, instead prying out humor with the wince of self-recognition as it explores failure and self-deception.

“In England people say to me, ‘I find it very funny but I often don’t laugh, I cringe,’ ” says Lucy Davis, who plays Dawn, the receptionist. Davis models Dawn on a friend who took an office job “for a year” at 18 to earn some money but remains there at 33, unsatisfied but tethered by raises or promotions.

Still, BBC America is convinced “The Office” will translate over here, becoming that signature show by creating buzz like “South Park” did for Comedy Central or “Larry Sanders” (and later “The Sopranos”) did for HBO.

“This is really a priority for us,” network Chief Executive Paul Lee says. “There’s no question this is a huge risk, but it’s one we’re delighted to embrace. We’re going to put major marketing dollars behind it and see if we can win over American audiences.”

“The Office” revolves around David Brent (Ricky Gervais, who also co-wrote and co-directed the series), the regional manager of a paper company in a small town. Brent, lacking any self-awareness, considers himself a wonder boss, but his desperate quest for attention and laughs continually undermines him.

In one episode he sabotages a training session by upstaging the outside consultant -- Brent interrupts and shows off, plays instructional scenes for laughs and even whips out a guitar, astounding his mortified employees. But Gervais, who worked for seven years as a middle manager, portrays Brent with a nervous energy and genuine neediness that make it impossible to truly loathe him.

All the characters, but particularly Brent, perpetually steal glances at the “documentary” cameras when they think they’ve triumphed, and especially when they’ve been humiliated. “It’s that idea of ‘He’s been embarrassed and he knows it’ but imagine he also knows 10 million people saw it,” Gervais says.

Lee likens the mockumentary -- with its faux reality and glimpses of guards let down -- to “Survivor,” saying, “like Richard Hatch, Brent’s a jerk, but we see his vulnerabilities and crisis, making him human.”

“The Office’s” other misfits include Gareth, a sophomoric and power-hungry follower, and Finch, Brent’s buddy, a smarmy bully who tolerates Brent only because he’s a loyal sidekick. Gervais and co-creator Stephen Merchant were smart enough to make Tim (Martin Freeman), a smart, introspective salesman with ambitions of returning to school, the second leading role, but they were unsentimental enough to thwart virtually all Tim’s hopes.

When Tim asks out Dawn (with whom he has long flirted) mistakenly thinking she has broken up with her boyfriend, she rebuffs him, with the entire office watching.

“Ricky and Stephen were quite ruthless about what goes in,” Davis says.

The show avoids broad humor, instead deriving its humor from story, character and the intimacy of television, Gervais says. “I hate when people add too much comedy so you say, ‘Why is everybody acting like that?’ ”

Davis agrees, praising the show’s “quietness.” But Gervais knows Americans like their laughs loud and is curious about reaction in a country whose funniest take on office life now -- “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” on Fox -- is fantastical whimsy compared with the realistic dreariness of “The Office.”

“The workplace is a veritable pageant of abject humiliation,” Richter says, but he cautions, “You can mirror the difficulties and frustrations but you can’t make it as frustrating. Here you have to make it light and funny or there isn’t a release.”

Richter speculates that some of the differences between American and British television have deep-seated roots, like entrenched British fatalism brought on by a rigid class structure contrasting with Americans’ congenital optimism based on the notion that anyone can make it -- Richter’s character Andy still dreams, but most on “The Office” don’t believe their dreams anymore.

Even if American cable viewers overcome those differences, American network executives are warier of remaking “The Office” than British reality shows or traditional sitcoms like the BBC’s “Couplings” (similar to “Friends,” but with an edge).

“We spent quite a long time looking at it,” says Kathryn Mitchell, Comedy Central senior vice president of programming. “It’s a work of genius and the best British comedy in the past five years. But it has a singularly British theme and style and I’m not sure whether that can translate. It’s extremely dark -- it’s almost not a comedy.”

With BBC America showing “The Office” in “pure form,” Mitchell believes nothing could match it. “How do you improve on perfection? Certain things just shouldn’t be remade.”

BBC America’s Lee seems to agree, comparing it with American efforts to replicate another unique British product -- the Beatles. “They did it here and came up with ‘The Monkees.’ ”