‘Office’ wit wilts a bit crossing Atlantic

NBC’s “The Office” is a curious experiment in the comedy import-export business, a remake of a show that originated in England but with elements seemingly drawn from American pop culture -- computer-glazed office drones shot in a deadpan, mock documentary style.

In England, “The Office,” starring Ricky Gervais and created by Gervais and Stephen Merchant, became a sleeper hit, airing discreetly on the BBC for 12 episodes over 2001 and 2002, and the cult following it picked up here added to the perception that British comedy is a slower burn, more sophisticated and character-driven, whereas American sitcoms continue to hit audiences over the head with a mallet.

NBC’s remake of “The Office” is not a mallet show, but it can only simulate the heart and wit of the original. The devices are in place, and there’s intelligent writing, but here the approach feels a bit tired, like a better version of those commercials set in offices, where the drabness of corporate life is mocked to sell some shiny new gadget, or to make you feel superior to it all.

Lost in translation is the sadness behind the characters on the BBC series, the utterly dreary lives outside the office from which the comedy inside the office emanates. Yes, these poor blokes are being derided, but at the same time the show elicits your compassion for them.

In the original, Gervais plays the most pathetic among them -- David Brent, regional manager of the Slough branch of Wernham Hogg, a paper company. As Brent sees it, the principal job of a boss is to entertain his staff of lethargic desk-dwellers with pranks and jokes, never mind that he has no sense of boundaries, horrible comedic instincts, numerous personality disorders and an authority based on nothing so powerful as the fact that nobody else in the office can muster the energy to covet his job.

All of this is told quietly -- handheld camera with which the characters make furtive eye contact, no laugh track, no audience, bleating phones or copy machines reminding you that some kind of work is being conducted. The show, seemingly too idiosyncratic and slow at first, is a statement about the odd sociology of office life, shown in a series of brilliantly self-contained moments and in interviews Brent gives to the documentary crew capturing his leadership in action.

“When people say, ‘Oh, would you rather be thought of as a funny man or a great boss,’ my answer is the same -- to me, they’re not mutually exclusive,” Brent tells the camera in one of his self-deluded raps. “There’s the weight of intellect behind my comedy.... “

You can’t know how funny that scene is without seeing Gervais in action, fondling his tie and pitching his inflection between arrogance and digressive insecurity; his performance is a kind of continuous character study. When “The Office” made its way to the States, airing on BBC America, it gained more loyalists, and in 2004 the Hollywood Foreign Press -- clearly a group with premium cable -- gave the show and Gervais Golden Globes.

“I’m from a little place called England,” Gervais said from the stage that night. “We used to run the world before you.”

Quite right, now we run the world. Now we run the world and we decree that “The Office” shall be made American and premiere on one of our finest broadcast networks on our finest night, Thursdays, at one of our finest hours, 9:30 p.m., after Donald Trump and “The Apprentice.”

For the remake, Gervais and Merchant agreed to take on the Tony Blair role to NBC’s President Bush; they share co-writing credit on the pilot with executive producer Greg Daniels, ex of “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.” The story arc in the first episode (as well as some of the jokes, including a stapler encased in Jell-O), is the same as in the original: Michael Scott (Steve Carell) runs the Scranton, Pa., office of Dunder-Mifflin, a paper supply company, which is facing layoffs and the prospect of being folded into another regional office. At first, Scott, who purchases his own “World’s Best Boss” coffee mugs from Spencer Gifts, doesn’t think it will help morale to impart the news. “As a doctor, you would not tell a patient they had cancer,” is his reasoning.

Carell is a former correspondent on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart”; if you ever saw him debate fellow correspondent Stephen Colbert, or do Produce Pete, a slowly unraveling green grocer, you know Carell can sustain that tightly wound comedic poker face for as long as necessary. Michael Scott, like David Brent, believes he has a God-given ability to entertain. Episode two, in which Scott, seizing a performance opportunity, hijacks a diversity training session, showcases Carell at his zany best. “I wish every day was diversity day,” he proclaims, and soon has the staff wearing index cards on their foreheads that say “Jewish” or “Italian” or, in Scott’s case, “Martin Luther King. Jr.”

But this role also requires Carell to show humanity, to allow us to feel into his character, however unctuous he is, and like Jim Carrey in a Jim Carrey comedy, Carell has trouble getting at the gradations that would make the person behind the ticks and the dead-on timing emerge.

As a result there’s a menace to Carell’s character that I didn’t want to feel, a sociopathic, beady-eyed quality that’s too cartoon, and that gives the show a colder edge. This “Office” will have to rely less on him as a guiding voice than “The Office” relied on Gervais. The American version features doppelgangers of the original cast -- Dwight (Rainn Wilson), the outsized nerd with a Napoleonic complex, and Jim (John Krasinki), the mop-haired sales rep who has a sweet thing going with Pam (Jenna Fischer), the put-upon receptionist.

It’s fairly careful transplant surgery, all in all, and for this “The Office” deserves credit, particularly given the shabby recent history of Americanized versions of British sitcoms, like NBC’s “Coupling” and a CBS remake of “Fawlty Towers” starring John Larroquette. “The Office” isn’t that, but the voyage from England still finds it without some of its luggage intact. At the end of “Will & Grace” last week, NBC ran a promo for the premiere with the tagline, “for anyone whose boss is an idiot.” That’s promo-speak, I know, but I cringed all the same that “The Office” would be reduced to that.

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‘The Office’

Where: NBC

When: 9:30 p.m.

Ratings: TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14)

Steve Carell...Michael Scott

Rainn Wilson...Dwight Schrute

John Krasinski...Jim

Jenna Fischer...Pam

B.J. Novak...Ryan Howard

Executive producers. Ben Silverman, Greg Daniels, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, Howard Klein, Ken Kwapis. Director, Ken Kwapis. Writers, Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant and Greg Daniels.