“It really wasn’t a very brave decision”: Ricky Gervais’ ‘The Office’ UK May Have Changed Sit-Coms Forever, But Ex-BBC2 Controller Has a Different Opinion
Imagine sitting in a meeting where someone shows you a three-minute clip of a painfully awkward boss making his employees question their life choices. You turn to your colleague for a second opinion and they call it funny—probably suppressing secondhand embarrassment. Well, just like that, Ricky Gervais’ The Office UK was born.
Little did the ex-BBC2 controller Jane Root, who greenlit the project, know that her decision would change sitcoms forever—turning mockumentaries into the new hit—and spawning remakes and spinoffs. So, if you ask Root, she won’t claim any bold visionary moves behind The Office UK. Instead, it was just an appealing budget-friendly project that eventually became a big hit.
Jon Plowman and Anil Gupta recalled taking The Office to the BBC2 top brass
According to the oral history of The Office UK via Esquire, executive producers Jon Plowman and Anil Gupta faced the toughest challenge when they had to pitch the idea for Ricky Gervais’ show to BBC2’s top brass. Imagine making a show about a cringe boss, who makes things difficult for his employees—and then imagine convincing your boss that it’s a good idea.
Jon Plowman and Anil Gupta faced that exact challenge when they pitched The Office UK to BBC2’s hierarchy. It wasn’t an easy sell. While traditional sitcoms had punchlines, laugh tracks, and entertaining characters, Plowman and Gupta’s version featured David Brent—Ricky Gervais’ character who was desperate to be liked by everyone around him.
Gupta shared,
Jane Root was the controller and she and her team sat on one side of a big long table… And Jon said, right, ‘First of all, there’s this thing called The Office’… They sat and watched the tape. We went, ‘Okay. What do you think of that?’… Jane turned to a scheduler guy and she said ‘Was that funny?’ And he went, ‘Yeah’. So she said, ‘Okay’.
Plowman noted,
[Commissioners are] not comedy experts, and they always want corroboration. In other words, probably if she’d absolutely hated it she would have said, ‘I don’t think this is for us’. But clearly, she sort of liked it, but didn’t quite know why or what it was, and therefore wanted somebody else to say it’s okay, go ahead.
Although ex-BBC2 controller Jane Root, claimed to be easily convinced by the idea of Ricky Gervais’ The Office, executive producer Anil Gupta revealed how Root sought a second opinion from a scheduler guy. While Root undoubtedly considered the cringe-fest wonderful and funny, Jon Plowman noted that the ex-BBC2 controller needed an unbiased opinion before approving the project.
Ex-BBC2 controller reflected on her decision to greenlight Ricky Gervais’ show
Ricky Gervais’ idea of changing sitcoms by making mockumentaries more popular, became a major hit. It revolutionized the industry by inspiring shows like Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, and not to mention giving birth to adaptations like Steve Carell‘s The Office US. But if you ask Jane Root, she doesn’t see herself as some fearless visionary for approving the show. For her, it was just another day at the office (pun intended).
Root shared,
Once I moved to America, people said to me, ‘Oh, my God, that must have been such a brave decision.’ It really wasn’t a very brave decision at all, because it was really cheap.
When Jon Plowman and Anil Gupta cut the original Seedy Boss tape into a three-minute taster and showed it to Jane Root, all the ex-BBC2 controller saw was an experimental comedy that was funny. Not to mention the fact that Ricky Gervais’ show was comparatively cheaper than other sitcoms—therefore giving it an upper hand in convincing Root to approve of the project.
So now, despite Ricky Gervais’ The Office UK revolutionizing television, Jane Root insists that it wasn’t really a risky gamble for her. Things simply aligned well—the show was funny and cheap to produce—and that’s what helped her greenlight the project.
The Office UK is currently available to watch on Hulu and Peacock.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
from FandomWire https://ift.tt/R9Yf5mO
No comments: