{"id":14827,"date":"2012-12-08T07:00:51","date_gmt":"2012-12-08T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=14827"},"modified":"2017-06-02T13:59:50","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T20:59:50","slug":"best-of-british-part-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2012\/12\/08\/best-of-british-part-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Best of British: Part 7"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"facebook\" src=\"http:\/\/i1.ytimg.com\/vi\/lh7qzDJG94M\/mqdefault.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>In my last Best of British post I started to share some of my favourite British comedy shows which have aired more recently.<\/p>\n<h2>The Office<\/h2>\n<p>Today I&#8217;d like to talk about a show with which most residents of the United States will be familiar, <em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;The Office&#8221;<\/span><\/em>. However, not all\u00a0Americans will know that this was originally a British TV show which played its final episode long before there ever was a Michael Scott or a Dwight Schrute.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll admit that, when I first heard that they were making an American version of <em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;The Office&#8221;<\/span><\/em>, I became extremely indignant (<em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Why can&#8217;t these Americans handle British comedy?!&#8221;<\/span><\/em> etc.). However, after watching the first season of the American version, I was converted. Whereas the British version limited itself to two brilliant seasons, the American version still continues when it should have been put out of its misery several seasons ago&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The original British show&#8217;s humour is far drier. You will spend far more time watching the British version through your fingers, trying to shield your eyes from the awkwardness produced by the boss from Hell, David Brent. The clip below is one of the more light-hearted moments though, where David performs the activity dreaded in every office, the performance reviews&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K2ZfWRbk0OQ?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Extras<\/h2>\n<p>As I said above, the British version of <em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;The Office&#8221;<\/span><\/em> only lasted two seasons. Ricky Gervais and\u00a0Stephen Merchant then went on to write the show <em><span style=\"color: #000000\">&#8220;Extras&#8221;<\/span><\/em>, following the characters David and Maggie as they &#8220;star&#8221; as extras in movies and TV shows. I think it probably nicely captures the boredom of the job which would involve a lot of standing around.<\/p>\n<p>Each week, some celebrity would make a guest appearance, such as Kate Winslet and Patrick Stewart. My favourite though was probably when Orlando Bloom made his guest appearance shortly after &#8220;Pirates Of The Caribbean&#8221; had been released:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lh7qzDJG94M?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my last Best of British post I started to share some of my favourite British comedy shows which have aired more recently. The Office Today I&#8217;d like to talk about a show with which most residents of the United States will be familiar, &#8220;The Office&#8221;. However, not all\u00a0Americans will know that this was originally a British TV show which<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[1676,1718,2969,1347],"class_list":["post-14827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","tag-best-of-british","tag-extras","tag-featured","tag-the-office"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14827"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64571,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14827\/revisions\/64571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}