20 Years of ‘The Office’

TV comedy history can be divided into before The Office and after.

Since the 1950s, when I Love Lucy introduced the multi-camera shooting style—with three cameras covering a stage, acted out like a play, often in front of a live audience—most TV sitcoms had been shot that way. Early HBO scripted shows in the ‘90s, like The Larry Sanders Show and Sex and the City, had begun to change that by shooting “single camera,” like a movie, with no audience or laugh track, with frequent forays to outside locations. The network hoped to distinguish itself by making shows that were more film-like, and it worked.

The style began to spread to broadcast comedies like Fox’s Arrested Development, but the British Office changed the game when it premiered in 2001 using a mockumentary form. It mimicked movies like This Is Spinal Tap by pretending to be a documentary while telling the fictional story of boss David Brent, played by co-creator Ricky Gervais as an inappropriate dolt ruling over a small paper company office.

When an adaptation of the show, starring Steve Carell as the inappropriate American dolt Michael Scott, came to the United States, its eventual success had wide-ranging effects on sitcoms ever-after, popularizing both cringe humor and, perhaps more surprisingly, the mockumentary format. It turned out to be the right approach at the right time: Its resemblance to reality TV, which was also on the rise, with its talking-head shots featuring major players explaining their feelings to the camera, made the format easy to swallow for audiences. Greg Daniels, who adapted The Office for NBC in America, believed, as he told me in a recent interview, that “the mockumentary format is how people look at the world now, because everybody has a camcorder. At that time, it was a camcorder, not a phone.” Suddenly, viewers weren’t even questioning why a documentary crew would be following the Pritchett-Dunphys of Modern Family, the Pawnee government in Parks and Recreation, or, more recently, the teachers of Abbott Elementary. When Office writer Michael Schur left to co-create and run Parks and Rec, he told star Amy Poehler she wouldn’t want to shoot any other way once she did a mockumentary, and he was right: “The way in which you could push story along by using talking heads was major,” she told me. “You could tell the audience what you were feeling, and then the camera could tell the story that the actors weren’t telling. The camera became subtext, like our own subconscious.”

As the Peabody-winning U.S. version of The Office reaches its 20^th anniversary this week, its availability on streaming has made it more popular than ever, proving to be a lasting phenomenon with subsequent generations.

The Office gave us regular people trying to live regular and relatable lives, in a regular place, Dunder Mifflin Paper Company’s branch in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Other shows may have focused on sexy young people in big cities pursuing big dreams or solving crimes or performing life-saving surgeries while pursuing dramatic personal relationships. The Office,  though, showed that the lives of normal people, just like those of most of the viewers, were funny, sweet, romantic, and worthy of watching. Although it made jokes about racism, sexism, alcoholism, and homophobia—and pointedly sent up Michael’s awful management style—over its nine-season run, The Office differentiated itself from its British predecessor by veering more heartfelt at times. It even managed to slowly redeem and humanize Michael, thanks to Carell’s performance.

Now, the series means something else. While plenty of people still go to offices, and we all relate to the mundanity of work for pay, the 2020 pandemic changed work culture for millions. Many workers now complete their daily tasks at home, attending meetings via Zoom and maybe coming in once a week or once a month, if at all. The Office serves as a 2000s time capsule, showing what things were like before everything unexpectedly changed.

All of these factors have led Peacock to order a new spinoff series called The Paper, which is co-created by The Office’s Greg Daniels along with Nathan for You executive producer Michael Koman. Set in the same fictional universe as The Office and featuring original cast member Oscar Nunez among its large ensemble, The Paper has a documentary film crew following a flailing Midwestern newspaper as it tries to survive with a volunteer reporting staff. And that’s not to mention The Office‘s even larger legacy, as evidenced by the other offshooting branches of its TV family tree. Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mindy Project, and Hacks are among the (many) series whose producers came from The Office‘s writing staff. And the currently buzzy Severance is one example of ways The Office influence can show up in very different shows.

Just more proof that The Office is as relevant as ever, 20 years after its premiere.

Where to Watch: Peacock