00s britcom third place play-off: BLACK BOOKS vs THE OFFICE

Black Books is fine, but a bit trad and patchy. It didn't break ground like the Office did.

Uh, this poll is a bit silly. Can't vote anyway because I've never seen "Black Books", fuck watching a Dylan Moran.

peep show the office voters should be outed and effing shot

i mean at risk of committing the genetic fallacy, anything that launched gervais on the world has to be a huge mistake, in retrospect.

black books is actually funny

with ledge on this, black books has much less dismal import - in its fluffiness it transcends the office and occasionally as said on that other thread finds the sublime - much more enjoyable and suitable experience

You guys are just being cool.

Well I'm sticking up for The Office - stripped of What Was to Come it's brilliant. Also it spawned one of the best US sitcoms of the past ten years, so its legacy isn't all bad surely. I love Black Books too BTW.

xpost - I suspect so too.

well, 'effing shot' takes it a bit far. the office isn't all bad, has its moments - but it's really self-mythologising and small-minded imo

peep show the office voters ricky gervais should be effing shot

black books, black books, black books

<3 dylan moran Tom D. crazy

I am trying to think of examples of why BB is so great but it's been too long since I've watched it and I have a cold and am doped up on OTC meds and am drawing a blank. But you know, when Bernard, Manny and Fran do that thing with the stuff, it's great!

Uh, this poll is a bit silly

You'll be pleased to know that I'm drawing the line at a Nathan Barley/Green Wing/Mighty Boosh sixth place play off...

Weird that now Black Books likers are "just being cool" when prior to the first round of this poll all references I'd seen to BB on ILX were negative

anyway The Office really goes for the "uncomfortable" in "comedy of uncomfortable recognition of flawed universe", Black Books is a trad sitcom and doesn't mind being comfortable about it - the idea that the latter has suddenly returned to being more "cool" than the former is unexpected, but if so I'll take it, thanks

(voting BB, not expecting it to win but maybe Gervais really has outstayed his welcome that much - certainly did long ago in the spacecadet household)

I think the point was not that people are 'just being cool' for liking Black Books, but rather for dismissing the Office based on the current Gervais backlash.

All made in a jokes bruv way, obviously.

dismissing the Office based on the current Gervais backlash

For what it's worth, I've never liked either the UK or US version of the office very much. My vote for BB has nothing to do with "current Gervais backlash" or "being cool". BB, on the other hand, I loved from the first episode I saw.

aye, ditto. i mean it's been interesting finding out that gervais and brent really are one and the same, but he was an unappealing character from the start and the show never transcended that.

^

The Office is as much about Tim, Dawn and Gareth as it is about Brent though.

Gareth is the best character in the Office by a long chalk.

Gareth: unpleasant. Tim, Dawn: boring. Everyone else: unpleasant or boring.

Can't believe the central character in a show about the hell of working in an office full of tools was a tool.

I only like sitcoms with charming and loveable characters like unfunny drunks.

NVOTM

agree with Matt about Gareth tbh

NV layin it onnnnnnnn haha, can't we just all agree that Phoenix Nights is better than both of these and leave it at that

unfunny?!

can't we just all agree that Phoenix Nights is better than both of these and leave it at that

No

wd probs take PN over both of them, it has its cake both ways in pretending to have "heart" but leaving the icy glint of Kay's soulless Terminator-ness visible just under the surface.

PN is really Fitzmaurice's show tho.

shabbaaaaa

Yeah come on Brent is obviously supposed to be unpleasant, it doesn't actually matter whether Gervais himself is unpleasant as well any more than it matters whether some pop star writes their own songs or not. If it works in the finished product it's alright with me.

Still, I've not actually wanted to go back to the Office in several years but I still occasionally want to watch an episode of Black Books.

Black Books for me is the sitcom equivalent of sitting in the student union bar while some bloke at the next table goes "oh maaaaaan we were sooooooo drunk last night it was hilaaaaaarious" for half an hour so I really have no choice, but in any case I think The Office is still funny, mean, heartbreaking and well-executed, despite its endless repetition and the fact that Ricky Gervais is the first man in the history of comedy to be not v. charming irl.

don't get me wrong, I am no real BB fan, but I'd rather watch it - The Office is the equivalent of sitting in...an office...while people are being twats at you for an hour ffs, at least student unions can sometimes be fun rather than dismal, bit of the old escapism innit

The Office works better as social commentary than as comedy, I'll give it that

Maybe it's the faux-realism of The Office that turns me off. BB, Father Ted, Fawlty Towers, they're broad-brush, even slapstick, the characters are all caricatures, no real-life book shop or hotel or er house full of priests would be like that. The Office wants to be taken seriously and it just brings me down.

xp escapism, yes.

ledge on same page as me but BB doesn't rlllly belong with those other two let's be honest

chap OTM upthread. Gervais's current ubiquity eclipses the Office, which was as much a charming and sensitive observation of lowly white collar drudgery and how people muddle through it, as it was a fat bloke in a shirt doing an embarassing Bee Gee dance.

You'd be forgiven for almost forgetting the subtle interplay between the other characters in the show - Tim's change from bewildered everyman in the first series to faux-suit middle manager in the second. Dawn's relationship with her husband and the little glances echanged with Tim. And of course Gareth, who is rightly the funniest guy in the show.

It's not all belly-laughs, but like Peep Show, it's more about what you recognise in yourself and other people and places.

BB is kinda on the Blackadder level imo, maybe a bit more ephemeral and less richard curtis hence better

sounds awful xp

I wouldn't set rules for what good comedy has to be, so I'm not privileging realism over escapism or satire over silliness. I just think The Office does what it sets out to do very very well, it succeeds within its own remit, whereas BB's escapism seems shallow and banal - a book shop, ffs. Book shops are not funny. Prisons, department stores, occupied fucking Belgium apparently but not a book shop. The situation is a nullity, it's a blank canvas for 2 and a half shticks, but without the shticks being given much funny to say and do. Sorry I'm sure Moran is a personable stand-up and I've said elsewhere he's done at least one show I enjoy, but I strongly believe people like BB cos it's cute or something and its charm thoroughly baffles me.

Sorry I'm sure Moran is a personable stand-up

Bloody awful imo

Watching Linehan and Mathews' post Father Ted career makes you realise what a stellar cast FT had.

Was good ten to fifteen years ago.

xpost

Can't really explain why I don't like the Office and do like Black Books.

I mean I've gotta admit I'd prefer to, y'know, laugh than to sit there unsmiling, wincing occasionally and thinking "that was a conceptually neat wry tragicomedy", but on the other hand The Thick Of It has a similar architecture (agonisingly intricate layering of misfortunes befalling tools who remain human enough to sympathise with during each episode's grand disaster) and I'll be voting for that on the other thread.

Whereas Black Books is an old-fashioned sitcom of the kind ILXors have previously had a lot of contempt for, should have been left in the 70s etc etc, and I couldn't point at any particular aspect of it which I want to claim is clever or different, but it makes me laugh. That is all.

Why I am not a TV reviewer, part 34582.

Whereas Black Books is an old-fashioned sitcom of the kind ILXors have previously had a lot of contempt for

Have they?

I had got that impression! I had not added it to my .xls however

I thought ILX was generally pro the trad format.

There's a lot of love for Black Books on its own thread.

I find Moran a funnier standup than Bill Bailey most of the time, although I have a high tolerance for curmudgeon schtick and a low tolerance for self-conscious cuteness.

I wouldn't set rules for what good comedy has to be

hey me neither, just trying to figure out my own experience. realism seems like a convenient excuse but yeah there are probably dozens of counterexamples you could come up with.

Why I am not a TV reviewer, part 34582.

ditto. i don't even know why i hate homer simpson but like peter griffin.

tbf "omg we got so drunk" isn't really any worse than "omg that's totally where i work", esp as drunken anecdotes are occasionally funny whereas people moaning abt their boss is always dull as fuck

I used to have a boss who'd get drunk and tell people about his erectile dysfunction, friends used to actively ask for updates. Not quite the same thing though.

I don't think The Office relied so much on "omg that's totally where I work" as "omg that is what work is like and I have to do it for the rest of my useful life".

i decided on the other thread to revisit the_office. i thought it was brilliant at the time, and it's not about gervais 'becoming' a dick afterwards, coz that friday night show he did on channel 4 (bit woozy on the details but he did have his own show) in 2001 was completely awful. brent is an indelible creation in a way 'black books guy' is not.

anyway i think i've done my share of gervais-hating over the years.

It was called the Ricky Gervais SHow, and I can't remember anything about it except it wasn't very good, and it had the most unattractive set known to man.

Oh actually it was called Meet Ricky Gervais

how is this even a thing? you guys are nuts. black books is comedy for american anglophiles, the office is amazing.

ime "am i just a cog in the machinery of capital" outweighed by "OMG MY BOSS IS TOTALLY DAVID BRENT" by 10000000000000:1 (approx)

I think BB is the only Britcom from that list I haven't been able to watch a whole ep of. It just didn't do it for me. Maybe I need to give it another chance?
From wikipedia: "Gervais has announced he is starting work on a Chinese version of The Office."

Unless The Office features a cordless drill with a corkscrew attachment that I'm not aware of BLACK BOOKS FOR ALL TIME.

x-post - I've shown ppl BB who have just been like, "uhhhhh and this is funny why exactly?" so maybe you're just one of those people.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Ha!

More ppl identify with being an angry drunk loner than being in a boring office, ILX in a nutshell etc

i think you are ignoring the strong angry drunk loner in a boring office demographic

was just going to say...

RMMFE