The Office might be returning to office
A million Michael Scott GIFs suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced
Aux News The Office
Who’s ready to return to Office?
Less than 24 hours after the WGA announced its tentative deal with the AMPTP, Puck reports that U.S. series creator Greg Daniels is returning to Dunder Mifflin for a reboot of his massively successful sitcom. Another U.S. remake of the series would mark the 11th incarnation of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s original show.
Of course, this isn’t the first we’ve heard of bringing The Office back. In 2019, following the success of the Will & Grace revival, Daniels told EW about his hesitation about opening up “such a perfect thing” and “disappointing fans.” Daniels is proud of where things left off and the effect the show had. “People will watch the entire series and then roll right into watching it again, and to me, that means we ended it properly,” he said.
Years later, at the Edinburgh TV Festival, NBC content chief Susan Rovner said they were “standing by” until “Greg Daniels wants to do one.” However, while everyone expected an Office revival featuring the original cast in 2022, Daniels clarified his vision, saying he was looking for more of an Office cinematic universe.
“I can’t tell whether fans would want more of it, and when I say more of it, I don’t think it would be the same characters,” he said. “I think it would just be sort of like an extension of the universe, you know what I mean, like the way Mandalorian is like an extension of Star Wars. But I don’t know if that would be something people would want or not, it’s hard to tell.”
Is the world ready for more The Office? Do fans want a new Jim smirking at the camera or a Michael Scott clone misgendering employees? We are in a bit of a meme drought at the moment. A couple more episodes of The Office for fans to caption and post around social media is precisely what we need right now.
87 Comments
Doesn’t even need to be “the office” reboot, just another docudrama from the creator of the office, Different company, different premise, and different cast. It’s worked for so much comedy from Spinal tap, the office, Parks and Rec, Just need a good cast and good writing team.
It already exists, it’s called Superstore. In this one, there’s more balance in the Jim-Pam relationship, as Jim (who looks like Ryan Howard) is a screwup who’s forced to take a menial job at a store and Pam is his superior at work. Dwight is a woman, Stanley is in a wheelchair, Kevin is an Hawaiian woman, etc.
Also, Mark McKinney
Superstore also knew when to end and, contrary to a lot of shows, did so perfectly (at least to me). I say this as someone that just rewatched Scrubs, even the 9th season in “med school”.
There is no 9th season of Scrubs…
…no…9th….season.
Lets be honest….Superstore is good, but it sure isn’t great.
I disagree! I’d put Superstore on par with even The Office’s best seasons.
It’s good+ / great-. Right on the verge. Consistently funny with a super engaging cast.American Auto, also from the Superstore producer tried and failed to hit those same notes.
The second season of American Auto was a significant improvement, if you gave up early I’d suggest giving it a look.
Hard disagree other than the budding connection between Wesley and Dori. A tremendous waste of a great cast.
I’ll be completely honest and say that Superstore was fantastic.
It actually had a lot of solid writing but it could be fairly unfocused and it fell a bit into the trap of “we’re all one big happy family” workplace storytelling, which always feels disingenuous. But I do think it’s a bit underrated even for all that. Its depiction of working class people and the challenges they face was very grounded in reality.
I really felt it was a strongly middle-class impression of what working-class people were, its a big part of my reluctance towards it. All the larger issues were very clunky and landed with thuds, incongruous with what working in these spaces are (what I assume, limited experience in my youth which is much too long ago to be relevant) actually like. It felt …performative and arch. Some of the softer notes – mostly for the broader cast like Cheyenne/Sandra/Mateo – were really much better than this. But I always felt that one of the plots for almost every episode was some version of on the nose/not from an really authentic voice/going through a prescriptive set of motions.
Excuse you. The Sandra/Kevin comparison is terrible. Sandra is possibly one of my favorite characters ever to appear on tv. A middle aged woc, not conventionally attractive, but allowed to be a fully realized weirdo? She’s completely unique and the actress who plays her has incredible comedic timing. Kevin is fine but he was always very one note and became super flanderized as the show went on.
Superstore was so great that no one watched it
Or any modern workplace sitcom (too lazy to list) but like Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Parks and Rec and about a zillion others. I have no faith Daniel’s idea wouldn’t just be Brooklyn Nine-Nine… it’s not possible to do The Offices mean-spirited humor on TV anymore. It’s not gonna happen. So like… I don’t understand why people are talking about this.
As someone who has been in that sector for 15 years now, I can tell you there is a lot of comedy to be found in the non-profit industry. You have your hard-core believers in the charity who donate 15 percent of their salary back, the mercenaries who have raised money for cancer research, Special Olympics, the homeless and diabetes and haven’t felt a thing, the ones just itching to get to the private sector to make the real money and then one person who knows how to run the donor database and isn’t sharing.
And that’s before you even get to the wacky-ass donors.
(cough cough) and The Good Place (cough)
There was a CBS sitcom called The Office that aired for 6 episodes in 1995.
There are also numerous bars named “The Office” with the joke being that people being asked where they were can say “At The Office” (Similarly, near universities there are bars called “The Library”).
Honestly, it has become one of my go-to idle-watching shows (as it has for many), and it’s almost entirely because of the characters. I’ve never been a big cringe comedy fan, but I love the hangout feel with the character I watched for years. I’d be skeptical bringing them back, so a side-boot is probably the best option.That said, the version I’m picturing in my head has strong “Scrubs: the new class” vibes, which would be an easy hole for them to fall into.
‘Scrubs: The New Class’? So it’s gonna get cancelled just as it starts to find its footing?
Very well said. I don’t regard Scrubs season 9 as canon (why would you when the Season 8 finale is a perfect series finale??), but I can at least admit the weird “ninth” season or soft spinoff or whatever seemed to have a clearer direction as it went.But at least it gave us Kerry Bishé, who would later go on to do amazing work in Halt and Catch Fire.
Kerry Bishe was the worst part of Med School, except for the security guards.
I should read further down in the comments, as I just referenced the 9th season in another one. But for all the stilted and strange staging for it, there was some good in it – mainly from Eliza Coupe and Kerry Bishe.
Scrubs Med School was better than the preceding two seasons, especially once they pivoted off Girl JD and onto Jo and #1.
I’d imagine Krasinski and Carrell would be too expensive to bring back.
“People will watch the entire series and then roll right into watching it again, and to me, that means we ended it properly,” he said. “And then we did another two seasons,” he added.
I was going to ask after “Daniels told about his hesitation about opening up ‘such a perfect thing’ and ‘disappointing fans.’” if he had even seen the last couple of seasons.
I went back years later and watched those later seasons with fresh eyes. It’s almost like it’s a different show, which is why I didn’t like it at the time. It *is* different. But honestly, it’s not bad once you come to terms with that fact and watch it on those terms. A lot of really great jokes.
exactly, those episodes were still really funny. its just that carrell was the heart of the show so it just wasnt the same. still good though.
This makes me think of how much I hated the Plop/Aaron love arc. Also the way they treated Andy was awful. It was a great show up until Michael left, and even the last season with him was pretty uneven.
So, wait, this is a reboot, not a revival? That seems like an odd choice. The characters are what people loved about The Office, not the premise. The premise is that there is no premise, it’s literally just a workplace comedy. While I’m sure good writers can write a new batch of good characters, it seems like hamstringing them to call their show “The Office” if it’s not about people in the office from The Office.
More of a spin-off set in the same world than a reboot.
i mean, everybody loved the characters from the british one, too.
The vast majority of people who are fans of the American Office have never seen the British Office and didn’t even realize it was an adaptation. The British Office was a cult show. That is not the case here. The American Office was a big hit across a wide audience base.
Your claims here seem . . . dubious.
They’re not my claims, they’re facts.
“Daniels told about his hesitation about opening up “such a perfect thing” and “disappointing fans.”no trouble there, since season 5 onwards was a slippert slope to disappointment.If anyone is interested in watching this shouw, i only recommend season 1 to the season 5 preimier. then stop there. you will feel good and it is a great ending.
Perhaps a workplace comedy set somewhere besides an office? Although in few other settings would it be at all realistic for the employees to spend half their time fucking off. Hmm. I’m not coming up with much. Any ideas?
I seriously think there could be a good comedy about professors, postdocs and grad students working in a lab together, not in a science fictional way where they discover cold fusion or the cure to cancer, but work on realistic scientific problems that nobody outside their narrow subfield cares about or even understands.
I mean, Parks and Rec and Superstore basically follow the same premise, minus an actual documentary or crew being shown at any point
+ Abbott Elementary
Oh of course I love Abbott how could I forget that.
And What we do in the Shadows.
I did think of that though it’s not a workplace, but yes 🙂
A bar perhaps?
I say set it in the military, similar to McHales Navy (which I did not realize was also a TV show until just now). Trust me, we fucked off plenty.
You know, now that I think about it, The Office really missed an opportunity by reviving only after the lockdowns stopped.Them doing a ‘pandemic revival season’ that’s just everyone working from home would basically have translated perfectly into what I think is the core Office audience: people relating their lives to The Office, and reposting gifs that tangentially relate to what’s going on.
eh, why not.Jenna Fischer could use all the work she can get.Talk about a one trick pony.
Reject my “The Office but it’s a for-profit prison” pitch at your own peril, Daniels!
Office is the New Black?
Picturing a shiv in a Jello mold already, Gobby.
… or the guards keep their keys in a vending machine but the prisoners never have any change.
No that’s ok. I realize people watch it over and over again for whatever reason, but we don’t need more of it. Thanks!
obviously they’ll keep it all new characters so the legacy actors can come back for sweeps week, but if they cast this right it could obviously get another 5 years out of it.people i would like to see in the cast:joe pera, dylan gelula, conner o’malley, zach fox, patti harrison, adam pally, and that weiner kid from jury duty.
Joe Pera being cast would be the only thing that would get me excited about this.
tim robinson could also do a ‘michael scott type’ in his sleep.
I think he’d be the wrong fit for the role – he leans into obnoxiousness way too much. I enjoy his sketches (and I liked Detroiters) just fine but Michael worked because Carrell was the right mix of likeable and awkward. Could see Sam Richardson doing well in that role.
i guess i did specifically say ‘michael scott type’ but if we go a david brent route, he was super fucking obnoxious and not at all likeable (you pitied him, at most), which i think robinson could do
Lost 2: The Next Generation. The kids of the original cast crash land on the Island and encounter many exciting mysteries, none of which get resolved.
That already exists as a cheap Lost knockoff called Flight 29 Down
Never heard of it. Maybe I’ll check it out — I used to like watching “mockbusters” (low budget movies trying to cash in on their similarity to big budget movies of their time).
I’ve not seen it as it’s audience is children, it’s probably pretty cheesy.
“Hi, what’s your name?”“WAAAAALLLLTTTTT!”
Listen, times are tough, so I’m just gonna admit right now that I’d watch the shit out if that.
Have there really been 11 different versions of The Office, or did you just mean an 11th season when you said “incarnations”?
Wikipedia has 16 international versions, although two haven’t launched yet.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Office
Huh… the more you know!
do yourself a favour and watch the quebec one right now.
Is it more like the UK version, the US version, or the last two seasons of the US version? 🙂
Nope.
The favorite thing about The Office was how they knew to end it when Michael Scott left. It’s hard to imagine how many uninteresting new characters, uninspired cameos, and threadbare plot contrivances would have occurred if they had continued. They might’ve even gotten desperate enough to try another will-they-or-won’t-they subplot with Pam & Jim. God, can you imagine?
Pass, for the following reasons:1. The last few seasons of the Office were pretty terrible. They ran out of steam and it was obvious and painful.2. Season 1 was a “work fucking sucks” dark comedy, then Season 2 on was a pivot to “you like these characters, hang out with them during their mundane job”. In other words, part of the appeal was the characters themselves, not the premise.3. I would bet good money that the enduring appeal of The Office is based in large part of the fact that it is comfort TV that was and is largely available, rather than being stellar TV that people seek out. NBC, to paraphrase Jack Donaghy, really wants to make it 2007 again through science or magic. The moment for the Office was great, but passed.
it’s so funny that everyone seems to unanimously agree that the last few seasons were bad, because i actually thought kathy bates/james spader (and the rest of the new blood) reinvigorated things. the 3-part florida sabre triangle release arc is my fave thing the show ever did.but i also never really liked michael scott or had any affection for carrell in the role, which makes me an outlier amongst outliers.
I like the *idea* of new bosses, I just thought it was poorly executed. Kathy Bates was a complete whack-a-doo character. James Spader was the kind of boss that people would actively avoid, not go to his basement pool party (the last episode I watched live, incidentally, before giving up on the show). Both of them were so far removed from reality, combined with shit like the travelling bus episode, whatever the fuck wuphf.com was (as well as bringing Ryan back as a temp), no one apparently knowing how to pronounce Sabre, the Senator/Oscar/Angela situation, whatever Athlead was… all of it was just so crazy that it was no longer the same show.
yeah it was a show i liked more haha. i think robert california is the best character the show ever came up with, full stop.
And I fully support that! Different strokes for different folks and all.
Since you invoked the 3 to the 0 to the Rock, Jack McBrayer would make a great character on an Office type show, because co-workers with that much joie de vivre can often be real life Colin Robinsons.
Please don’t. Please give us something new. I loved The Office. Let it be dead. It’s okay. All things must die, and most things should stay that way.
I would be pretty cautious about this. Because the trend for Greg Daniels shows seems to be for them to be getting worse. Like King of the Hill was amazing. Office and Parks and Rec were very very good. But Space Force and Upload were not good. So if he keeps going in that direction we will probably get something very bad.
to be slightly fair to daniels, netflix offered space force to him. it wasn’t his idea. to be fair to the office, that wasn’t his idea either.
Well then to also be fair, he originally wasn’t supposed to get a created by credit on KOTH just a developed by. But Mike Judge thought that he did so much work setting up the show that he made it so they were both creators. I watched KOTH a while ago, and it is impressive how great it was right from the start. Space Force and Upload were not.
Deleted – is there really no way to delete a post?
Upload has a lot of wasted potential. Daniels seems to do better with more generalized settings that allow interesting characters to interact with each other. That just doesn’t work in shows with PLOT PLOT PLOT being the main focus.
Just because a younger audience found this show through zombie-binge watching during 2020 does not mean the people who watched the later seasons of this show want it to come back.Great, we’re all glad your teenagers understand the Kevin’s Chili meme, but this damn show didn’t even know when to end when it was on the air, much less having deserved the reboot treatment. Make something different and interesting like your partner Mike Schur did, and stop trying to adapt and reboot everything.
Someone should have told Daniels that he was in the good ole’ days before he left them.