Ricky Gervais has said he “can’t wait to see” how Australia intends to modernise The Office.
On Tuesday (30 May), it was announced that Australian comedian Felicity Ward will lead the country’s forthcoming re-envisioning of the popular British sitcom.
While Prime Video’s The Office: Australia is the 13th version of the workplace mockumentary series, it will be the first-ever female-led version.
Comic Gervais, who created and starred in the original UK version as the insufferable David Brent, said: “I’m very excited about Australia remaking my little show from the turn of the century.
“Office politics have changed a bit in 20 years, so can’t wait to see how they navigate a modern-day David Brent.”
Sophia Zachariou, producer and co-managing director of Bunya Entertainment, said: “To me, Wernham Hogg’s David Brent was a leading light in comedy. The Office UK made the mockumentary form available to a wide audience, and that was its sheer brilliance.
“I can only hope that global audiences find our Aussie take on The Office as funny, self-deprecating, and believable as those that have gone before it.”
Gervais’s groundbreaking two-season smash hit made its debut in 2001.
“This was a show about everything. It was about difference, it was about sex, race, all the things that people fear to even be discussed or talked about now,” the 61-year-old actor said in a 2020 interview.
He added that if The Office “was put out now”, it would risk being “cancelled”.
The Office: Australia will be set in the post-Covid present day and stars Ward as Hannah Howard, the managing director of a packaging company who “goes into survival mode” after being told her branch is shutting down and going remote.
As she attempts to “keep her ‘work family’ together”, Hannah begins “making promises she can’t keep”.
Production on the eight-episode series is set to begin in Sydney in June.
