Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to time travel – just watch the Australian remake of The Office. Viewing this version of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s massively influential mockumentary series as a portal through time is a good way to make sense of it, because boy does this show grab the skeletons of a fusty old format and jangle them in your face.
Given The Office has already been remade a dozen times – including a brilliant long-running US version that (apologies to my British colleagues) surpassed the original – the key challenge for the Australian reboot was to bring something new to the table. The amazing thing is that the creators don’t seem to have even tried. The mockumentary is so done that even the Muppets were goofily mocking the format – in 2015. Even then, Stuart Heritage rightly noted that cutaway character interviews “would have been a sophisticated touch had this been made in 2005, but now just comes off as grimly rote”. Almost a decade later, what do we call it now? Morbidly rote?
