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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: August 20, 2001
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Office (UK), “Judgement” (Season 1, Episode 6) [Watch on Hulu]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The influence of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s The Office on the world of television comedy cannot be overstated. What started for many Americans as the best comedy that you don’t (or can’t) watch on TV quickly became an influence on most of the comedy writers who would make television comedy for the ensuing decade. And before Gervais became somewhat soured after his turn as the Golden Globe host who took his sacred duty to skewer actors and actresses every bit as seriously as those actors and actresses took themselves, he was fearsomely committed to what would come to be known as the comedy of awkwardness.
The first season series finale saw Gervais’ David Brent at his most spineless, flip-flopping on his decision to take a promotion (and thus subject his current co-workers in Slough to downsizing). There were few more committed performances on television in the cable era as Gervais’ as David Brent, a creature of pure need and expedience and mushy morals and occasional goodness but mostly the kind of banal evil that resides in the hearts of most workaday men.
Meanwhile, the Tim and Dawn star-crossed office-mates plot continued at a pace and with a tone that completely belies descriptions like “star-crossed office-mates.” While their American counterparts, Jim and Pam, engaged in a much more overt, traditional will-they-or-won’t-they TV courtship, more suited to American audiences, Tim and Dawn instead reaches a crossroads here because Dawn was sad to see Tim back away from his dreams of independence from his desk-drone life. Everything is so melancholy and rainy and British! It’s wonderful.
[You can watch The Office (UK) on Hulu.]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
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