The Office (British TV series)
British sitcom television series
The Office is a British mockumentary television sitcom first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC Two on 9 July 2001. Created, written, and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, it follows the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough branch of the fictional Wernham Hogg paper company. Gervais also starred in the series as the central character, David Brent.
When it first aired on BBC Two, ratings were relatively low, but it has since become one of the most successful British comedy exports. As well as being aired internationally on BBC Worldwide and channels such as BBC Prime, BBC America, and BBC Canada, it has been sold to broadcasters in over 80 countries, including ABC1 in Australia, The Comedy Network in Canada, TVNZ in New Zealand, and the pan-Asian satellite channel Star World, based in Hong Kong. It was aired in the United States on BBC America from 2001 to 2016, and later on Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim from 2009 to 2011.
Two six-episode series were made, followed by a two-part Christmas special. The series centres around themes of social clumsiness, the trivialities of human behaviour, self-importance, conceit, frustration, desperation, and fame. The Office is considered to be one of the best television series of the 21st century and of all time.
Premise
The series is a mockumentary based in a branch of fictional British paper company Wernham Hogg (where "life is stationery") located in the Slough Trading Estate.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Office (British TV series)” is british sitcom television series. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Office, British and series, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q23829. VIAF identifies the subject as 182525260. The Library of Congress control number is no2006052105. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001, 2016, 2009 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Office (British TV series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.