BBC's The Office finally comes stateside

A mere twelve episodes of The Office had aired on the BBC in 2001 when the show's co-creator and star, Ricky Gervais, chose to end the series at the height of its popularity in Britain, before the comedy even had a chance to reach American shores. Fortunately, thanks to the recent release of a DVD with the show's first six episodes and a run of the remaining six on BBC America, those of us in the States will finally have an opportunity to see Gervais's brilliant, inconceivably funny television series.

As its name suggests, the action of The Office centers on the anonymous, cubicled confines of the corporate workplace. Specifically, the show takes place in the dreary London suburb of Slough, home of paper wholesaler "Wernham Hogg, Inc." and the denizens of the company's office.

David Brent, played by Gervais himself, runs the front office of one of the paper merchant's two branches. The focal point of the show, Brent is a woefully incompetent supervisor, more concerned with winning over his employees with humor than actually managing his department. Brent's dopey, loyal-to-the-end assistant is Gareth Keenan (Mackenzie Crook). Keenan's bizarre attitude and quick but harmless temper provides comic fodder for Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman), a listless, dissatisfied college dropout and the show's straight man, and Dawn Tinsley (Lucy Davis) his love interest as well as the office's receptionist.

Although The Office mines the same white-collar disillusionment and corporate absurdity as the Comedy Central classic Office Space, the show's real humor doesn't lie with its pointed observations on life in the cubicle, but rather, with the character of David Brent. The standard gags like photocopier breakdowns and hot coffee scaldings are left to Dilbert strips here, as they serve simply as a backdrop for Brent and his idiocy.

With Brent, Gervais has created a character that is as unlikable as he is unfunny. Brent is a hypocrite and a liar, an egoist and an unregenerate misogynist, a fake and a tyrant. He promises his workers that they will not be fired in an upcoming downsizing but is quick to sell them out when offered a promotion. Obsessed with being the center of attention, he hijacks a motivational speaker's training seminar to play some of his songs on acoustic guitar. He is, in the words of many of his superiors and underlings, "a sad little man."

The humor of The Office is aimed squarely at Brent himself, in particular his terrible sense of humor. In fact, Brent's jokes are so painfully unfunny and clumsy that they inevitably lead to a moment of awkward silence as he bares his teeth in an embarrassed grimace, self-consciously smoothes his tie, and quietly walks away from his co-workers' disbelieving stares.

Where The Simpsons relies on sight gags and parodies, and Seinfeld on its characters' pathetic and conniving personalities, The Office utilizes awkward moments as its comedic fodder. The show is at its funniest when Brent's jokes go horribly awry and everything screeches to a deadening halt. During these moments, viewers are just as likely to feel extremely uncomfortable, as they are to laugh out loud.

Gervais has made Brent so unappealing that it's hard to believe someone this terrible, this inept could even exist. Yet, by the end of each episode, Gervais has us convinced that there are not only a couple David Brents in the world but that we know one or two ourselves. It's Gervais's insistence on playing everything straight-to shoot the show as if it were a documentary about a real office, and to forego without a laugh track-that gives the show its real brilliance, its ability to strike a balance between the banal and the hysterical, the awkward and the hilarious.

Ultimately, The Office is concerned with deconstructing the idea of humor itself. Every episode questions what is and isn't funny; from the practical jokes Tim plays on Gareth to Brent's pontificating on politically correct humor in the workplace. Somehow these questions seem appropriate for a show that isn't funny in any traditional sense but rather shows just how funny the unfunny can really be.