For the first five minutes, the Australian take on The Office feels a genuinely fresh and updated retelling of the story.
Western Sydney packaging company Flinley Craddick (the main setting) has operated a popular work-from-home policy since Covid-19 and budget constraints (plus common sense) have means that the office might be closed.
But managing director Hannah Howard (Felicity Ward) doesn’t want to lose her “family” – even if she is the only one to consider the workers like this. And she is willing to invent any number of untruths as to why her reluctant staff need to come in at all costs, telling regional director Alisha (a comically stubborn Pallavi Sharda) that forcing them to come in would quadrupule profits.
It’s irresponsible, deluded and rather sad. And it feels like just the kind of thing that David Brent would have tried had he been managing a post-pandemic Wernham Hogg.
With that in mind, this Prime Video Australian reboot of The Office should be an easy win. A cheap to produce, ready-made hit with an established fan base.
Does it work? That’s more up for debate. The post-pandemic office setting does offer a few easy, but well-taken, gags. In the first episode, staff members prefer playing a quiz on Zoom despite sitting a few metres apart. But soon, the old Office subplots start to come to the fore once more.
Hannah (the equivalent of Ricky Gervais’s Brent or Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott) is willing to let the company slide in the pursuit of office popularity. She is disliked by everyone apart from her dogsbody Lizzie (a female Gareth Keenan) and the company is falling apart.
But the main narrative is centred on the will-they-won’t-they relationship of Tim and Dawn, sorry, I mean front desk colleagues Nick and Greta.
It is all rather familiar ground, and whether Julie De Fina and Jackie van Beek bring enough new material here to make it worthwhile is questionable. Despite the setting, there is little inherently Australian about the show to distinguish its western Sydney location from UK and US settings of Slough or Scranton, Pennsylvania, respectively.
There’s a joke about the M1 (think the M25) getting backed up, a reference to Parramatta (I’d say Dalston is our equivalent), and a character lives in Woy Woy, a picturesque town slightly too far away for an easy commute (Rye or Lewes, maybe). To be honest, the first three episodes (which were available for review purposes) could have been in London – but for the accents.
The strength of this Office reboot is not in its Australianness or the now slightly tired mockumentary style, but its cast. Aussie comic actress Ward (known Down Under as a panel show regular) is eccentric and needy enough to be Brent-like as Hannah but, unlike early Michael Scott, never tries to do an impression of Gervais.
Like the British and US versions, a lot of the humour comes from her rivalry with the Tim/Jim character, here called Nick. Steen Raskopoulos is perhaps the greatest carbon copy in the show and brings nothing new to the role, but love interest Greta (Shari Sebbens) is at least developed beyond a secretary here to a fully valued member of the team, albeit still with an inferior boyfriend.
It might take time for the Australian Office to find its feet, but it does offer an improvement on the American version’s early days. There is no copy of the stapler in the jelly, at least, and if Lizzie is a TA veteran, she keeps it to herself.
It feels Prime has taken on a safe bet with this sitcom and it delivers a steady stream of gags. But for seasoned fans, there is little more than treading over old ground here.
