Did you try turning it off and on?

You know that variety of procrastination where, instead of working on what you're supposed to be working on you watch an entire TV series until you run out of available episodes?

Welcome to my world.

Introducing my new favourite television series, The IT Crowd, a brilliantly written, laugh-out-loud funny (seriously, I keep getting chided to be quiet) combination of two of my favourite things: Britishness and nerdiness.  (I'm slightly ashamed to report that I ONLY got 92% on the official IT Crowd quiz.)

I stumbled upon it on Netflix (remind me to rant about their unruly habit of making all the seasons available instantly save one), where it's introduced as follows:

Enter the glamorous offices of Reynholm Industries, then take the elevator to the basement, where you'll find the decidedly unglamorous IT support team: slacker Roy (Chris O'Dowd), social misfit Moss (Richard Ayoade) and technically ignorant supervisor Jen (Katherine Parkinson). Together, they find nerd-tastic adventures in this hilarious British sitcom from the producer of "The Office." The program won a 2008 International Emmy for Best Comedy.

As it turns out, IFC is currently airing the original episodes.
(I picked a clip at random -- it's so hard to choose:)

 

Which is a far, far better idea than NBC's ill-fated (the pilot never aired) American version, which used the same scripts and 1/3 of the original cast. As Chris O'Dowd explains in this 2007 interview:

"They approached us all around the same time to do it," says O'Dowd, "and I couldn't do the pilot, so I couldn't really do the show, because I was shooting something else. I was gonna play American and Richard was gonna play English, but I'm not sure how they're doing it now. And I'm not 100% sure it's still gonna go, to be honest... [They] commissioned it, and then a new head of the network came in, and I don't think he's so sure about it...The guy in the pilot, I saw the press shots for it, and he's wearing the same T-shirt I'm wearing. It's quite creepy."

He's not kidding. RTFM, indeed.  In NBC's defense, they DID change the color.

Chris O'Dowd in the original

Some other dude in NBC's unaired pilot

Apparently, NBC is going to have another go at it.  As reported by Comedy Central UK, the show’s creator Graham Linehan said in a webchat for The Guardian:

‘They’re working on [a remake] at the moment. I’m waiting to see the first script. I have encouraged them to do their own thing and not try to slavishly copy the original...As long as there’s no hugging, no learning, and big set piece moments, I’ll be happy...But if the show moves too far away from what I consider to be the IT Crowd ‘brand’, I’ll be asking them to change the title.’ 

Yeah, I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, I love you Richard Ayoade. Wikipedia would have you believe that he is the son of a Nigerian father and a Norwegian mother.  As for me, I'm convinced he's the love child of Jemaine Clement and Malcolm Gladwell.

	Do you see the resemblance?

I'm thinking Moss for Halloween this year. 

On a final note, I made the theme song B's personalized ringtone. Between the theme of the show and the badass synthesizer, it's kind of perfect, except that I feel compelled to let most of the song play before I actually pick up the phone.