Adult Swim to air U.K version of The Office

If the previous article by me has left some with the impression that I’ve sworn off Adult Swim, that would be an incorrect assessment. Today Adult Swim publicist, Tim DeClair, announced that they have acquired the smash hit, “The Office.” The original BBC version! The American one is hilarious itself, but it’s great that see where the original idea came from. Here’s hoping for the Aussie comedy original “Kath & Kim” to make it state-side as well.

Created, written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, “The Office” is about the day-to-day lives of office employees in the Slough, Bershire branch of the fictitious Wernham Hogg Paper Company. The main character in the series, David Brent, as played by Gervais, is now firmly established as one of the great creations of comedy “" and one familiar to office workers everywhere. As regional manager of the company, Brent fancies himself as a great team leader using humor to win the loyalty of his staff. In reality, he is belittling, smug, sexist, insensitive, patronizing and unthinkingly offensive. He tells crude jokes and talks in cliches and only gets away with it because his staff feels obliged to humor him. His employees are stuck in mundane, dead-end jobs, surrounded by irritating colleagues and engaged in bitter feuds over the most trivial things. Filmed as a fly-on-the-wall documentary, “The Office” is working life at its worst. Get ready for ostrich costumes and copy-machine rofl-copters.

In case you can’t wait, “The Office” Seasons One and Two (BBC edition) are already available for purchase at most video stores, online and off.

Along with “The Office,” Adult Swim also recently purchased “The Mighty Boosh” from our entertaining neighbors across the pond, BBC Worldwide. “The Mighty Boosh” is a stoner’s entertainment series, but still very entertaining and funny when not high.

Trying to pin-down the core of a show like “The Mighty Boosh”, is like trying to capture wet bar of soap. The show revolves primarily around Howard (Julian Barratt) and Vince (Noel Fielding), along with their friends Naboo the Enigma, mystical shaman and pot dealer, and Bolo the gorilla, as they go on various surreal journeys. Recently in the series, (Season three had started in November 2007) the show was still set in Dalston, but this time has the foursome working in their shop called the Nabootique. Their adventures and outings in the third series were more toned down than the previous two series’, and they focused more on the involvement of new characters (e.g. Sammy the Crab, or Lester Corncrake etc) than just the two of them ‘journeying through time and space’.

With the original TV format being PAL, the conversion was delayed for Americans to have easy (legal) access to the series. But with rising popularity, “The Mighty Boosh” is coming to the US in standard North American DVD format (NTSC).

Adult Swim is owned by Turner Brodcasting System Incoporated. Which itself is a company owned by Time Warner. Adult Swim airs nightly around 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. BBC Worldwide is a subsidiary of the UK Britsh Brodcasting Corporation. The BBC has a US channel known as BBC America.