The IT Crowd goes west
Cult geek comedy The IT Crowd, has been sold to a US cable channel and the scripts for the third series have been delivered to producers. Series creator Graham Linehan admitted on his blog that he'd cut the deadline a bit fine and so could do with some help in making the series look and feel sufficiently geeky. He said he wants …
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Awsesome
The IT crowd is the best IT comedy since computers were invented....
A 3rd Series is great news, get in there reg..!
"If you type Google, into Google, you may break the internet"
Classic series, can't wait for the 3rd season.
I'm sure some yanks will get it, though it helps if you've seen Father Ted first and know what a bizarre comic-book world Graham Lineham's head spews out.
I hope they like it.....
....but not so much they decide to remake it, and kill it in the process as has happened with other great british comedies.
Good Idea
America may do a good job of this as they did a good job of taking Red Dwarf and making Hyperdrive
...ps Im being sarcastic ;)
Xenu Ted...
I'm sure there is mileage in a Father Ted type sitcom based around a failing scientologist minister and his inept, comdedic sidekick "Body Thetan Cruise".
Although I'm stumped for any one-liners revolving around Dianetic auditing.
IT crowd control
the best thing they could do to improve 'the IT crowd' [which has actually grown on me of late, after leaving me cold at first] would be to get rid of that fucking annoying woman [who plays their boss] and her crap unfunny, stupid face-pulling, over-acting. she's nearly - but not quite - as irritating as the talentless bint they got in to play the 'new' kachanski and thus hammer the final nail into 'red dwarf's' coffin.
Holy techno junk!
Funny the guy said he wanted the IT office to resemble the Batcave: the first IT job I had for an university that will remain nameless, the support team always called their office The Batcave :-)
God bless the septics,
I can see them making a reasonable fist of The IT Crowd, they did OK with The Office after all, but I fear for what they will do to the utterly wonderful Look Around You. If nothing else, who will they get with a voice as sexy as Peter Serafinowicz?
are you serious??
the first season was so-so, but the second season was a disaster. I can't believe they're making more...!!
Does ANYONE Know It's A Comedy...?
Lucky me, I've been unlucky enough to catch a few glimpses of this programme out here in Saudi Arabia. I didn't realise it was a comedy until I read your article..............
Why....
...are we exporting this rubbish? It's not a geek comedy, it's a comedy that ridicules geeks.
I'd be more than happy to see the turgid shit-com that is "The IT Crowd" die a death and fade into well-deserved obscurity.
Paris, 'cause at least she's actually funny, even if she doesn't mean to be.
Been there, Done that, do you have a T Shirt? :-)
Does America Dig Subversive Ironic Parody and Parallel Dimension Multi Polar Paranoia.... or is that for A.N.Other Time? .
Actually, that would be a Spooky Hack which the Script Writers could embrace .... with their Programs being XSS attacked by Ethical Terroritorial Advantagists ..... the Holy High Ground UnderGround using Registered Media Outlets to Take Over Critical InfraStructure Systems and ReAlign Output for Virtually SMARTer Being..... who always Get their Oats, John.
Although that would make AIdDArk Humour Beta Film, meThinks, rather than just being for a Comedy of Flash Errors....... but IT could be Alluded to, to tie in with a Games launch and BlockBusterCorporation Move into HyperRadioProActive DNAI Space.
.
But when will it reappear here?
C'mon Graham, we want to know.
BTW, I'd like a free t-shirt please if you are handing them out as I've been a loyal reader/poster for a long time now
women and shoes
I watched season 1, but only saw a couple of episodes of season 2. To me only the decor was particularly geeky. All the big jokes were about women and shoes.
A good show....
....the first series was pretty good and even. However, the second series was hamstrung by the fact that the first episode (the gay musical) was one of the most solidly funny half hours ever created and the rest was just pretty so so.
Still far better than most of the output from BBC/ITV.
The only other series that has got me interest is The Inbetweeners. My Gf doesnt get it though as she never went to sixth form.
@Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
You just made me spurt water from my nostrils onto my keyboard!
I too would like to see an american version of 'Father Ted'.
'Operating Betan Ted' kicks Bishop Xenu up the arse.
@ Chris Simpson
American's do wonderful things to our Sitcoms. Their remake of Fawlty Towers was remarkable, albeit for the fact that it did not have a Basil Fawlty character.
It's actually pretty good
I wasn't down the the IT Crowd at first...but after a while it grew on me and I really like it now...particularly as I'm a Garth Marenghi fan (shout out to Dean Learner!).
Also, and I hate to admit it but I kind of fancy the annoying bird who plays their boss...I have no idea why!!!
Devil Bill cos wothout him, the good bits wouldn't exist..
yay!
So wait...
I'm a yank who has seen the first two seasons and loved it. Are they starting over for the US market (The Office style) or are they simply putting the third season in both markets? If it's new, is Joel Mchale still tapped as a leading role?
Com'on El Reg, we need more info! Seriously though, IFC? Nobody is gonna watch it. I had heard it was coming to NBC as a new show, but as far as the cable stations go, IFC is at the bottom of the list. It's doomed.... This is like trying to watch Trailer Park Boys (a canadian show) on BBC America. 1 out of 1000 people will know what you are talking about.
i'm worried - amanfrommars is starting to make sense
it could be my pain killers wearing off, 'though
Nice Screen Saver
I particularly like the way the smoke seems to come out of the monitor
How about ..
DESK RABBIT t-shirts !!!!
oh yes !!
/funnily enough mines the one with the bunny . . . .
I only drink Absinthe
Regardless of whether it is or is not geeky - IT Crowd IS funny.
Cannot understand how you can't find it amusing.
How many times have you asked somebody if they want you to set up their PC whilst they have pretended to use it? I swear it has occurred to me twice.
"Made in Britain"
ill bet 500 quatloos
the yanks dont get it
as for a third series great news! i suppose the hardcore geekiness has to be left out so muggles can understand it
@John
"women and shoes" ... your problem being? Like all sit-com's, the situation, in this case a geek enclosure, is but the scenario in which the comedy happens, in this case an exploration of rather strained human relationships. If you are a woman who works in roomful of men who caould have been class definitions for Roy and Moss then the humour is definitely that of recognition. If you are a geek who could be as self-unaware as Roy and Moss, well, I'm sure that I don't need to show you the Powerpoint presentation.
1st series
I liked the first series but not the second really, hopefully the 3rd will be better than both.
I want girls shirts in the Reg Cash n Carrion and I bloody want them now
It's discrimination against both girls and transvestites and it's just not on.
I do hope that the new US makers don't do anything to spoil it by adding jokes anywhere. I saw the first season and loved it, but never having worked in IT before at the time I did think "oh, it's just exaggerating". Now I actually do work in IT and it's almost depressingly on the jelly. Only our Batcave isn't as interesting as theirs because we're not allowed to put up posters. :/
Needs BOFHing
The IT Crowd could do with some BOFHing. They need to be more evil.
Who is in it?
Is Richard Ayoade still going to be Moss in the US version?
(anyone seen the Ted Picture on sysadmins day web site?)
The Big Bang Theory
IT Crowd was OK, but the US already has it's own geek program, "The Big Bang Theory".
OK physics geeks rather than IT ones, but it's the better program.
...& their non-geek totty's better (Sorry Jen/Katherine)
Huh?
Isn't IT Crowd just a remake of the US sitcom Dweebs anyway?
Just the poor man's Dilbert in both cases.
@ Chris Simpson
I agree with the spirit of your comment, but I didn't think Hyperdrive was American. The cast were certainly not American.
"heh, memory IS ram..."
Hopefully, Google will pick up on it and display a search results page that says "you broke the internet". I mean, why would you ever want to google for google? Doubt they'd lose much and would delight me intensely...
Iliked it
But in my opinion it lacked a sufficient number of Star Trek references.
Mines the one with the big Klingon logo on the back, ta
Hope maybe...
...that the americans re-write the thing entirely and actually manage to introduce some humour.
My helpdesk manager got taken in by the hype prior to the first ever episode, and literally spammed the whole IT team for a week, urging us to watch it.
I still remember confronting him the day after the first episode, asking him where the hell I was going to get the utterly wasted hour of my life back from.
It's a bog standard identikit brit tv sit-com, that just happens to be set in an IT office. Unfortunately, like all the other identikit brit tv sit-coms, they forgot to actually use the situation element, and just continue to replay the same gags used by all of the other equally lame sit-coms. (The Office excepted).
There was nothing in that very first episode that showed any great insight into the IT world, beyond the tiredest of cliché. No insight, no impact, they forgot the funny.
There is stuff in the day to day world of IT that could contribute wonderfully to an observational comedy, providing new and unique humour, we've all been blessed on here to be able to read el-reg's own BOFH so regularly, but there's other stuff out there equally as good and insightful. Three Dead Trolls and a Baggie's wonderful "Internet Helpdesk" being a great example.
For now, I'm going to continue to use the IT crowd as a personal barometer for a person's intellect . Anyone that tells me that they actually find the thing funny is immediately identified as a potential candidate for my shit list, and is also to be avoided in anything approaching a conversation on technical matters. People that actually express an appreciation for the BBC's Little Miss Jocelyn also fall into the same category.
It has a laughter track, doesn't it?
Surely all those years of sitcoms about families with large sofas and kitchens just off to the left haven't caused Americans to actually start subconsciously filtering out the laughter tracks?
The Big Bang Theory ?
I thought there was already a similar show stateside, i.e The Big Bang Theory
Will have to try give it another go...
Mate of mine showed me a couple of episodes (hello Ian) but I couldn't get into it. Seemed that the laughs were at the geeks, not with them. Though I liked the various props & decorations littered round The Batcave. Will try give it another chance - god knows what the American version will be like, though!
I'll take a t-shirt too, thanks.
Where Sitcoms go to Die after BBC3
"The IT Crowd" (along with "Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps" and "My Family") is one of those series that inexplicably lives on despite being painfully un-funny...
Although the American version of The Office was pretty good, so maybe there's hope for it...
Modern Toss?
That's really going to confuse them. How will Americans respond to the sweary genius that is Mr Tourette, the bizarre 'Alan' or the utterly puerile Space Argument, which revolves solely around the idea of two astronauts calling each other cocks?
Just remember...
0118 999 881 999 119 725...
3
(For some reason just numerics don't count as a comment on here, so I've had to add thsi waffle... Please feel free to ignore)
@ Keir Snelling
If you wasted an hour of your life watching the first episode you watched the wrong program!
Are you sure it wasn't Big Brother?
jPod
If you liked "The IT Crowd" and "Dweebs" (damn, where can I get a copy of that series?!) then go and get the Canadian TV show "jPod" from your local friendly torrent tracker - only one series as the bloody executives cancelled it but well worth a watch.
So pleased "The Big Bang Theory" is back for a 2nd season, some of the material in that literally had me in stitches, seriously loved the deep geekiness of the jokes & subject matter.
As for America re-doing "The IT Crowd", you HAVE seen the American "Red Dwarf" pilot?
@techno junk
>> the first IT job I had for an university that will remain nameless,
Tell me, did you work for "an un-iversity" or "a university"?
@Keir
Too bloody right... Seriously.. how is that comedy? Take away the actors and replace with Mr. Brittas and co.. Job done - same show.
Been there, seen it.. got really really tired, so went on to better things. And why is it always the case that if someone doesn't like The IT Crowd, people who do like it HAVE to jam it down our necks that it is comic genius.
Nope. Not at all. It's just drivel and an embarrasment to Graham Lineham's talent.. (this is my opinion and is in no way an attempt to jam it down the neck)
Re: jPod
"If you liked "The IT Crowd" and "Dweebs" (damn, where can I get a copy of that series?!) then go and get the Canadian TV show "jPod" from your local friendly torrent tracker"
Please Ghod let it be better than the book, although I fail to see how it could be much worse.
Mine's the one with the battered copy of 'Microserfs' in the pocket.
comedy?
The IT crowd is comedy? It's unbearably shit!
It actually makes the latest series of My Family seem like the cutting edge of comedy.
I notice there's a series called Lab Rats now too, which seems to be The IT crowd but with a different set design.
Re: Needs BOFHing
I've been working on and off on a set of BOFH scripts over the last few months, drawing on all the BOFH stories I've collected over the years. Purely for my own interest though - Simon owns the copyright and I'd never seek to profit by plagiarism. I just want to see how the thing will turn out.
And you know what? It's bloody difficult. Not so much writing the script but doing it in a way that the mainstream TV viewer would find funny.
Most of BOFH these days is predicated on a dramatic irony that you need a good understanding both of technology and the IT industry to fully appreciate. Some of the BOFHs I've found funniest have involved concepts that Joe Average wouldn't begin to understand without such a big build-up that the impact would be lost. You can't squeeze too many of those into a 30 minute TV programme even if you could get it past a technologically clueless commissioning editor.
It would be easy to take the easy way out and just regurgitate some mainstream crap. But there is a lot of potential. The female interest needs to be a modern Lucretia Borgia, who can take on the BOFH and draw, if not win the battle. Think of someone like Servalan from Blake's 7.
I've worked out how to end the series and roughed out the stories. Might send them Simon's way if I ever get them finished.
Flip off!
Being a huge Father Ted fan I was really looking forward to the IT Crowd when it first premiered but was sorely disappointed with it first time round. Then it was repeated on E4 and I loved it so went out and bought the DVDs. I definitely think it gets better with subsequent viewings.
The Haunting of Bill Crouse and Aunt Irma Visits are firm favourites ("and in Munich, a group of IT Consultants shouted at a dog"). And Jen is hot!
As for decoration of the 'Bat Cave', doesn't Roy wear shirts from 'Think Geek' anyway? I have one; it reads "I never finish anyth..."
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