People here often ask me what part of England I grew up in, which isn’t a particularly easy question – I was born in the north, but then lived in South Wales and then various place in the South all of which were west of London. Oxford is sort of familiar to everyone (though not my part of it), Aylesbury to no-one, and Slough… well, on Friday the person I was chatting with stole my usual line, which is “The British version of The Office is set in Slough, and that tells you a lot about the place”. He told the leader of our research project that she should watch the British version because it is much better than the American version.
Personally, I think the British version is, indeed, brilliant. Because of that I was excited to watch the first few episodes of the America version when it came out, and found it almost unbearable. I expected it to fail, as I think most sitcoms that move from the UK to the US do. In fact, though, it transformed itself and succeeded. And I admired the writers and the star, Steve Carell, for understanding how to make that happen.