“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

Justin’s rating: A failed hard drive has nothing on this

Justin’s review: With the US version of The Office exploding into a greater popularity than its British progenitor, I can understand why networks were on the hunt for other shows to import from the Land of Monty Python in the 2000s. But everyone should’ve figured out that the decidedly nerdy and quirky The IT Crowd wasn’t a great candidate for translation. Alas, NBC took a stab at a pilot in 2007 anyway and then gave it a hard pass.

I’ve been wanting to see this, not because I heard anything good about it, but because (a) I love The IT Crowd so much, (b) The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade plays Moss here as well, and (c) it stars Community’s Joel McHale as the new Roy. Oh yeah, it’s going to be a train wreck, so why not come rubberneck with me?

As with The Office adaptation, The IT Crowd’s pilot took the British IT Crowd’s first episode and copied it more or less exactly. Yeah, there are a couple minutes of variations, but it’s the same thing. And it is WEIRD to see other characters inhabit these roles and and often do them much worse (except Moss, of course).

Both of these are about a couple IT guys — Roy and Moss — who are the sole and underappreciated techno-wizards for a company until they get saddled with a new boss, Jen. Jen’s swindled herself into this role, even though she has no IT skills or knowledge whatsoever, and the guys see right through her. Things happen, lessons are learned, and eventually Jen becomes their relationship manager instead.

Again, other than Moss — who was well-established in this role already — none of the other characters work whatsoever. They’re like flat, bland facsimiles of the real thing, parroting lines and scenes from a show where they worked.

If nothing else, this serves as a good example of how line delivery is so crucial. I loved Joel McHale in Community because he had great delivery for a role that fit him. A nerdy IT guy, he is not. He kind of comes off as an abrasive jerk in the limited screen time he has.

However, easily the worst character is Jen, played by Jessica St. Clair. It’s hard to convey how fakey and annoying she is in every scene. She plays her role really broadly and with none of the comedic timing that Katherine Parkinson showed.

Allegedly, NBC tried twice more to develop an IT Crowd adaptation (in 2014 and 2018) but couldn’t get to a pilot stage either time. So this weird orphaned offshoot remains as a sad warning of the pitfalls of international remakes.