The IT Crowd - Series 1 [2006]

"Have you tried turning it off and on?"


suprisingly funny   September 24, 2006
Boris Muller (cheltenham)
17 out of 28 found this review helpful

"have you tried turning it off and on again?"

the funniest line though has to be

"i'm sorry are you from the past?" (ep. 1)

VERY REWATCHABLE AND BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN.


A crying shame   July 15, 2007
Mr. J. Russell (The North, UK)
17 out of 88 found this review helpful

I've been aware of this comedy for a pretty long time but I have been decidedly wary of watching it despite my love of the acting of both Richard Aoyade and Chris Morris. Everyone I spoke to about this sitcom had severe issues with it and so I wasn't too eager to spend three hours watching it. However, I reached one of those boring Sunday evenings and decided maybe I should give it a shot.

This is one of those shows when your heart sinks about five minutes from the end of the first episode. You realise there is very little coming to save it. Despite the occasional good piece of acting, especially from Aoyade and Morris, this is a severely disappointing sitcom. Its content is broad, its jokes derivative and worse than this the situation at the heart of the comedy has nothing to do with any of the humour. I mean, an entire episode of an IT sitcom dedicated to PMT jokes? Have we British not grown past this sort of empty, repetitive 'gag'?

The story of each episode doesn't sit well. Although there are spatterings of good ideas in the series, a lot of them are underminded by tacky and rather boring turns. Noel Fielding is an excellent actor, shown in the series' The Mighty Boosh, Nathan Barley and the short Sweet, but this comedy shows what poor writing can do to a good actor. Humour based around goths and Cradle of Filth is a little bit dull and uninsightful for me and to have an entire episode turning around a 'weird' metal fan is downright poor. We all remember non-conformists from when we were kids, and no it's not got any funnier since then.

To cut a long story short, this show is pretty weak. I like the actors but I'd wait to see them in better roles than this. There are great british sitcoms, original and exciting, for example shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus and more recently Spaced but there is also far too much filler material like this. It's worrying but our comedy is rapidly becoming the sort of watered down rubbish that American mainstream TV has been solidly producing since Friends. As a writer, I was soundly disappointed to see this show was BAFTA nominated and had to wonder whether awards have less to do with the strength of a show and more the names attached to them.

Don't waste your time.