Why is there a US-version of "The Office"?

i've gone back to rewatch this series from the start. right now i'm halfway through season 5. imo season 2 is the best. the Michael-Jan stuff is very interesting, the weird power struggles they deal with, and it's funny to watch him fail at both being a competent manager and a lover often at the same time. Jan was a really good character it is a shame what happened, they basically turned her into a crazy ex. the show works best when it just sits back and lets Michael fail and Jan was the best foil for him, the Margaret Dumont to his Groucho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiI4lvRbLkU

when it starts the "Jim's sports company" subplot this show becomes a struggle to get through

James Spader is cool. Catherine Tate is cool but they quickly ran out of things for her character to do. Ed Helms is funny but a mostly absent boss. Ellie Kemper is the funniest part of the last couple of seasons.

Finished up a few days ago, all nine seasons. I should have posted a few times as I went along--hard to sum up after you've finished. (I might do a character rundown in a couple of days.) Briefly: erratic, as you'd expect, but at its best I loved it. Especially Pam and Jim the first two or three seasons--as crazy as this sounds, I think that was about as romantic as any film I've ever seen. And so out of the blue when you don't know anything in advance, and you've decided you have a pretty good idea of what you're about to see.

I never made it past episode one of the British show. It made my skin crawl.

I'm amazed at how much negativity there is towards Pam early in this thread. Thought she was pretty great right from the start.

Apparently this show has become a touchstone for Gen Z, which is really odd, given how little actual office experience any of them have had. It'd be like them really getting into a show about people using rotary phones. (And yeah, obviously the office setting of The Office is all but incidental, but still.)

I think at least once a day for the rest of my life I will randomly blurt out "WUPHF.com!" at some point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfokPqeSNcw

lol

"This is how you make it in this country..."

I bet I've watched that clip 25 times the past month.

Second-last one of the these--you can feel the magic in the air. Not really about pop music in The Office, which was used sparsely over nine seasons--just 20 minutes on the "Nobody But Me" lib-dub, posted just above.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4NtPbFQd-s&t