The IT Crowd

There are a few things about me that aren't even a little bit of a secret. The fact that I am a nerd and that I love British television. If there were a way to combine these two things it would be beyond brilliant, right? Totally right! The IT Crowd combines the wonderful, sarcastic dry wit that I know and love from British comedies and is also about the sometimes painful life of the hired nerd. I feel the pain of the people who have jobs that no one understands. It is endlessly frustrating to spend ten minutes explaining to someone what it is you do to make money and pay your bills and they just look at you blankly and say, "So computers then?" Yes, computers. I do computers. The IT Crowd has a beautiful way of showing that relationship between the "computer people" and the "normals."

Moss (Richard Ayoabe) and Roy (Chris O'Dowd) are the basement-dwelling "Did you turn it on and off again," spouting, socially awkward, comic book reading members of the IT department of a very large company. It is never really clear what the company does but that doesn't really matter. Jenn (Kathrine Parkinson) is the IT department  "Relationship Manager" who thinks that IT stands for "Internet Things," is easily convinced that the internet is housed in the tower of London and looks like a smallish metal box with a blinking red light, and asks more questions about computers than she's ever able to answer. Watching Roy and Moss try to teach Jenn how a computer works and Jenn teaching them how human interactions work is beyond delightful. With every episode, they find new common ground and the boys convince Jenn that everyone else is an idiot.

This is absolutely one of the all-time funniest shows I have ever seen. This is a show I found on Netflix that I started watching on my own and very quickly turned from a "me" show to an "us" show in my house. We rationed our episodes so that we could make it last longer. We knew there was a finite number of episodes and we really just didn't want it to end. The jokes were so smart and sarcastic and the actors handled the characters brilliantly. I later discovered that Ayoabe is not quite but almost as awkward as Moss in real life. Even so, if you know anyone with a computer job or you yourself have a computer related job, you will love this show.

The only thing that makes me sad about this show is that it is such a short-running show. I know that Doctor Who aside, British shows are famously short-running. Usually the thing that happens after a successful British show has reached its end is that the American tv networks pick it up and the show lives on for far too many seasons until it doesn't resemble the original show at all. (*ahem* The Office) This is not the case with this show. In 2007 Universal filmed one episode of the show starring Joel McHale, Richard Ayoabe and Jessica St.Claire. That's as far as it got. While the casting is great, they couldn't match the original and it died before it could take off. Because of this failure, I'm sure that an American version will never get off the ground.

So again, please go watch The IT Crowd. Please. I can never watch it again for the first time so you have to for me.