by The Christmas season is a strange time of year because there are so many movies and TV shows that tell us how it should be – and yet the reality is always different, and always worse. Rosy families smiling under Christmas trees in adverts, for example, against toddlers screaming down the shopping center because they are, in fact, scared of John Lewis’ Santa Claus. The “I love you” postcards on the doorstep in Really Love versus the dangerous texts you’ll inevitably send at 9.43pm on December 25 as your fifth Baileys kicks in.
An exception are the two special Christmas programs of the Office – 20 years old this year. Despite their age, they are still the most realistic television document of British Christmas: mostly banal, and sometimes wrenchingly beautiful – because of, rather than in spite of, that normality. The Office Christmas episode is about Christmas itself, not the version we culturally idealize.
The two original series of The Office were only 12 episodes long, broadcast between 2001 and 2002 on BBC Two; but the show became such a national phenomenon that the Christmas specials, which continued in 2003, were moved to the main festive slots on BBC One. The Office had a fresh, aggressive, down-to-earth style, and essentially informed almost every British TV comedy that came after it. And perhaps the best time is the Christmas specials.
Nowadays, the kind of “office Christmas party” that covers the Office is almost a thing of the past. These days, you’re more likely to be booked for a festive round of axe-throwing, kindly funded by corporate, than photocopying your ass in the print room. But the office party (and, therefore, The Office) represents the unmistakably grim, bleak British Christmas spirit – the mini-meal made on a plate of half-eaten pigs in blankets, the odd tender moments under the strip lighting – in which live on.
There are so many watchable moments in the party scenes – one colleague squeezing another’s belly while they slow dance in fast-falling party hats, people playing darts in the meeting room – that feel very real. They belong to the same Christmas universe as 100-piece party food plates from Iceland, and making out with someone you went to school with on Mad Friday and last Christmas playing with the lights coming on.
The underlying truth is that it really is like this: even the great, uplifting moments are kind of shit. Of course the climax of the Christmas specials is the moment Tim (Martin Freeman) has been waiting for for years. Over two seasons of The Office’s original run, Tim’s will-they, won’t-they relationship with receptionist Dawn (Lucy Davis) is the emotional core of a show that might otherwise have felt one-note: too cynical, too cringe-inducing .
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In the final moments of the Christmas special, Tim gets his wish in a nutshell. But because the woman he loves finally allows herself to love him back, there is no excuse. The disturbance of the day in, and there is an awkward kiss, searching, maybe clammy hands. She is wearing her overcoat. It’s probably nothing like what Tim imagined – it’s just life. There’s such an inevitability to the fact that this much-anticipated defining moment happens in the middle of a two-stroke conversation that has only his likes.
I haven’t been a fan of most of Ricky Gervais’s work since, and his standup comedy is clearly self-satisfied, unfunny and insulting for her (ironically, all aspects of the fragile masculinity that Gervais satirized through the character. David Brent), but The Office manages to strike a warm, if not saccharine, note.
Discussing the specials at 20 in a recent interview with GQ magazine, Gervais’ co-writer, Stephen Merchant, referred to this: “In a movie, the camera would do a 360 around them and the strings would be going up,” which he said. As the Office does it, the camera shifts awkwardly and Dawn and Tim’s colleagues are all staring at them, before they leave the room.
It is this foundation that affects the Christmas specials, and the series in general. British Christmas always has an undercurrent of craziness that feels really important – for all the peaceful, picturesque moments we look forward to, it really wouldn’t be the same without the agonizing over whether a roast potato is choking . danger to the dog. British Christmas is a disappointing Secret Santa gift, roaring hangover on the 25th, and still manages to make you laugh. The Office, 20 years later, is the rare show that gets that right.
