TV Review: The Office shut its doors this week with David Brent handed a single shred of dignity as he left the building. He had found a girl and a hint of self-respect. "How would I like to be remembered? As a man who put a smile on the face of everyone I met." And a grimace. There has been a lot of grimacing.
Over two concluding episodes we discovered that his bosses at Wernham Hogg had ignored his pleas not to sack him from the Slough paper merchants and that he has since become a travelling salesman. Sorry, a rep.
"I don't do cold calling, trying to sell clothes pegs and dusters," Brent's gormless half-grin snapped off. "I do sell dusters, but that's only about 5 per cent of what we do."
He had joined an Internet dating agency. Thirty seconds into the evening his first blind date had to ask him: "Sorry, can we not talk about my dead mother's breasts?" Brent was also gagging on the last meagre crumbs of fame given to him by his original appearance in the "documentary", making personal appearances to underwhelmed nightclubbers and guided by an agent whose best act is a Michael Douglas look-alike.
"I'm thinking of getting a Catherine Zeta-Jones look-alike," muttered the agent, "cos a lot of people don't realise who he is. They just think he's some small bloke at a party." Unable to let go, Brent was still hanging around in his old office, unwittingly irritating the staff and eventually barred by his nemesis Neil.
Neil is everything that Brent wants to be. He is popular, charming, witty and smart enough to sack Brent. In his presence, Brent would often became stunned by resentment, occasionally trickling out as blithering half-insults, prefaced by a muted whine as he searched desperately for the killer punchline.
It is a tough thing for a sitcom to have to write its own death scenes. By its nature, the sitcom consists of a sequence of stand-alone episodes through which an overall plot trickles thinly. To impose an ending on something that is only happy in the middle of a story can be traumatic.
Seinfeld's weakest episode was its final one, as was Father Ted's. Only Fools and Horses has sullied its reputation through a succession of increasingly tepid Christmas specials. On St Stephen's Night, A Life Outside the Box: Norman Stanley Fletcher made an attempt to follow up on Ronnie Barker's great Porridge creation 25 years later, but was so pointless and disrespectful, it had you pounding the television with frustration.
Gervais insists that this is the end of The Office, but only his subsequent career will dictate that. Right now, though, he and co-writer Stephen Marchant leave behind a near perfect imprint. They avoided a big ending for The Office, hinting instead at a new beginning. These episodes were beautifully made. The frustrated romance between Dawn and Tim was resolved brilliantly, while the unrequited love of one worker for another was a fine diversion as it was told only through glances.
But it has always been about Brent; a man almost entirely devoid of self-awareness, so that only major catastrophe registered with him. Given that licence, over the course of its two series the script has set about him like dogs to a hare. It relented at the last, his discovery of a woman whose skin didn't crawl when he spoke infusing him with genuine rather than contrived self-belief. His obnoxious and cruelly dominant friend Chris Finch made an insulting wisecrack about his new girlfriend. "Chris," retorted Brent, "why don't you f--k off?" Seldom has such crudity been infused with such resurgent nobleness.
Ryan Tubridy and Liz Bonin presented 03: How Was It For You. As is now commonplace, it was felt that the viewers' attention might wander should the pair not complete each other's sentences.
She: "We'll reveal Ireland's best . . . " He: " . . . and worst of 2003." They do this on the news bulletins all the time; a duo of male and female presenters sharing the newsreading duties, alternating mid-sentence, a rhetoric rally. It is as if to bemuse you into attentiveness. As if the one thing the Iran earthquake really needs to get our attention is the newsreaders performing an autocue duet.
Anyway, the 03 programme was based on a survey of what the Irish nation felt had been the worst and best things about the year. Or rather the Top 10 Worst Things! And Top 10 Best Things! The format trod clumsily. Straight in at number five, give it up for clerical abuse! A series of journalists and personalities provided a rapid-fire commentary. For instance, social diarist Amanda Brunker spoke about crime: "I'm from Finglas, so, it's on the TV all the time." Thank you for your valuable contribution to the debate.
Despite all that's happened, Northern Ireland didn't figure at all; which confirms the suspicion that were someone to carve off the North and push it freely away, we might only notice that it is gone were someone to disappear over a new cliff where the Sainsbury's off-licence should be.
Mickey Harte was the third best thing about Ireland this year, according to the survey, which suggests that we can be dazzled by the dullest of lures.
He appeared on Network 2's The Panel just after the final credits rolled on How Was It For You on RTÉ1 and he wasn't even the third best thing on that. Host Dara O'Briain guessed what we were all thinking.
"Just what we need, another review of the year. I don't think I've seen a review of the year for, oh, about two minutes." The View of the Year followed up back on RTÉ1 a few minutes after The Panel. Can you imagine how it felt?
The Panel's panel featured English comedian Jimmy Carr, whose schtick is as a wittier-than-thou toff. He mentioned that his family comes from Limerick but that "I like to think I've moved beyond that". He immediately wondered what he was doing featuring in a review of a country he doesn't live in and then set about taking advantage of being able to get on a plane and leave straight afterwards. His treatment of Senator Mary O'Rourke, usually well able to handle most young pups, was especially withering. "Can anyone else feel the sexual tension between us?" he asked the audience.
When Denis Hickie and Mickey Harte subsequently featured, both wore expressions suggesting that they had changed their minds about being there 30 seconds before they walked out on the stage.
The Panel has finally given Irish television a decent format in which the big issues get broken down and panned for punchlines. It has its lulls, when a guest waffles onwards in the hope of stumbling across a joke, but it is often very funny indeed. This week it was particularly sharp on the Irish race's sudden elevation to the pinnacle of world beauty. I would also mention that it treated the German cannibal trial in a most tasteless manner, if that was not too cheap a pun.
Pat Shortt, the man who has long shared the patent for Irish characters with Jon Kenny, popped up with his own comedy, The Pat Shortt Show: Killinaskully. In 'The German Fillum', a village of Pat Shortt characters and assorted others made up the chancers and schemers who led the visiting Germans down the path of cultural obfuscation.
In the pub, they order from Paraic Breathnach's glowering barmen: "Two schnapps."
"We don't serve crisps."
"Two Baileys and ice."
"You'll have to go inside to the lounge for the ladies' drinks."
And so on. There was no subtlety about the Germans, with their Johnny Logan T-shirts and slow-witted earnestness. But from Shortt's wicked observation comes Irish characters who are utterly recognisable and yet fresh and deeply funny. He has tapped into the well of our character, extracted the mannerisms and colloquialisms, the complex blend of charm and borderline threat, which makes a character such as Dan The Man, who has the Germans lugging bags of plaster for him within minutes of meeting them, so authentic. If this was shown a century ago, he would have been chased from the stage. Now, however, we happily welcome him with a few David Brents of our own.
