The Office

The Office is a popular mockumentary sitcom that was first made in the United Kingdom and has now been remade in many other countries, with overall viewership in the hundreds of millions worldwide.

The Office original UK version was created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. It starred Gervais as the boss and main character. First broadcast on BBC Two on 9 July 2001, the show ran for 14 episodes – two series of six episodes and a two-part Christmas special. The longest running version is the U.S. version, which ran for 9 seasons from 2005 to 2013. The German version has seen 46 episodes over five seasons and a movie aired 2014 in German cinemas.

Counterparts

Awards and honors

Selected major awards won only

The Office (U.S. TV series)

The Office is an American television comedy series that aired on NBC from March 24, 2005 to May 16, 2013. It is an adaptation of the BBC series of the same name. The Office was adapted for American audiences by Greg Daniels, a veteran writer for Saturday Night Live, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons. It is co-produced by Daniels' Deedle-Dee Productions, and Reveille Productions (later Shine America), in association with Universal Television. The original executive producers were Greg Daniels, Howard Klein, Ben Silverman, Ricky Gervais, and Stephen Merchant, with numerous others being promoted in later seasons.

The series depicts the everyday lives of office employees in the Scranton, Pennsylvania branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. To simulate the look of an actual documentary, it is filmed in a single-camera setup, without a studio audience or a laugh track. The show debuted on NBC as a mid-season replacement and ran for nine seasons, and 201 episodes. The Office features Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, B. J. Novak, Ed Helms, and James Spader on the main cast.

Television program

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A television program is a segment of content intended for broadcast on vision, other than a commercial, trailer, or any other segment of content not serving as attraction for viewership. It may be a single production, or more commonly, a series of related productions (also called a television series).

A television series that is intended to comprise a limited number of episodes may be called a miniseries or serial. Series without a fixed length are usually divided into seasons or series, yearly or semiannual sets of new episodes. While there is no defined length, US industry practice tends to favor longer seasons than those of some other countries.

A one-time broadcast may be called a "special," or particularly in the UK a "special episode." A television film ("made-for-TV movie" or "television movie"), is a film that is initially broadcast on television rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video.

A program can be either recorded, as on video tape, other various electronic media forms, played with an on-demand player or viewed on live television.

Television film

A television film (also known as a TV film; television movie; TV movie; telefilm; telemovie; made-for-television film; direct-to-TV film; movie of the week (MOTW or MOW); feature-length drama; single drama and original movie) is a feature-length motion picture that is produced for, and originally distributed by or to, a television network, in contrast to theatrical films, which are made explicitly for initial showing in movie theaters.

Origins and history

Though not exactly labelled as such, there were early precedents for "television movies", such as Talk Faster, Mister, which aired on WABD (now WNYW) in New York City on December 18, 1944, and was produced by RKO Pictures, or the 1957 The Pied Piper of Hamelin, based on the poem by Robert Browning, and starring Van Johnson, one of the first filmed "family musicals" made directly for television. That film was made in Technicolor, a first for television, which ordinarily used color processes originated by specific networks (most "family musicals" of the time, such as Peter Pan, were not filmed but broadcast live and preserved on kinescope, a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor – and the only method of recording a television program until the invention of videotape).

Rick Steves

Richard "Rick" Steves (born May 10, 1955) is an American author and television personality focusing on European travel. He is the host of the American Public Television series Rick Steves' Europe, has a public radio travel show called Travel with Rick Steves and has authored numerous travel guides.

Career

Steves started his career by teaching travel classes through The Experimental College, a student-run program of non-credit classes at his alma mater, the University of Washington, and working as a tour guide in the summer. At the time, he also worked as a piano teacher (his father had owned a piano store). In 1979, based on his travel classes, he wrote the first edition of Europe Through the Back Door (ETBD), a general guide on how to travel in Europe. Steves self-published the first edition of his travel skills book ETBD in 1980. Unlike most guidebook entrepreneurs, he opened a storefront business. Initially, this was both a travel center and a piano teaching studio. He held travel classes and slide show presentations, did travel consulting, organized a few group tours per year, and updated his books. He did not provide ticket booking or other standard travel agency services. He incorporated his business as "Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door." The store was in Steves's hometown of Edmonds, Washington, north of Seattle. The company's headquarters are still in Edmonds. Steves' first television show, Travels in Europe with Rick Steves, debuted on public television in April of 1991 and ended production in 1998. His second show, Rick Steves' Europe, debuted in September of 2000, and has produced episodes through 2014, though because he does not produce a season every year, this accounts for eight seasons.