Facilitate - Soft Focus

Facilitate magazine

Overview

Pioneering mockumentary series The Office turns two decades old next year. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s original idea proved so successful that a slew of TV awards was soon followed by 10 global variants of the show, any number of copycat sitcoms and the mass adoption of the mockumentary format.

In hindsight, what’s amazing is the universality of both setting and humour. An immediately familiar sales floor staffed by office worker caricatures so well observed that they proved instantly recognisable to viewers in the UK, the USA, France, Germany, Israel, Finland, Spain, India and beyond. The Office highlighted uncomfortable truths about office life, and office workers lapped it up.