The IT Crowd

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The IT Crowd
Jen, Moss, and Roy
Genre	Situation comedy
Created by	Graham Linehan
Starring	Chris O'Dowd Richard Ayoade Katherine Parkinson Matt Berry Noel Fielding
Theme music composer	Neil Hannon
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Language(s)	English
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	18 (List of episodes)
Production
Producer(s)	TalkbackThames
Editor(s)	Paul Machliss
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	22 min.
Broadcast
Original channel	Channel 4
Picture format	16:9
Audio format	Stereo
Original run	3 February 2006 – Present
External links
Official website

The IT Crowd (pronounced /ˈɪt/ or /ˌaɪˈtiː/)^[1][2] is a British sitcom, written by Graham Linehan and produced by Ash Atalla for Channel 4. The series has won BAFTA and International Emmy awards.

Three series have been produced to date. A Christmas special is planned for December 2009,^[3] and a fourth series has been commissioned for 2010.^[4]

Contents 1 Main cast 2 Situation and plot 3 Development 3.1 Cultural references 3.2 Foreign remakes 3.3 Awards and nominations 4 List of episodes 5 DVD releases 5.1 Series 1 5.2 Series 2 5.3 Series 3 6 Broadcasting 6.1 Online 6.2 List of broadcasters 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Main cast

• Roy portrayed by Chris O'Dowd
• Maurice Moss portrayed by Richard Ayoade
• Jen Barber portrayed by Katherine Parkinson
• Denholm Reynholm portrayed by Chris Morris
• Douglas Reynholm portrayed by Matt Berry Recurring Series 2, Central Series 3
• Richmond Avenal portrayed by Noel Fielding Recurring Series 1 - 2

Complete List of characters on the IT crowd

[edit] Situation and plot

The IT Crowd is set in the offices of Reynholm Industries, a fictitious British corporation in central London. It focuses on the shenanigans of the three-strong IT support team located in a dingy, untidy and unkempt basement — a stark contrast to the shining modern architecture and stunning London views enjoyed by the rest of the organisation. The obscurity surrounding what the company does serves as a running gag throughout the series — all that is known is that the company bought and sold ITV (a fact which Denholm Reynholm forgot completely), and once made part-year profits of "eighteen hundred billion billion". The team consists of what Douglas Reynholm describes as "a dynamic go-getter (Jen), a genius (Moss) and a man from Ireland (Roy)".

Moss and Roy, the two technicians, are portrayed as socially inept geeks or, in Denholm Reynholm's words, "standard nerds". Despite the company's dependence on their services, they are despised, ignored, and considered losers by the rest of the staff. Roy's exasperation is reflected in his support techniques of ignoring the phone in the hope it will stop ringing, and using reel-to-reel tape recordings of stock IT suggestions ("Have you tried turning it off and on again?" and "Are you sure it's plugged in?"). He expresses his "personality" by wearing a different geek T-shirt in each episode^[5]. Moss's wide and intricate knowledge of all things technical is reflected in his extremely accurate yet utterly indecipherable suggestions, while demonstrating a complete inability to deal with practical problems like extinguishing fires and removing spiders.

Jen, the newest member of the team, is hopelessly non-technical, despite claiming on her CV that she has "a lot of experience with computers". As Denholm, the company boss, is equally tech-illiterate, he is convinced by Jen's interview bluffing and appoints her head of the IT department. Her official title is "relationship manager", yet her attempts at bridging the gulf between the technicians and the business generally have the opposite effect, landing Jen in situations just as ludicrous as those of her team-mates.

[edit] Development

The first series of six episodes was produced and recorded in front of a live audience at Teddington Studios and series 2 and 3 were shot at Pinewood Studios. The third series completed shooting in late October and early November 2008.

The first series premiered on 3 February 2006, the second series on 24 August 2007 and the third series on 21 November 2008. ^[6] Linehan is optimistic about doing a fourth series.^[7] "Hopefully what's going to happen is we'll do a Christmas special this summer, and then another series later on^[8]," said actor Chris O'Dowd in an interview posted in May 2009.

[edit] Cultural references

The show tries to add a large number of references to geek culture, mostly in set dressing and props. Dialogue (both technical and cultural) is usually authentic and any technobabble used often contains in-jokes for viewers knowledgeable in such subjects.

[edit] Foreign remakes

A pilot for an American version of The IT Crowd was filmed by NBC before an audience on 16 February 2007.^[9] Jessica St. Clair played Jen, Joel McHale played Roy and Richard Ayoade reprised his role as Moss.^[10] The show was originally reported to have a midseason debut in 2007–08.^[11] However, the remake was cancelled in 2008.^[12]

A German version of the programme has been in production since June 2007, starring Sky du Mont, Sebastian Münster, Stefan Puntigam and Britta Horn.^[13] Originally titled Das iTeam - Die Jungs mit der Maus (The iTeam - The Boys with the Mouse, where "Maus" is also a slang term for a young woman), the title was changed to Das iTeam - Die Jungs an der Maus (The iTeam - The Boys at the Mouse) at the last minute. The premiere episode was aired on 4 January 2008 on Sat.1. After the first episode was broadcast online, the adaptation received a mainly negative response from Internet forum users and blog writers. It was criticised for the quality of its translation and direction, and the poor performance of Stefan Puntigam as Gabriel (German version's name for Moss). The show was dropped by Sat.1 in January 2008 after the second episode due to low ratings.^[14]

[edit] Awards and nominations

The series won the Best Sitcom prize at the 2008 Rose d'Or ceremony.^[15] The website "The British Sitcom Guide" voted The IT Crowd to be the "Best New British Sitcom of 2006",^[16] and it won the "The BSG Readers' Award" in 2007.^[17] In November 2008, it was awarded with an International Emmy.^[18] In 2009 Graham Linehan won best script television actor at the Irish Film and Television Awards for his work on the IT Crowd. The IT Crowd won the BAFTA for Best Situation Comedy in 2009.

[edit] List of episodes

[edit] DVD releases

[edit] Series 1

The first series was released in the UK as "The IT Crowd - Version 1.0" on 13 November 2006 by 2 Entertain Video Ltd. The DVD start-up sequence and subsequent menus are designed to resemble a ZX Spectrum.

The DVD also included a short film written and directed by Linehan called Hello Friend, which starred Martin Savage in a silent role, and also has appearances from Richard Ayoade and Little Britain's David Walliams. Other special features include deleted scenes, outtakes, audio commentaries on all episodes and a tounge in cheek behind-the-scenes documentary presented by Ken Korda, a film maker created and portrayed by Comedian Adam Buxton.

The first series DVD was also released in Australia on 6 December 2006.

An American version of the DVD was originally planned to be released by BCI Eclipse for a 4 September 2007 release, but on 14 August 2007 it was announced that since the American version of the show had been pushed back to an early 2008 start, the DVD would be released on 18 February 2008.^[19] Review copies were sent out in January 2008, with multiple websites, such as TVShowsonDVD.com^[20] and tvdvdreviews.com^[21], posting reviews. For unknown reasons the DVD was delayed again, and MPI Home Video received the rights for the show and released it on 31 March 2009.^[22] The American DVD is the same as the UK release, with the exception of the American release missing, although oddly, the reviews for the BCI version included these missing features.

[edit] Series 2

"The IT Crowd - Version 2.0" DVD was released on 1 October 2007, together with a box set containing both the first and second series. Initial plans to release series two without region encoding did not go ahead.^[23] Retail chain HMV sold an exclusive limited edition version featuring a set of four postcards in the style of popular viral photos such as Ceiling Cat — here replicated as Ceiling Goth.

The disc contains a commentary track, outtakes and "Recording The IT Crowd" featurette. Whereas the first series DVD menus parodied 8-bit games, the Series 2 DVD menus parody 16-bit games and make reference to Zero Wing (all your base meme), Mortal Kombat, Tetris and Lemmings. They were animated by London animation studio, CHASE. There are also several 'hidden' extras encoded into the subtitles.^[24] These are done in much the same way as the base64 subtitles from Series 1, and include three JPG images and a text adventure game file. Episode 4 has a BBC BASIC listing, and Episode 6 has light bars in the corner of the screen which can be decoded using a light reader. ^[25][26]

The American release of the Series 2 DVD is slated for a 30 June 2009 release. ^[27]

[edit] Series 3

A box-set containing all three series was released 16 March 2009 under the 2ENTERTAIN label. A single DVD featuring all six episodes was also released on the 16th of March. As with both the series 1 and 2 DVDs, the menus are based on different games. In particular, such internet games as GROW CUBE, Doeo and flow.

[edit] Broadcasting

[edit] Online

In a first for Channel 4, each episode of the first series was available for download via the station's web site for the seven days preceding its initial TV broadcast. Downloads were only available for UK and Ireland viewers and were supplied in Windows Media Video format. All but the first two episodes were encoded with DRM restrictions.

[edit] List of broadcasters

• In Australia the first series of The IT Crowd was broadcast on ABC1 in 2006 and the second series began on 16th of April 2008, before moving to ABC2 for syndication. Both the first and second series have also been run on UK.TV, a pay channel on the Foxtel platform.
• In Bulgaria, the show is broadcast by GTV Bulgaria with title Компютърджии since 30 July 2008.
• In Canada, the series made its North American debut on 16 July 2007 on G4 Canada, it currently runs during the Adult Digital Distraction block.
• In the Czech Republic, the show was broadcast in spring 2008 by the public TV Česká televize with the title Ajťáci (The I.T. Guys). Contrary to common practice with foreign language series, it was not dubbed, but only subtitled. In the Czech Republic the show was also broadcast on HBO with title "Partička IT" (Literally translated "The IT Crowd") in 2007 this series have been dubbed and HBO was also first which broadcast 1st and 2nd Season (except 3rd Season for now).
• In Denmark, the show is broadcast by TV 2 Zulu.
• In Hungary, the show's first season was broadcast by Cool Tv, in 2007.
• In Finland, the show is broadcast by Yle TV2 since April 2009.
• In Iceland, the show is broadcast by Skjár 1 since June 2008.
• In India, the show is broadcast by STAR World since 27 May 2008.
• In Israel, the show is broadcast by Channel 23, The Educational Channel.
• In Japan, the show is broadcast by digital satellite channel wowow
• In Latin America, the show is broadcast on Canal Sony.
• In the Netherlands, the show is broadcast by Comedy Central
• In New Zealand, the show is broadcast by TVNZ on TV ONE since 2007. Series 2 has just finished airing.
• In Norway, the show is broadcast by TV 2 once a week.
• In Philippines, the show is broadcast by Star World.
• In Poland, the show had been broadcast by TVP 2 and Comedy Central channels with the title Technicy-magicy (Technicians-Magicians).
• In Singapore, the show is broadcast by Star World.
• In Spain the show has been broadcast since 24 November 2007, on Canal+ with the title Los informáticos.
• In Sweden, the show is broadcast by TV4 Komedi.
• In Thailand, the show is broadcast by True Series and Star World.
• In Turkey, the show is broadcast by Show Plus.
• In the Middle East the first and second series were simultaneously broadcast in July 2008 on Show Comedy. It is shown in English with Arabic Subtitles.
• In the United States, past seasons are broadcast on the Independent Film Channel as part of their "Automat" block.
• In Wales the show is broadcast on S4C with a one week delay during the popular Friday night line-up.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The IT Crowd

• The IT Crowd at Channel4.com
• The IT Crowd at the Internet Movie Database
• The IT Crowd at TV.com
• The IT Crowd episode guide at The TV IV
• The British Comedy Guide
• Parody site for Reynholm Industries ('Staff intranet' login: [1])
• The IT Crowd at IFC
• Set Design for the IT Crowd Series 3