Michele Hewitson: Two episodes too far

COMMENT


Be careful what you nag for. Because nag I did, on these pages, for months, for TVNZ to screen The Office Christmas Special. Nine months after Christmas they did and I can hardly blame them, for watching the special was like finding a Cindy instead of a Barbie in the Christmas stocking.

The makers of The Office always said after the two series, 12 perfect little pieces of television by which to kill yourself, that would be that. Oh, except for the Christmas Special.

Some people were looking forward to the extra "comedy". A bloke in my office told a couple of us that The Office was a comedy. We looked at him as though he needed locking up. But here's a funny thing: he's a boss. Perhaps those boss people watched it in a different way. Perhaps those boss people think David Brent really was loved.

One awful moment (as in a moment that worked) in The Office Special: Brent is banned from just popping into the office by the ghastly new boss Neil. Brent tries to paint Neil as a fascist and challenges his former staff to have a drink with him, you know, to prove they're not under the fascist's thumb. How about tonight? Or tomorrow? Or some time? Finally Tim says he'll have a drink with him. But the moment goes on too long. The first hour of the special went on too long and there were few of the excruciating silences that filled so much time in The Office — you could just about hear the clocks tick away the awful moments.

We didn't need to see the music video Brent made for the self-financed single he spent the 40,000-odd quid of his redundancy cheque on. At least, we didn't need to see so much of it. It was enough to know he had made it.

And no Brent music moment could be as bad/good as the time he went home to get his guitar during staff training day and he played his own Free Love, with the chorus:"Free love on the free love freeway, where the love is free and the freeway is long".

You know you're disappointed when you find yourself getting nostalgic for such moments as the last, nearly unwatchable, ones of The Office when a ghastly man called David Brent is seen pleading for his job, and you almost, but never quite, feel sorry for him.

The Office Special shows how hard it is to sustain satire (the second half screening tomorrow picks up on some of the tension left hanging from the series, but the ending . . .no don't worry, I'm not going to tell. I'm too busy wondering which ending left me feeling more suicidal).

In the meantime, the Auckland mayoral campaign is ripe for satire. Actually, it's farce. It would make great, show-it-straight telly.

The characters are all there, including, according to candidate Christine Fletcher, Helen Clark's toyboy aka Honey Bumbles-maker, Dick Hubbard. And now well-known peacemaker Titewhai Harawira is about to step in as mediator. I'd watch that show.