It’s now been 10 years (and a few months) since Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s “The Office” debuted in the UK, and to commemorate the anniversary (and give TV comedy fans a good gift option for the holidays), a new DVD set is coming out today. “The Office: Special Edition” features all 12 episodes, plus the Christmas special that wrapped up that series and its characters, plus a variety of bonus features, some seen on previous DVD sets, some brand new (including the complete version of the original pilot, Gervais and Merchant introducing the season 1 episodes, and interviews with them and fans of the show like Hugh Jackman and Richard Curtis).
The UK “Office” burned hot, burned bright and then wisely got off the stage before we got sick of David Brent, Gareth and company. The US version is still going, and has seen better days, but managed to take the same basic starting point (world’s worst boss, creepy lackey, unrequited crush on a co-worker) and produce a whole lot of episodes (many times more than what Gervais and Merchant did) of a very high quality. Still, the finite quality of the original version gives it a great intensity, and ending the series so quickly allowed the show to go out on an incredible high note with that Christmas special, two scenes of which you can see below.
For those of you who want to have the gang from Slough on your shelves, HitFix is running a contest to give away two copies of the DVD set. You have to have a Twitter account (and it’s very easy to set one up just for this and then ignore it immediately after if you don’t want to be sucked into the Twitter-verse), and then follow the instructions as outlined below.
We will randomly select one Winner on Monday, November 28th by tracking the hashtag #WinBritishTheOfficeDVD. The Winner must be at least 18 years of age, have a U.S. mailing address and follow @HitFix on Twitter. We will contact the Winner with a Direct Message on Twitter.
Good luck!
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