The IT Crowd

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

To someone like me, for whom television-watching defines the word anathema, arriving as a virgin to the British TV sitcom The IT Crowd proved a shock, to say the least. My initial reaction -- which almost caused me to eject the DVD from my machine -- was "Oh God, a laugh track! They still use this prehistoric method of making you believe something is funny?" They do, but get used to it. By the end of the first episode (there are six in this "complete first season," each one lasting about 24 minutes), my own laughter had taken precedence over the artificial track, and I was hooked. And that first episode is nowhere near the best this very funny series has to offer.

Episode one gives us mostly set up. We meet the two IT (information technology) nerds who rule their basement domain of a large and successful something-or-other company, run by a pompous, nasty, and very odd boss. When the boss hires a young woman who clearly knows little-to-nothing about computers and places her in charge of the two nerds, no one is happy until the three drones decide to make things work.

The humor here comes almost completely from the characters of the three underlings. Writer/director Graham Linehan knows his stuff -- his people and their workplace -- and he makes enormous fun of them and it. And in his three leads, he has sterling material: Chris O'Dowd plays a cocky, full-of-himself-and-still-batting-zero "techie" named Roy; Richard Ayoade is Moss, who sits with knees together, bites his lower lip; knows a lot about everything IT-related and almost zero about anything else -- including how to put out a fire, which occurs in episode two; and Katherine Parkinson plays Jen, a young woman for whom consistent lying is the only way to get through the day.

As wild and ridiculous as Linehan allows events to become, there's always that kernel of truth at the heart of the joke -- which makes the humor all that much funnier and the satire razor-sharp. Whether it's female vanity and the shoe fetish that is being skewed, the needy-sick employer-employee relationship, or interoffice dating and the rumor mill, the humor is consistent, crazy and hilarious. In episode five, Moss tells Jen that he doesn't lie very well (something she excels at), but she insists he lie for her anyway. He does -- even more badly than we could have imagined -- and from this comes the funniest episode in the series, involving funerals, ghosts and Elton John.

Pared of the adverts that probably accompanied the show, each short episode lasts only long enough to make you happy and not wear out its welcome. And because the first season includes only six of these, all are presented on a single disc -- making The IT Crowd particularly economical for our hard times. Where else can you find this many laughs for this little money?