Television - The US David Brent is not enough of a loser, writes Andrew Billen The Office: an American workplace (BBC3)

Ricky Gervais's and Stephen Merchant's The Office was, as the double-edition finale two Christmases ago proved, about the search for love. At its centre were three single men whose lives had contracted to the size of a paper products sales office in Slough. Gareth, the nerdy, status-obsessed assistant to the manager, was a portrait in sublimation, a youth who diverted his libido into the Territorial Army, aggressive office posturing and, judging by the rings under his eyes, heroic nightly masturbation. Tim, a university graduate still living with his parents, is ashamed of his job as a Wernham Hogg salesman, but his working days - and these are all we ever see - are made tolerable by his flirtations with Dawn, the office receptionist and arts-school graduate, a soulmate who has sold herself short to a Neanderthal from the packing department downstairs.

And then there is David Brent, whose desperate attempts to garner his employees' devotion suggest that, having failed in one-to-one relationships, he has decided to expose his chat-up technique to a wider audience. It is significant that it is only in the final episodes, when he has been expelled from the office and spends the days alone in his car as a sales rep or with his pet dog, that Brent is spurred to sign up to a dating agency. Remarkably, in the great redemption that follows the series' darkest hours, he finds a woman who finds him tolerable - thus proving the old adage that there is someone out there for all of us (except Gareth, of course). The profound sadness that clung to David Brent was not that he was a bad boss who thought he was a good one, nor even that he prided himself on his highly undeveloped sense of humour, but that he cared so much about the hours between nine and five. By the end, there was some hope he would now need to care about it less.

It was Gervais's genius as an actor that he managed, in his portrayal of Brent, to make us care about him. The problem facing the producers of The Office: an American workplace (Tuesdays, 9.30pm), NBC's translation of the series, was how to pull off a similar trick in a society that invented the catch-all pejorative "loser". Its writers must be congratulated on never once, in the five episodes I have seen, resorting to sentimentality. In the fifth episode, an attractive outsider is given office space for a day, and the useless men buzz around her. The David Brent figure, Michael Scott, practically has an orgasm when she accepts his offer to drive her home, only to face humiliation when she forgets all about it. He walks to his car, gutted of its takeaway litter by a lackey, with something like dignity. The next day, his ego has recovered sufficiently to address the camera: "Do I have a special someone? Yes, a bunch of them: my employees."

There will be plenty of us fans of the British Office who will be able to explain why the American version is inferior, especially given that the pilot was so closely based on the British one. Their receptionist Pam, we complain, is drippier than our Dawn. Their Jim lacks our Tim's self-loathing. Gareth has turned into Dwight, and Rainn Wilson's creepy performance is familiar from his turn as the sepulchral mortuary assistant in Six Feet Under. The best thing to do was to play spot-the-difference: a Camilla Parker Bowles reference becomes a reference to Hillary Rodham Clinton; Dwight is a volunteer deputy in the sheriff's office rather than the army; a coffee cup as well as a stapler ends up entombed in jelly. Overall, there is a feeling that the Americans are straining a little harder to make sure we see the funny side.

But I am happy to report that the writers, after coughing up the hair ball of the British pilot, have got into their own rhythm, the rhythm of an American workplace. The second episode, "Diversity Day", addresses Scott's racism by making him the subject of a staff complaint. A diversity officer arrives to host a seminar, in which Scott mistakenly believes he is there to teach, not to learn. Afterwards, at his own rival session, he asks one of his darker-skinned co-workers: "Is there a term beside Mexican you prefer? Something less offensive?" Episode three deals with the American nightmare of employer-funded health insurance, Scott wondering aloud if having the responsibility of choosing between the alternative packages does not make him, in a sense, his employees' doctor.

The writers spare no effort in making Scott live. "I think the main difference between me and Donald Trump is that I get no pleasure out of saying the words 'You're fired'," he says hubristically. He would like, he confesses, to go "head to head" with Robin Williams. His heroes are Bob Hope, Abraham Lincoln, Bono and "probably God, who would be the fourth one". Yet something is wrong: Steve Carell has been miscast as Scott. He is too muscular, too clean-cut, too blank-eyed to cut it. His performance, while unsentimental, lacks pathos. There is no hint, as there was in Brent, that he has recovered from some distant nervous breakdown. Instead, he looks like someone who might one day turn into a serial killer. He's a jerk, in other words, but the kind of jerk who would have a girlfriend. And that's all wrong.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times

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