Stream On! ‘The IT Crowd’ a worthy followup to ‘Father Ted’
Peter Hummers would rather be watching ‘The IT Crowd.’ ‘Big Bang’ who?
In 1998 I first heard about one of my now favorite shows, Father Ted, from a friend who had visited family in Ireland. It took me until last year to discover another sit-com from the same writer, The IT Crowd, about a corporation’s information technology department. Almost as good as Father Ted, I first thought, but it’s steadily growing on me. I mean it’s almost neck and neck.
/Streaming /Amazon /🍅85% 🍿88% /Trailer /2006 /TV14
Graham Linehan is an Irish comedy writer who has created or co-created sitcoms Father Ted (1995–1998), Black Books (2000–2004), and The IT Crowd (2006–2013). He has won five BAFTA awards, including Best Writer, Comedy, for The IT Crowd.
(Black Books is new to me; it is streaming, and I’ll have a look at it soon.)
Don’t mess with success! While the excellent Father Ted was about three dysfunctional priests on a remote island, The IT Crowd is about three dysfunctional people in a remote Information Technology department (in a company’s basement). And it, too, is hilarious. Fresh as well, nineteen years later.
Some of the best humor comes from personalities, and as in Father Ted, the people in the Reynholm Industries’ underground IT department in London are strange enough for TV: Richard Ayoade plays Maurice Moss, a painfully shy, highly intelligent IT technician with few social skills. Moss seems to be the breakout character of the series; he’s a believable but strangely charming nerd, who, despite his naïveté displays some peculiar skills. (And Moss doesn’t seem as hackneyed as the characters of The Big Bang Theory, bless its heart!)
The other member of the IT department with any computer abilities at all is Roy Trenneman (Chris O’Dowd), a snarky Irish IT tech. Not charming at all, he’s a big, crude but lovable slob. (O’Dowd later played the loutish Lennie Small in Of Mice and Men on Broadway.) Roy despises his job, as it requires him to work beneath his capabilities, and he often goes to lengths to distract his workmates so he can relax and enjoy some comic books or video games. He habitually answers the phone with “Have you tried turning it off then on again?”
Katherine Parkinson (Humans, Doc Martin) plays Jen Barber, Roy’s and Moss’s tech-illiterate manager. (She doesn’t know what “IT” stands for, for a start.) While working on Doc Martin, busy actress Parkinson was asked by a friend from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Chris O’Dowd, to audition for The IT Crowd as they were having trouble casting a female lead. Roy and Moss initially resent her but soon find she is helpful to them in interacting with “normies.”
And while Moss has his share of quirks, the true loose cannon of the cast is Matt Berry as Douglas Reynholm, Denholm Reynholm’s long-lost gonzo son, who returns to inherit Reynholm Industries when his father, under investigation for embezzlement, steps out of a window.
Typically, Douglas, who seems like a cross of Russell Crowe on a bender and Hugh Hefner, in one episode accidentally shoots himself in the leg after finding his grandfather's old service revolver. This causes him to have a near-death experience, in which he meets his father in what seems like Heaven (if it weren’t for the sudden appearance of Adolf Hitler). Douglas decides to not follow his father and returns to the land of the living.
The premiere of The IT Crowd on Britain’s Channel 4 was watched by 1.8 million viewers, and described as “disappointing” by BBC News; however, Linehan stated he was “playing the long game” and reflected how the first season of Father Ted also “went pretty unnoticed” but went on to gain viewers and awards. The series finale in 2010 saw the program reach its current ratings peak of 2.17 million and was highly successful in its time slot. Now it’s enjoying a streaming rebirth.
Sources include Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License); Channel4.com.
Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon's prices. This column originally appeared on The Outer Banks Voice.